Good point about Barb. Could be that Lisa has been talking to the daughter (like she does Nate), maybe that’s why she acts so freaked out.
I’m sure Michela simply overheard something, and her dad didn’t know she was listening.
I want to like Claire. I really want to like her. (it helps that she’s really hot) But, goddamn she pisses me off. Grow up, cut back the drugs and just be, you know?
I thought it was clear that Hoyt had killed Lisa when he told Nate that they should take a walk, which was very threatening and ominous to me.
So, George is a paranoid schizophrenic? That’s a bit more mundane that I might have imagined from his intro last year, but I think that he’ll still fit in well at Fisher & Diaz.
What, precisely, IRL was David leaning against at the end of the episode?
I like how the season finally, finally came around and validated this year’s tag line, “Every day above ground is a good one.” That would have been an appropriate line for Nathaniel’s little speech.
What did George’s daughter say to Ruth after she gave her the business card?
Something along the lines of “You can call me any time…He trusts me.” I think she was trying to tell Ruth that he’s going to get even weirder then he already is, sooner or later. And when that happens, she be one of the few people that he’ll trust.
I guess I don’t find it such a big mystery that Michaela knew something was going on—kids often know one parent is screwing around even if the other parent doesn’t.
David makes me sigh a lot. I mean, I feel really badly for him, but he just makes me sigh. Maybe things will change now that Nathanial basically told him, “Quit yer whining, you’re at least alive.”
Crazy Carjacker Guy is just such a brilliant character. He managed to fuck with David’s head even while shackled. “You’re all I have, David.”
Didn’t really need to see the 2 bloody pieces of the COTW in the embalming room, but I suppose if you’re trying to hammer home the point that the chracters are torn between 2 worlds/people/things/whatever, that’s the way to do it.
I should probably mention that I didn’t think it would happen so soon. I assumed they were foreshadowing something for next season, not 20 minutes later. Also, what was that comment about looking like he “just walked out of the bible.” That doesn’t seem like something that was “just a random comment.” I get the feeling we’ll be hearing more about that later. I’m just not sure where they’ll go with it.
Nate noticed Lisa’s clothing, and he knew that the photo had to be taken the day she died. Michaela seems to be a very observant girl. Maybe she noticed the same thing? She also seems to think a lot about death. Could be that she overheard her father talking to Lisa once and figured out that they were having an affair, saw the photo that her father snapped, and put two and two together.
I figured young Michaela saw the photo in with the rest of the roll and put two and two together on the time frame. She’s a frighteningly smart little girl. She was outside when Nate arrived, he spoke to her, but where was she when her daddy ate his gun? That bothered me.
I was also a little offput by the amount of blood spatter in this episode. I know that the COTW was a license on the story of the young doctor who died the same way (though I believe he was decapitated, not cut in two at the waist) in a hospital last year but I didn’t need to see arterial spray and head-blown-apart-goo in one episode, darnit. 
No snottiness detected. 
Any speculation on why Michaela gave the book and picture to Nate to give to David rather than just giving it to Nate?
Was she trying to distance herself from the possible consequences?
She’s a spooky little girl, and I mean that in the best way. I hope we see more of her.
Hmmmm…I think I was less impressed with this episode, and the season, than most of y’all.
The suicide seemed more like sloppy writing. A convenient way to close off a story line that the writers didn’t know what to do with. How did the little girl find the picture? Why did she put it in the book, to give to David instead of Nate? Why did BIL just happen to have a loaded gun in the desk in front of him? I don’t think the writers knew, either.
And I don’t like what they’re doing to Claire; specifically, why has she suddenly turned into such a druggie. She’s always been an experimenter, but now it’s becoming obsessive.
And George’s survivalism came out of the blue this year. You would think that Ruth might’ve overheard something to that effect at the faculty party; all she heard was details about how his past relationship ended – not that he was a tinfoil-hat-wearing loon.
-
Keith is being offered a new career by a guy on the fringe of show-biz. It involves bodies but not guarding them.
-
The sister has a better case than Nate over custody of the kid. She’s biologically related, he isn’t. While traditional law says it’s his kid no matter what, TV writers tend to ignore such details. (There’s a lot of guys paying child support to kids that are provably not theirs.)
-
Why the hell do keep trying to mess up Claire so badly? She could be a great character, smart with interesting twists. But they keep making her all twist.
The impression I got–from probably very little actual evidence–was that Michaela wanted David to get the book because she sensed that he might actually open it and find the picture. Now I have no idea where I’m getting this from at all, but her insistence that Nate give him the book seemed to indicate that she detected some irresponsibility on Nate’s part. Nate did keep forgetting to give it to David, after all. But I fully acknowledge that this is coming from out of thin air and really does nothing to explain how a young girl could so weirdly orchestrate a confrontation that not only results in a confession of adultery between her father and aunt, but also in a stunning suicide. So basically, I still have no idea why she gave the book to Nate to give to David instead of just doing it herself.
I was pretty satisfied with George’s storyline. It did explain why he’s so reticent to introduce Ruth to any aspect of his other lives (his kids, his ex-wives); it also suggested possible reasons for his multiple marriages and strained relationships with his children.
Right after Nate gave the book to David and David gave Nate the picture and after Nate took the picture to the house and he confronted the guy, and right after the guy made his rapid exit from the show, THAT’S when I thought of it. Pretty sharp of me huh?
