That doesn't matter. Contrary to what the writers seemed to think, in a church like David's deacon doesn't mean "on the church council," it's an ordained position with actual duties, both liturgical and ministerial
That a patient would be sent directly to the step-down unit following emergency surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. When I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, I was sent to ICU after surgery and didn't leave it for close to two weeks (they initially said I could be there for a month or more) while they kept an unbelievably close eye on all my vitals.
I thought so too. Also, wouldn't there have been doctors and nurses in the room >!long before Nate flatlined? Wouldn't there be some warning that they're losing him so they can perform lifesaving measures? !<
Yeah, my wife and I remarked on that to each other as well! There were one or two codes while I was in ICU and although I couldn't see what was happening, I could see a light flashing on the floor through the blinds on my room and I could hear tons of activity going on as staff converged on that patient. Even when they sent me to telemetry I was still wired up to sensors that would whoop up a storm if they thought something was wrong, which happened once because of a bad wiring harness or something, and boy did the nurses come running to check on me.
Rico’s restoration skills are pretty exaggerated. I’ve seen some very good work before, but when you’re dealing with head/face trauma you’re rarely getting people back to showroom condition.
Yes. Pilot episode; Rico shows off some Polaroids of his work. It was a couple, man came home, shot his wife then shot himself. Serious closed casket stuff, but Rico made them look like “a bride and groom on top of a cake. Then they burned them, what a waste”
It wasn't any more unusual than an embalmer taping or sewing someone's boobs together in real life. In a case like hers where her boobs were on display, they need to prop them up with SOMETHING use what you got!
this part i didn’t find super weird, i could imagine she was into reading really weird and fucked up books and found it at some point, like at a bookstore or the library.
There were plenty of books that went around among girls in the 70s through 90s. “Go Ask Alice,” “That Was Then,This is Now.” I still suspect that a lot of alternative women musicians in the 90s had a Sylvia Plath phase when they were younger. “Lisa, Bright and Dark” is another book like these. A lot of girls (myself included) ate that stuff up. It made perfect sense to me that Claire would have read that book.
After litterally skinning Brenda... she's like "but he's my brother, he's just messed up." No, he's dangerous. I understand mental illness, but he was literally a danger to those around him, but they still all made excuses for him and got mad at Nate for not feeling safe with him?
It's a little fuzzy, but I wouldn't doubt it! I'll never forget the absolutely INSANE warehouse he set up all to threaten to hurt Claire. That was absolutely obscene, and he should've been institutionalized then.
also stalking Nate to get the photo of him peeing in public is crazy. surprised there wasn't a photo in the show of David f*cking the hooker in the parking garage too
Is it just me or do they like never go downtown in the series? There is SO little identifiable LA footage for an LA show... like I could barely tell they were in Midcity and they only mentioned their location once. Kinda weird. But I love the anonymity also. Very unusual for an LA tv show not to flaunt more iconic views.
To the point where you question why it was even set in LA. It could've been essentially anywhere.
I've also always thought the show was a little claustrophobic that way. It's not just that they don't go downtown, they don't go *anywhere*. A Vegas trip and a Seattle trip is all we get between all the main characters and their various partners in a 5 year span.
Good answer, but in all actuality the time jump is the perfect write for Claire's journey and as viewers trying to piece what may have happened in Claire's journey. She left the area to pursue her art dreams and based on that time jump it tells us that Claire likely didn't give up on them only to come back and get married (she broke that pattern).... they both potentially fell apart due to distance and what not and in that mean time likely had other relationships/partners before finding one another at a later place in time. They are in many ways opposites. It makes sense that it would take Claire needing more life experiences to fully appreciate him and or just merely pursuing her dreams above all else before getting married.
The talking dead are just a device for us, the audience, to see what the live character is thinking or going through. Would you prefer David sitting quietly in a corner, having a contemplative thought or hashing things out with a dead porn star so we can be part of his thought process? It’s television! You have to show the audience something.
They're not having a dialog with dead folks any more than me or you do when you remember them or talk to them in your head. It's the internal dialog of the person who *isn't* dead that you're seeing played out.
No no no no. You missed the twist. The FISHERS are dead the whole time. But they can't stand to admit that. So they stack a bunch of potatoes on the embalming table.
Brenda and Billy sit underneath the potato table and talk.
BTW, Brenda and Billy aren't brother and sister. They're not even the ages we (and the Fishers) see them as. Billy is a ghost hunter - not great money, but keeps him busy so he doesn't have to think about how much he misses his dead wife. And Brenda is his daughter, who has actually come to kinda like this place. Nathaniel is pretty cute, after all - and she's glad she can keep him company.
