SEASON 5

EPISODE 2: DANCING FOR ME

A man, too lazy to put his van in park and actually get out of his car to retrieve his morning paper, instead leans out of the vehicle to reach down and try to grab it. He falls out and gets mashed by his own van. Wow...that really sucks, dude.

Nate and Brenda are going at it like rabbits, trying for a new baby. Maya is just like the rest of the family in that she loves to barge in on folks having sex. But unlike Ruth, Claire or Billy, Maya is neither shocked into nearly having a stroke, nor embarrassed and tripping over herself trying to flee the scene, nor is she giggling and talking about "seeing this on the internet". No, she's just dancing, having a swell time.

Ruth hates her life now. George has been home for a time, and appears to be doing really well. But all Ruth sees in front of her is her "fucking legless Grandmother".

She's still at odds with Claire, who has taken that big step and moved in with Billy. She has done another thing Ruth didn't like: she dropped out of LACArts. I think Claire's mad myself. If I had that hottie teaching me, I'd stay enrolled. I'd stay after class too, if ya know what I mean. But then again, Claire's getting just about the best of everything from him now. Maybe seeing him constantly would cool her off. She's still serious about her art, but her dealer, that Robert E. Lee looking guy, isn't interested in her Billy Chenowith inspired wedding photos. He wants more of her collages that were so successful. Seems Claire can't get away from people who want to program her.

Brenda still wants to become a psychotherapist, and she wants to work in a place that's REAL. Not the plushy offices made for the overpriveledged poor little rich kids, but at a clinic where there are real problems, real family needs, etc. Mad Margaret thinks her daughter is an idealist nutball, and begs Brenda to let her pull a few strings.

But Brenda doesn't want any handouts, especially not from Ma, who will definitely hold it over her head one day.

Rico has really come to like Sharon, the gal he took to Nate's wedding. She's a dental hygienist, so she, like Rico, leads a very busy life and has very little down time. That's what she says anyway.

I said before that Claire's getting what a lot of us would love to get from Billy, and she seems pretty satisfied in that area. Poor Billy though. He's not functioning very well sexually, because of those meds. His catch-22. And it's really sad. He can't function with them, he can't function without them.

David and Keith continue in their endeavors to have a child, and Keith, really liking the idea of having a child that is biologically his, asks David to hit Claire up for some of her ova. From the get-go, David doesn't like the idea. It might be because he thinks it would creep Claire out. Or it might be something else. But he doesn't want to disappoint his beloved, so he does ask Claire. His subconscious works during his sleep, a hilarious dream in which Keith, looking quite ravishing in overalls with no shirt (no wonder David could never bear to let Keith get away) runs away with Claire on a tractor, leaving David holding the bag.

Claire, like David, isn't thrilled by the idea of giving eggs away, even if she won't be using 99% of them. Keith is disappointed. I wonder if he thinks the Fishers are a little big paranoid and puritanical with all these "taboos". Gee, Mari, you think???!!!

It turns out that the man who accidentally ran himself over with the family van is an old high school chum of Nate's. At the funeral, Nate is reunited with another friend, Tom Wheeler. When they were all in high school, Nate, Tom and this other guy, I can't remember his name, something Maddox??? had a big hair New Wave band.

George's daughter Maggie (Tina Holmes), comes to visit again, and Ruth seems copiously relieved by Maggie's arrival, and the step-daughter does her best to comfort both of the emotionally overwrought parents.

Brenda feels gratified at first, but all too soon, she sees that this free clinic she picked for her internship is filled with callous, jaded and uncouth employees. I guess gallows humor could be a great de-stressor for these people who daily see humans at their worst, but it still seemed terrible to joke about some woman who is sexually abusing her daughter. Maybe I, like Brenda, am not used to social workers and their secret ways of coping in each other's company. Why else would Brenda decide to leave after one day, and take Ma up on her offer to send Brenda to a "nicer" place? Or was it just too horrible to hear about the Newsweek magazine incident? Maybe Bren, for all her noble talk earlier, would rather deal with spoiled little anorexic chicks whose Daddies don't pay enough attention to them?

In a bar, Nate and his old friend Tom get reaccquainted. Tom discusses his fears of getting old, being mortal, turning forty. If only he knew everything Nate has been through in the past few years. There was a time when Nate would have thought turning 40 would be the end of the world. But the death of Dad, the experience with death-care, his relationship with Brenda, his marriage to Lisa, fatherhood, Lisa's murder, and of course, his brush with death, have taught Nate a lot. It's simple. Nate has grown up. Tom is simply relating fears that average people harbor inside, but Nate isn't an average man, not anymore. That carefree slacker life he lead in Seattle is but a distant memory. He seems filled with scorn at Tom's admission to being attracted to teen girls. At first, you think, ah, a pedophile. But when he tries to explain to Nate, I remembered Lester Burnham from American Beauty. It's just wistfulness about the end of youth and the decline in physical energy. Getting old really does suck.

Nate comes across as a strong believer in the fact that people have one life to live, and that they need to make the most of it and appreciate it. Well that's easy to say now that the burden of Lisa is gone from his shoulders and back.

I am trying not to neglect Rico, it's just that I don't find this storyline interesting in the least bit. His new love interest Sharon has not been returning his calls, so he goes to her place and gets a rude awakening. She's just another asshole coward who hopes he gets the message rather than simply telling him that she's just not into him the way he'd like. What really baffled me was why Rico lies to Vanessa about what happened to end the relationship. What was that all about???

Maggie has her work cut out for her as George throws a tantrum over ice cream and Ruth dissolves into tears. I felt for Ruth here. I know George has his issues, but this was very childish and attention seeking.

Claire and Billy eat out with a couple of Billy's old friends from the art world, and they remind him over and over again of how things used to be when he was younger, wilder, perhaps happier? He admirably defends his decision to teach at LACArt, and admits that he's in a creative dry spell, but still, these friends got to him. They're not even being catty, they're reminiscing together, but still, there is something going on. Later, while Claire was talking about creating a new collage series depicting how "the world is barely being held together", Billy looks like there is a timebomb inside of him. You can hear it in his voice and see it in the body language as he says, "Okay, well I'll let you work."

As he has many times before, Billy is missing what it's like to feel. And because he can't feel, he barely knows who's looking at him in the mirror. This well-behaved, smooth Billy that everyone can tolerate never feels right for very long, because he doesn't feel, period. The creative, emotional Billy feels less foreign, because he feels everything, because it's the version of himself he's lived with the longest. What he wouldn't do to feel, and be able to behave normally. You can hear his thoughts as makes the fateful decision to flush his meds, one dose at a time: Why did he have to have this disease? Why does he have to pop pills and feel nothing just to live among other human beings? It isn't fair.

This episode was obviously a lot to chew on, so it gets an A or even an A+.