In all honesty, I was extremely disappointed in this season. Almost every episode was boring, tedious, and the characters were consistently self-absorbed, idiotic, and mentally ill. I like one or even two characters like that in a show, but when every single main character is a completely unlikable loon, it makes the show tough to watch. There was also an almost complete lack of a sense of dark humor that drew me to the show the first two seasons. Everything was so melodramatic it made it unwatchable.
I mean look at the main story lines from this season:
SPOILERS AHEAD:
David: I absolutely hated what they did with David this season. I have no problem with the whole having to deal with a traumatic experience, which is fine. But they took one of my favorite characters, stripped him of his wicked, dark sense of humor and meticulous professionalism, and made him a annoying, whiny, helpless, needy, idiot. I’m generally fine with a main character having to deal with a big, bad thing, but it just dragged on and on and on and on and on and on, and, up until the last scene of the season finale, I hated him. I loved the last scene with him and Nate Sr., but it should have taken place 6 episodes ago.
Nate: Still Nate. Still self-absorbed, angry, Nate. While the first episodes were good, especially with him having to bury his wife and dealing with her death, his story lines devolved into idiotic ramblings and even more idiotic “dream sequences.” Then, the whole mystery of Lisa’s death. All this happens to Nate, and he does not grow one ounce as a person and instead comes back and makes, yet another, rash decision that could ruin not only his but Brenda’s, Maya’s and another potential child’s life. At first, he was an interesting, likable in a raffish kind of way, character, who was a near perfect counterpart to David, his brother. Now, he’s just annoying.
Claire: While I liked the story of her finally deciding what she wants to do with her life, and her success as a artist, she too became another self-absorbed idiot with no positive contributions.
etc., etc., etc.,
I guess that’s my entire problem with all the characters this year. None of them are likable, most of them are mentally unbalanced, none of them have redeeming qualities, and they all stuck in a self-aborbed, melodramatic life that they don’t seem to wish to get out of. If I wanted that, I’d watch Springer.
I really enjoyed the show before, but this season just bugged the heck out of me. I will say that, if the Finale is any indication, there is hope for next season. I thought the finale was the best show of the year, and I’m hoping the writer’s can quit with the melodrama and make the characters likable once again.
One question, though: It seemed to me that Rico was on the verge of suicide at the end of the episode. IIRC, his story left off with him getting his stuff in order, tidying his drawers, and sitting down in the middle of the room alone. Very “I’m about to finish it all” actions, especially after he’s lost pretty much everything he loved. (By the way, I hate what they did with him too this season). Did I miss something, or is that one of the cliffhangers that I’m supposed to think about for the next 2 years until we get new episodes?
You’re assuming Maya isn’t actually Nate’s. The writers opened up the possibility that she might not be, but it’s never actually confirmed she’s not.
I’m going to go on assuming she’s Nate’s biological daughter-- with the lingering doubt she isn’t-- until told otherwise.
i was having tivo malfunctions all night, so all i caught was about half the episode, interrupted by a jumble of pixelated screens and in-and-out audio. but i knew, as soon as i saw the brother-in-law at the desk, he was the killer and he was going to shoot himself in the head. there’s something about a nervous white guy behind a desk that just screams “i’m going to blow my brains out.”
they’ve handled the claire character very badly. it’s the old “i was just experimenting, and now it’s spiralled out of control” storyline. and did i need to see more nicole richey?
i saw the actor who played the carjacker on a monk rerun last week. i was just waiting for him to kidnap monk and take him on a crime spree before dousing him with gasoline and shoving a gun in his mouth. didn’t happen, though.
george went uber-crazy kinda quickly.
“hey ruth, notice anything wierd about dear old dad?”
“no, whatever do you mean?”
ten minutes later, the guy is blabbering to a figment of his imagination. not like the fishers haven’t been doing that shit all series long.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly when Lisa and Hoyt were having this affair.
He says they would meet at the beach between Santa Cruz and LA, but she was living in Seattle till she was about 5 months pregnant. Remember, she and Nate lived together as friends in Seattle (and occasional bed partners) till he came home that fateful Christmas Eve when Nathaniel, Sr. got creamed by the bus. In the episode when Nate and Claire made their trip to Seattle to pick up the body of the guy who was afraid to fly, (when Nate had the seizure in the fast food drive-thru and ended up telling Claire abour his condition) and stayed with her was when she got pregnant and then she just showed up later in LA pregnant. Nate ran into her at a deli or grocery store and asked how she was, she pulled open her coat to reveal her belly, and said, “I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.”
Where they having the affair after she was in LA, but before she and Nate got married?
Yeah, I’ve put waaaay too much thought into this.
I don’t think Rico was contemplating suicide, I think he was finally moving in to the Fischer’s extra room. He had been living out of a suitcase because he thought he could fix it up with Vanessa.
Has anybody thought about the possibility that George flipped out and went over-the-edge because he met with his daughter? I’m thinking that George was a little bit off, starting in on the paranoia, but meeting with his daughter tipped the scales. Maybe that’s why he stays away from his kids and refrains from discussing his past wives. The woman in the shadows was either his mother or his first wife. I’d guess that it was his first wife and the father of the children, but his own mother would have had more influence as far as future behavior.
I loved this episode, especially the COTW. Finally, a death more in line with those in the first season!
George was flipping out earlier in the episode before his daughter arrived.