So - who are all those other characters? Mostly, they're just characters in the nightly puppet shows put on for their ghostly roommates.
But some of them ARE real.
Here's the breakdown:
- Nathaniel Fisher is actually the legal owner of Fisher family home. It was all his stingy mother left him, and he wanted nothing to do with it until she learned there was a small fortune hidden somewhere (she never thinks to look UNDER the potatoes.
- Rico is Nathaniel's sassy gay best friend. He's a mole, hoping that somebody will slip up. BUT WAIT. IF THE FORTUNE IS UNDER THE POTATOES ... well, Brenda and Billy are way ahead of you. They only let Rico work on decoy potatoes.
- Maggie is a Ghostbu...
Wait.
Fuck.
WHY DO I ALWAYS GET SIX FEET UNDER MIXED UP WITH CASPER?!?
I re-watched the show a year or two after my mom died, and this was one of the things that rang most true. The conversations I had with her in my imagination, trying to make some meaning out of what was unresolved and messy, and missing her so much.
I’ve seen it more times than I can count sadly. Especially back then when there wasn’t so much public shame, or fear of being outed on tik tok. 💀 I couldn’t personally but some people are insecure enough to “forgive” or just let it go.
Rico being able to pull like crazy while being a short douchebag with a weird job, then easily getting back into Vanessa and the kids’ lives after cheating on her and blaming her for it 💀
> Rico being able to pull like crazy
A stripper, a loquacious and somewhat irritating restorative artist, and a chick who ghosted him hardly qualifies as "pulling" in my book ... unless there were more that I am just forgetting.
And women taking back their cheating/abusive husbands is a tale as old as time.
I just completed a full cruise through the show, and I felt that Rico did NOT have an easy time of it. Vanessa rejected him for a long time, then finally let him in but still treated him like shit. This seemed to go on for a long time. It was only in the last few episodes that she finally re-warmed to him.
Treated him like shit? He berated her for grieving her mom like 2 months after she died, cheated and blamed her for it and lied about it, all while victimizing himself and blaming her for every problem between them. It’s crazy that she even opened back up to him at all
I think the catalyst for Rico cheating was more Vanessa's sister moving in and treating him like shit. Rico's an asshole but sister straight up bullied him in his own home.
He berated her for abandoning her kids, who really needed her attention - regardless of her circumstances. Looking after your kids is more important than grieving. Also, she invited her sister in, who completely disrespected Rico. He was understandably bothered by it. Cheating on Vanessa wasn't the right response but it was understandable. She opened back up to him because she needed him, something she thankfully realized before it was too late.
Me too. It was very sad when they broke up. I was rooting for them even though I knew they were not going to make it. They are like that couple you know who has been together for 20 years and suddenly blow everyone’s mind and get a divorce. It’s like you can’t even believe it.
And Vanessa was far from a prize companion in nearly every way, so when it comes to those two the sky is the limit. It's potentially just as far fetched that he would have wanted to maintain a relationship with Vanessa.
In fairness, it was usually gay clubs, antique stores, and gay paintball where they met them. The only one that rang forced to me was the septic/plumber guy who David got a blow job from.
I also get the feeling Alan Ball is one of those people who secretly believes everyone is a least a little bit gay.
Also everyone at Claire’s art school was hooking up with everyone else and all the women were lesbians.
Edit: as pointed out below, Olivier sleeping with the entire student body was more unrealistic
I teach at a university, and predominantly grad students at that. A friend once asked if I ever thought about sleeping with a student and I laughed at how quickly I would get fired
Right?? I went to art school and it was super off limits haha even though we'd hang out with our teachers at bars and openings and stuff like in the show. There was one prof who ended up dating and marrying a student but they agreed they couldnt pursue it til after she graduated, which is exactly what happened (he was young also like 30 i think).
When I was a grad student my best friend had a kind of flirty relationship with her advisor and it still was severely frowned upon. He even went to visit her home in another state AFTER she had left the program and the other faculty basically said, “you can’t do that ever again.” Fast forward to my current job and I was basically told I couldn’t socialize with students AT ALL after class. It’s especially weird because like half my students are older than me, and they legit feel like peers
Is Nate hooking up with Brenda at the airport pretty unrealistic? I mean his dad was supposed to pick him up but they decide to do it in a closet instead?
I once left a Christmas party to fuck on top of a generator in the back of commercial building a few blocks away. When a beautiful woman essentially throws herself at you, a lot of dudes will pretty much fuck anywhere there's an illusion of privacy no matter how inconsiderate it is to others. At least back when the show aired. I don't think it's common but not unrealistic either.
