Surf's up, Nate

Six Feet Under Ep. 60
Six Feet Under Season 3 (bonus playlist, since this week's soundtrack is thin.)

Spoiler Alert... The stiff of the week is... oh, really, who cares. It isn't Nate, just some hiker dancin' with a cougar. Nate's still unconsious ("Narm!")and is rushed to the hospital while Maggie avoids talking to Brenda for now by calling his brother David, who then calls Brenda the scorned. David tries to call Ruth, but she's camping with Hiram the hairdresser (Ed Begley, Jr,) who's a little too aggressive with his pitched tent. Ruth escapes and sleeps outside (and I wonder if that cougar will have more then the small cameo intro.) Maggie struggles with questions from the hospital, all the while wondering how she got into this, and we all nod our heads knowing that to sleep with Nate is to sleep with drama itself. David calls Claire and interrupts both her dinner and her painful discovery that her Ted is a... gulp... conservative. In a sequence of awkward waiting room silence, one by one, the Fishers (and Ted) figure out what Nate was doing before his collapse, namely Maggie. Ted stays up all night at the hospital with Claire, making up for his Iraq war opinions, either that or all the drama surrounding Nate has made her forget. Meanwhile, Nate goes all Jacob's Ladder and continues his affair with Maggie in his head... eventually acting out the ending of his marriage with Brenda. Turns out it's another hemmoraged AVM that Nate's had and the operation is deemed a conservative success. Nate comes out of it and Brenda's there waiting for him, which is obviously not what he wants to see, and Brenda senses it and leaves to get Maya. David, Keith and the boys sit in Nate's room and Anthony's got the heebie jeebies... repeatedly trying to escape the hospital. David's not the most intuitive parent, so Durrell has to explain to him that their mom O.D'd a few times and Anthony naturally has a bad relationship with hospitals (really, though, when you get right down to it - don't we all?) Maggie stops by and suddenly Nate's all smiley and full of God. Apparently God's swift punishment to Nate for his fling reads like a thumbs up to Nate... but religion truly is interpretation, isn't it? Rico finds Nate's glow kind of funny and tells him of the cougar victim. Nate gets all National Geographic and thinks of the Ecotone, which is "the region where two disparate ecosystems overlap." When you think about it, ecotone is a good description of much of the series... taking place in a region shared by the living and the dead. Speaking of Rico, he and 'Nessa talk some more and figure out that she loves him and that's why she's cruel to him ("get it?" "I got it.") So if Rico can handle being a punching bag for awhile longer... Brenda brings Maya and then forgives him for sewing his Quaker oats with Maggie, but Nate doesn't want it and gives her some of what he's already acted out in his head. When Brenda tries to engage in battle, Nate says he's through fighting, disarming Brenda instantly. Ruth's lost in the woods (where's that cougar?) and shoots all the men she's loved before (inluding creepy Arthur,) in a 'lost in the woods' delirious fantasy sequence. After wandering aimlessly, she comes upon an outdoor Tai Chi class, and hitches a ride back with them. Nate and David have a moment together before Nate falls asleep looking content. Nate's synapse fire and we're off for another dream... in this one he wakes up and David's calling him into the back of a beat up VW bus, only this David is a surfer dude with a soul patch. They hop into the back of the van ("Strawberry Letter 23" blasting) and share some weed. Nate laughs and says he was just dreaming he was like a different person entirely. This is more like it... free of the funeral home and with a cool brother who supplies him with weed and isn't a gay/suit-wearing/funeral home director. Everything seems cool until we find out Nathaniel's driving and asking for a hit (nothing good comes of a visit from Nathaniel in the ecotone.) They pull up to a beach that looks like where first wife Lisa and Nate jumps out and runs into the water, asking David to join him, but he's all of a sudden square and afraid of sharks. Nate swims off and David's now a suit-wearing funeral director again. David wakes up from their shared (ecotone?) dream to find that the next episode's stiff of the week is Nate after all.

Nathaniel Fisher, Jr. - 1965-2005

Full tracklisting with scene descriptions

Previously
A 'Giant Sucker' Punch (Ep. 59)
Staring into the abyss, Quaker style (Ep. 58)
The loss of the loss of virginity (Ep. 57)
Accept, adapt and adopt (Ep. 56)
Life is not a vending machine (Ep. 55)
Six Feet Under: Ep. 54
Mortality, insanity, paternity and more insanity (Ep. 53)
Requiem for a soap opera (Ep. 52 - Season 5 premiere)

tags: playlist, six feet under, television, soundtrack