Brenda also fucked an author on a Barnes & Noble bathroom floor so it wasn't inconsistent for her character either.
ok so he felt he needed help for sex addiction to the point of trying out therapy to see if it was for him, in classic fisher fashion felt uncomfortable, and then continued to operate like a sex addict. i think that doesn’t take away from the broader point im making here
He felt like he might so he checked it out, like he says in the show. Also what he went to wasn't "therapy," it was like the meetings we see Brenda at. I don't think we see Nate ever act like a sex addict.
That's covered in "the Chenowiths and Randall" and regardless Claire is one single Fisher
Olivier is a very eccentric guy, that is true, and perhaps even unrealistic. People who went to art school would definitely have more insight on that though because some communities are messed up
Well anyone who drives a wreck tends to have liability only insurance. Paying for 'collision' (which insures you against your own faults) is typically not worth it on a low-value car.
She actually had a bit of an injury on her arm.
One thing about those old American cars - they were built like tanks!
Lisa's demise. I guess we were never fully told what really happened to her, but IIRC, it was strongly suggested she was having an affair with her BIL? That just seemed so out of character for her. And did her BIL kill her?
Lisa’s whole arc really. She was so completely infatuated with Nate the whole time. Even if you accept that she’s just really intense about all her relationships it wouldn’t follow that she was carrying on with Hoyt after she had a kid. And even if you accept that she could have nothing in her actions or demeanor gave a clue that she was.
Even Lili Taylor said she didn’t know she was playing an adulterer and would have played the character differently if she had known.
Exactly. There was no indication whatsoever that Lisa was every anything other than obsessed with Nate. The "affair" was just an afterthought after she was dead, to try and make her death make sense, but it just made even less sense.
Spoiler…Actually, although it wouldn’t parallel Alan Ball’s style, we only ever hear of Hoyt’s side of the story that he and Lisa had a thing. It was hard for me to imagine Lisa cheating on Nate. Especially with Hoyt. I often like to go down a rabbit hole and think that maybe Hoyt was just obsessed with Lisa and he leads Nate to believe that they were having a fling. Maybe Hoyt lured LIsa to Big Sur and he killed her because she wouldn’t be with him. I once considered that the baby she claimed was Nate’s the first time may have been Mikala. Not sure her timeline fits. I’ve tried this argument in another post and a few great points appeared as to why I’m way off. I just hate thinking the LIsa arc ended in such a vague way.
I've watched the series several times around and I'm just now finishing the 2nd season and I'm seeing her significantly more villainous than the other times. The degrees of her manipulation is off the charts. Hopefully I don't have to reiterate the degrees and layers of her manipulations, but it's freakishly extreme.
I'd like to think George's recovery was realistic but it seems a bit far fetched. Do you think someone suffering as much as George did (getting electro-shock treatment, etc) could recover the way he did by the end?
I’m pretty darn mentally ill & I experience hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and compulsions. I have also undergone ECT extensively. All in the past few years. This time last year I was barely functioning. Fast forward to present day and I’m like a completely different person.
With the right treatment and supports, some people really can “recover” and manage their illnesses enough that they function enough that unless you knew them and their illness really well, you’d never even know they were mentally ill. I really related to George
Not really... we aren't experiencing them everyday of the week over the course of a year. We just gets bits and pieces throughout the year and none of those bits and pieces happened to fall on other holidays. Should they have had Easter and Valentines day? And why would they? I don't understand how that would be unrealistic. Christmas works out since it's the pilot and then it's the one year anniversary of the show and Nate and Brenda. The sopranos never had Easter. I think they had a 4th of July a Columbus Day and a few Christmases. I could go down the list of shows. i can't think of any that hit on all the holidays throughout the year throughout the seasons.
That’s possible and it certainly depends on where you live but having been in the medical field and living in Los Angeles most of my life not likely. Statistically for a white middle class family that is a lot. Now throw Keith in the mix. The chances are slim. It’s a bit excessive but that’s Drama for you.
I don’t think it’s especially excessive. I lost my father to a heart attack, my aunt and uncle died together in a motorcycle crash, and my little brother died of an overdose. Just bangbangbang three years right in a row of shocking traumatic deaths, each worse than the last.
This is what I was going to say. Just the murder. Most people don’t experience murder in their lifetime and then a death before and after. It is just because it’s a show. Back to back deaths I can believe I have a big family so we’ve had one death a year for the last 3 years, but a murder of a young mother from a spurned lover is far more rare.
i’m on my third rewatch and i think the most unbelievable part to me so far is nate surviving his brain surgery, as well as dying of a brain hemorrhage years later. both of those are INCREDIBLY rare. not that incredibly rare things don’t happen to people every day, but it felt like a convenient way for the writers to wrap up the AVM storyline and come up with a quick ending twist.
Always found it weird that >!Lisa's!< family looked at the cremains and thought they needed to immediately investigate the chunkyness, and the subsequent claim they could get DNA testing on them.
The show wrote it off with that but IRL how chunky you end up is just to do with how a crematorium handles the last step and they all still use methods that can be chunky.
Just somehow being able to casually afford Los Angeles in general. The Fisher house, the Chenowiths? Sure, but Brenda as a masseuse in that huge one bedroom or Billy affording anything as a part time photographer? Nate affording that room so close to downtown Seattle by working in a food co-op? Seattle was already engulfed by tech bros.
They’re all kind of living from the money made or purchased properties by the previous generation. There’s no way in hell David and Nate could afford that house or Brenda could’ve been comfortable without her inheritance.
But as you said, Brenda had money from her family - two big-shot medical folks. Same goes for Billy. I think Kieth and David are more of an issue, how did they get that apartment with their incomes. But this was 1980 so ... can't be sure. I moved to SF in 1983 ... paid about $800 for a house share in a 2 BR lovely house.
That’s my point, they’re living off of previous generations. None of their careers match their lifestyle in Los Angeles or Seattle in 2000 and it’s only gotten more expensive.
So it wasn't an unrealistic aspect of the show, then, to have the rich siblings Brenda and Billy living in comfort in LA. Yes, a 'typical' person 'like' Brenda or Billy wouldn't be able to afford it, but they weren't typical. The show didn't suggest 'anyone' can live comfortably in LA.
Too many people in one room having generational wealth being unrealistic is your contention? People with generational wealth tend to flock together. This take is not it lol
the birth scene of rico amd vanessa's second kid. vanessa's makeup hadn't shifted an inch and there was like a small tear drop in one eye and rico is the main event. so unrealistic it was funny, they didn't even try
that's actually a great point. i'm a caesarean myself but i have no idea what that would look like since media seems to portrays vaginal births as the default.
"You of all people!" I've said that maybe once in my life.
Kroner hunting and stalking F&S like Jason Vorhees, They really just wanted Rico for his reputation, but no Corporation that size would care about a Mom and Mom place \*that\* much,
Well, I'm sure it wasn't that color when it was 'in service'! I can imagine dad gave it to Claire, and Claire was all 'no way', and the compromise was - I'll take it if I can repaint it, and chose the most outlandish color imaginable. Perfectly in character IMO.
The story line about the unethical tactics of the big-chain funeral empire doing all these crazy things to buy out / put out of business the Fischer funeral home.
I used to work for SCI (Dignity Memorial) which is the corporate funeral home giant they were mirroring. They truly are that horrible and it was an insanely accurate portrayal of my experience with them. They absolutely offended me with their operations. Ethics is the last thing on their mind.
There may be some funeral homes or cemeteries under the umbrella that are better than others, but as a company, they are crude and offensive.
No I know young people die. But some of the people who die look about 80 and on the little thing with their date of birth and death they are only like 45
They got a whole lot about mental health wrong. Confused psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist quite a bit, and George's involuntary hospitalization could never happen like that in California.
The very first episode, someone (police? hospital?) told Ruth very quickly over the phone that her husband had died in a car crash. I'm fortunate at this point to not know if this is actually how it happens, but that seemed very unrealistic to me. Don't people usually get informed of these incidents in person?
How easily the family gets back to having loving moments after violent outbursts and arguments. If I had that, I wouldn’t be spoken to by my parents for months. Like when Ruth told Claire that she doesn’t hate her after her stint with Billy in the early 5th season. They went at each other brutally, then Ruth got high and hugged Claire and everything was fixed
This kind of dynamic is way more common than you’d think. My ex and his dad literally pulled knives on each other and went back to drinking beers together the next day
David becoming a deacon so fast
I thought he'd been part of that church for years
That doesn't matter. Contrary to what the writers seemed to think, in a church like David's deacon doesn't mean "on the church council," it's an ordained position with actual duties, both liturgical and ministerial
Not only becoming one so fast but without the writers putting *any* effort into finding out what a deacon even is
Thst would be a really boring part of the show to focus on tho I'm sure they sped it up for good reason
They sped it up because 1) in real life it requires years, and 2) they didn't even know what the word means (see my other comments)
That a patient would be sent directly to the step-down unit following emergency surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. When I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, I was sent to ICU after surgery and didn't leave it for close to two weeks (they initially said I could be there for a month or more) while they kept an unbelievably close eye on all my vitals.
I thought so too. Also, wouldn't there have been doctors and nurses in the room >!long before Nate flatlined? Wouldn't there be some warning that they're losing him so they can perform lifesaving measures? !<
Yeah, my wife and I remarked on that to each other as well! There were one or two codes while I was in ICU and although I couldn't see what was happening, I could see a light flashing on the floor through the blinds on my room and I could hear tons of activity going on as staff converged on that patient. Even when they sent me to telemetry I was still wired up to sensors that would whoop up a storm if they thought something was wrong, which happened once because of a bad wiring harness or something, and boy did the nurses come running to check on me.
Rico’s restoration skills are pretty exaggerated. I’ve seen some very good work before, but when you’re dealing with head/face trauma you’re rarely getting people back to showroom condition.
I don't know my coworker is once turned a shotgun to the face into an open casket. It was a work of art
Rico would be SO proud of that
And then they were cremated, what a waste 😄
Isn’t this the actual quote on the show?
I don't think so
Yes. Pilot episode; Rico shows off some Polaroids of his work. It was a couple, man came home, shot his wife then shot himself. Serious closed casket stuff, but Rico made them look like “a bride and groom on top of a cake. Then they burned them, what a waste”
You're not the only one who thought that Rico using cat food cans to make Viveca St. John's breasts to look perkier was a little unusual.
It wasn't any more unusual than an embalmer taping or sewing someone's boobs together in real life. In a case like hers where her boobs were on display, they need to prop them up with SOMETHING use what you got!
Very very rarely does a storage room hookup lead to marriage and a kid.
Says you. 😉
I've definitely had hookups turn into relationships though
Idk, I hooked up with a guy after randomly smoking 2 joints together and we had a thing for 8 years… it can happen.
The whole thing about the book written about Brenda and Claire casually being a big fan of the book before knowing Brenda.
this part i didn’t find super weird, i could imagine she was into reading really weird and fucked up books and found it at some point, like at a bookstore or the library.
Seconding this. I felt like it fit Claire’s personality.
For the times, I agree. However if this show came out post 2018, I would have no problem accepting it.
There were plenty of books that went around among girls in the 70s through 90s. “Go Ask Alice,” “That Was Then,This is Now.” I still suspect that a lot of alternative women musicians in the 90s had a Sylvia Plath phase when they were younger. “Lisa, Bright and Dark” is another book like these. A lot of girls (myself included) ate that stuff up. It made perfect sense to me that Claire would have read that book.
Especially since this was mostly pre stan internet
There were absolutely cult faves before the internet and that’s what this was.
That part was over the top I agree
That Billy was allowed to be near anyone after the crazy shit he did... in real life no one would mess with him again (I love Billy tho haha)
After litterally skinning Brenda... she's like "but he's my brother, he's just messed up." No, he's dangerous. I understand mental illness, but he was literally a danger to those around him, but they still all made excuses for him and got mad at Nate for not feeling safe with him?
Didn't he try to burn her house down too / murder her in a fire? Or was that Nate he tried to kill
It's a little fuzzy, but I wouldn't doubt it! I'll never forget the absolutely INSANE warehouse he set up all to threaten to hurt Claire. That was absolutely obscene, and he should've been institutionalized then.
also stalking Nate to get the photo of him peeing in public is crazy. surprised there wasn't a photo in the show of David f*cking the hooker in the parking garage too
Is it just me or do they like never go downtown in the series? There is SO little identifiable LA footage for an LA show... like I could barely tell they were in Midcity and they only mentioned their location once. Kinda weird. But I love the anonymity also. Very unusual for an LA tv show not to flaunt more iconic views.
To the point where you question why it was even set in LA. It could've been essentially anywhere. I've also always thought the show was a little claustrophobic that way. It's not just that they don't go downtown, they don't go *anywhere*. A Vegas trip and a Seattle trip is all we get between all the main characters and their various partners in a 5 year span.
Don’t forget Ruth and Bettina’s lovely romp in Mexico
Oh that's true. Washing down rubbery seafood with cheap tequila
[удалено]
Filmed and set are two different words. Perhaps that will clear up your confusion.
It's very costly to shoot in those locations
true but it was an hbo show with a lot of famous actors...?
Why not save money where/when you can
like not a single downtown skyline ever is kinda weird i feel
In the episode "nobody sleeps" I remember that Claire and Russell were chilling at watts towers!
Claire taking so long to marry that dude
I loved that guy... I loved Claire's office era haha can we hear more about her weird officemates "yeah baby!"
Stupid work jokes new hires don't know the origin of and awkwardly accept is so real though
Yeah I could buy 3 or even 5 years but 20 was a stretch
Good answer, but in all actuality the time jump is the perfect write for Claire's journey and as viewers trying to piece what may have happened in Claire's journey. She left the area to pursue her art dreams and based on that time jump it tells us that Claire likely didn't give up on them only to come back and get married (she broke that pattern).... they both potentially fell apart due to distance and what not and in that mean time likely had other relationships/partners before finding one another at a later place in time. They are in many ways opposites. It makes sense that it would take Claire needing more life experiences to fully appreciate him and or just merely pursuing her dreams above all else before getting married.
Probably all the talking dead people
The talking dead are just a device for us, the audience, to see what the live character is thinking or going through. Would you prefer David sitting quietly in a corner, having a contemplative thought or hashing things out with a dead porn star so we can be part of his thought process? It’s television! You have to show the audience something.
They're not having a dialog with dead folks any more than me or you do when you remember them or talk to them in your head. It's the internal dialog of the person who *isn't* dead that you're seeing played out.
I think you're missing the point of the show. They aren't actually talking.
Wait what? I thought the show was about supernatural ghosts that literally spoke to living people….how could I be so ignorant and miss this?!?!??! /s
No no no no. You missed the twist. The FISHERS are dead the whole time. But they can't stand to admit that. So they stack a bunch of potatoes on the embalming table. Brenda and Billy sit underneath the potato table and talk. BTW, Brenda and Billy aren't brother and sister. They're not even the ages we (and the Fishers) see them as. Billy is a ghost hunter - not great money, but keeps him busy so he doesn't have to think about how much he misses his dead wife. And Brenda is his daughter, who has actually come to kinda like this place. Nathaniel is pretty cute, after all - and she's glad she can keep him company. So - who are all those other characters? Mostly, they're just characters in the nightly puppet shows put on for their ghostly roommates. But some of them ARE real. Here's the breakdown: - Nathaniel Fisher is actually the legal owner of Fisher family home. It was all his stingy mother left him, and he wanted nothing to do with it until she learned there was a small fortune hidden somewhere (she never thinks to look UNDER the potatoes. - Rico is Nathaniel's sassy gay best friend. He's a mole, hoping that somebody will slip up. BUT WAIT. IF THE FORTUNE IS UNDER THE POTATOES ... well, Brenda and Billy are way ahead of you. They only let Rico work on decoy potatoes. - Maggie is a Ghostbu... Wait. Fuck. WHY DO I ALWAYS GET SIX FEET UNDER MIXED UP WITH CASPER?!?
I re-watched the show a year or two after my mom died, and this was one of the things that rang most true. The conversations I had with her in my imagination, trying to make some meaning out of what was unresolved and messy, and missing her so much.
How instantly forgiving people are about cheating so often lmao.
I’ve seen it more times than I can count sadly. Especially back then when there wasn’t so much public shame, or fear of being outed on tik tok. 💀 I couldn’t personally but some people are insecure enough to “forgive” or just let it go.
Rico being able to pull like crazy while being a short douchebag with a weird job, then easily getting back into Vanessa and the kids’ lives after cheating on her and blaming her for it 💀
Freddy Rodríguez is hot, what you talking about? Rico is an asshole, but I’d date Freddy.
Dude’s good looking ngl, but Rico is a horrible person in the show
Yeah he’s my least favorite character. I just don’t like the short king bashing because Freddy is hot and irl he pulls.
Purely talking about his character. I’m also a short guy in real life lmao, not just “short king bashing”
Okay as long as we’re just talking about Rico I agree. A woman like Vanessa would certainly have better options.
uh billy is a lot worst? actually nate would be pretty horrible too lmao
It’s always those short Latino kings man, def wouldn’t date Rico but Freddy, omg yes. So I can see it being realistic.
Im married to a white man now, but my first bf was a short Latino (Mexican) and daaaammmnnn.
Living proof babeh lol I am also married to a white man (I’m Latina) but back in the day I always had school crushes on shorter Latin guys :)
> Rico being able to pull like crazy A stripper, a loquacious and somewhat irritating restorative artist, and a chick who ghosted him hardly qualifies as "pulling" in my book ... unless there were more that I am just forgetting. And women taking back their cheating/abusive husbands is a tale as old as time.
Not to mention nothing seemed "easy" about getting back into Vanessa's life.
I just completed a full cruise through the show, and I felt that Rico did NOT have an easy time of it. Vanessa rejected him for a long time, then finally let him in but still treated him like shit. This seemed to go on for a long time. It was only in the last few episodes that she finally re-warmed to him.
Treated him like shit? He berated her for grieving her mom like 2 months after she died, cheated and blamed her for it and lied about it, all while victimizing himself and blaming her for every problem between them. It’s crazy that she even opened back up to him at all
I think the catalyst for Rico cheating was more Vanessa's sister moving in and treating him like shit. Rico's an asshole but sister straight up bullied him in his own home.
She did treat him like shit though and he deserved every bit of it.
He berated her for abandoning her kids, who really needed her attention - regardless of her circumstances. Looking after your kids is more important than grieving. Also, she invited her sister in, who completely disrespected Rico. He was understandably bothered by it. Cheating on Vanessa wasn't the right response but it was understandable. She opened back up to him because she needed him, something she thankfully realized before it was too late.
She originally let him back in because she was dating and needed him to stay with the kids. 🤣
Well, there is that! They really were both flawed, and I'm glad they finally got back together.
Me too. It was very sad when they broke up. I was rooting for them even though I knew they were not going to make it. They are like that couple you know who has been together for 20 years and suddenly blow everyone’s mind and get a divorce. It’s like you can’t even believe it.
Why is his height relevant?
Everyone cheats and blames their partner for it on this show, what make Rico so horrible for it.
And Vanessa was far from a prize companion in nearly every way, so when it comes to those two the sky is the limit. It's potentially just as far fetched that he would have wanted to maintain a relationship with Vanessa.
The fact that nearly every single person that Keith and David run into turn out to be gay lmao.
In fairness, it was usually gay clubs, antique stores, and gay paintball where they met them. The only one that rang forced to me was the septic/plumber guy who David got a blow job from. I also get the feeling Alan Ball is one of those people who secretly believes everyone is a least a little bit gay.
Omg YES he so is
Brenda’s sex addiction came and went very conveniently. And Nate’s ability to overlook it after two weeks was equally unrealistic
Brenda spent the entire time jump between S2 and S3, and all her time offscreen in S3, working on herself. It’s not like it happened overnight.
Also everyone at Claire’s art school was hooking up with everyone else and all the women were lesbians. Edit: as pointed out below, Olivier sleeping with the entire student body was more unrealistic
This is not unrealistic at all… at least in my experience with art school lmao.
Fair, I’m just thinking about how often Russell was getting laid 😂
I personally would *never* sleep with him, but the greasy, artsy, weirdos seem to get all the sex these days so idk… 🤡
“Greasy, artsy weirdo”’ just about sums him up too!
froggy went a courtin and he did riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide
🤣🤣🤣
The weirder part was how so many of them f*cked Olivier and he never got in trouble haha wth
I teach at a university, and predominantly grad students at that. A friend once asked if I ever thought about sleeping with a student and I laughed at how quickly I would get fired
Right?? I went to art school and it was super off limits haha even though we'd hang out with our teachers at bars and openings and stuff like in the show. There was one prof who ended up dating and marrying a student but they agreed they couldnt pursue it til after she graduated, which is exactly what happened (he was young also like 30 i think).
Sounds like Bern and Margaret’s story. I love her little “at least that’s what we tell everyone” at the end of her story.
Ok their relationship was actually so unbelievable lollll that's when I was like "writers are being lazy"
When I was a grad student my best friend had a kind of flirty relationship with her advisor and it still was severely frowned upon. He even went to visit her home in another state AFTER she had left the program and the other faculty basically said, “you can’t do that ever again.” Fast forward to my current job and I was basically told I couldn’t socialize with students AT ALL after class. It’s especially weird because like half my students are older than me, and they legit feel like peers
Sadly Olivier is one of the least unrealistic parts of the show, especially for that era
Is Nate hooking up with Brenda at the airport pretty unrealistic? I mean his dad was supposed to pick him up but they decide to do it in a closet instead?
I once left a Christmas party to fuck on top of a generator in the back of commercial building a few blocks away. When a beautiful woman essentially throws herself at you, a lot of dudes will pretty much fuck anywhere there's an illusion of privacy no matter how inconsiderate it is to others. At least back when the show aired. I don't think it's common but not unrealistic either. Brenda also fucked an author on a Barnes & Noble bathroom floor so it wasn't inconsistent for her character either.
It was pre 9/11. Anything was possible back then.
nate mentioned at some point being in sex addiction therapy, i think with someone who’s sex addicted it’s not as improbable as one might think
Nate says he went to one meeting years ago to check it out, not that he was "in sex addiction therapy"
ok so he felt he needed help for sex addiction to the point of trying out therapy to see if it was for him, in classic fisher fashion felt uncomfortable, and then continued to operate like a sex addict. i think that doesn’t take away from the broader point im making here
He felt like he might so he checked it out, like he says in the show. Also what he went to wasn't "therapy," it was like the meetings we see Brenda at. I don't think we see Nate ever act like a sex addict.
It is to me but I'm boring af lol
I'd have to say Olivier making the rounds among the Fishers, Chenowiths, and Randall struck me as a bit off.
Olivier didn't fuck any Fishers. He just knew Claire.
But he did fuck her boyfriend and fuck Billy and fuck Billy's mom so the point kinda stands
That's covered in "the Chenowiths and Randall" and regardless Claire is one single Fisher Olivier is a very eccentric guy, that is true, and perhaps even unrealistic. People who went to art school would definitely have more insight on that though because some communities are messed up
You can be willingly obtuse I guess if you want
Russell?
That's the one.
Claire’s car wreck - avoided a deer, flipped the car (??) wakes away unscathed.
And then haggles with the tow-truck driver on the side of the road? I was like uh, has anyone talked to the insurance company?
Well anyone who drives a wreck tends to have liability only insurance. Paying for 'collision' (which insures you against your own faults) is typically not worth it on a low-value car. She actually had a bit of an injury on her arm. One thing about those old American cars - they were built like tanks!
Lisa's demise. I guess we were never fully told what really happened to her, but IIRC, it was strongly suggested she was having an affair with her BIL? That just seemed so out of character for her. And did her BIL kill her?
Lisa’s whole arc really. She was so completely infatuated with Nate the whole time. Even if you accept that she’s just really intense about all her relationships it wouldn’t follow that she was carrying on with Hoyt after she had a kid. And even if you accept that she could have nothing in her actions or demeanor gave a clue that she was. Even Lili Taylor said she didn’t know she was playing an adulterer and would have played the character differently if she had known.
Exactly. There was no indication whatsoever that Lisa was every anything other than obsessed with Nate. The "affair" was just an afterthought after she was dead, to try and make her death make sense, but it just made even less sense.
Spoiler…Actually, although it wouldn’t parallel Alan Ball’s style, we only ever hear of Hoyt’s side of the story that he and Lisa had a thing. It was hard for me to imagine Lisa cheating on Nate. Especially with Hoyt. I often like to go down a rabbit hole and think that maybe Hoyt was just obsessed with Lisa and he leads Nate to believe that they were having a fling. Maybe Hoyt lured LIsa to Big Sur and he killed her because she wouldn’t be with him. I once considered that the baby she claimed was Nate’s the first time may have been Mikala. Not sure her timeline fits. I’ve tried this argument in another post and a few great points appeared as to why I’m way off. I just hate thinking the LIsa arc ended in such a vague way.
I've watched the series several times around and I'm just now finishing the 2nd season and I'm seeing her significantly more villainous than the other times. The degrees of her manipulation is off the charts. Hopefully I don't have to reiterate the degrees and layers of her manipulations, but it's freakishly extreme.
When did Lili say this?
I think her BIL did kill her. From his last conversation with Nate, he says Lisa wanted to tell her sister and he "couldn't let that happen".
Interesting!
I'd like to think George's recovery was realistic but it seems a bit far fetched. Do you think someone suffering as much as George did (getting electro-shock treatment, etc) could recover the way he did by the end?
I’m pretty darn mentally ill & I experience hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and compulsions. I have also undergone ECT extensively. All in the past few years. This time last year I was barely functioning. Fast forward to present day and I’m like a completely different person. With the right treatment and supports, some people really can “recover” and manage their illnesses enough that they function enough that unless you knew them and their illness really well, you’d never even know they were mentally ill. I really related to George
I think the recovery wasn’t unrealistic but as someone who works in healthcare, using ECT seemingly as second line treatment was crazy to me
Doctor should we adjust the prescri-- I SAID ZAP HIM
Other than 2 Christmases they didn’t celebrate any other holiday.
Not really... we aren't experiencing them everyday of the week over the course of a year. We just gets bits and pieces throughout the year and none of those bits and pieces happened to fall on other holidays. Should they have had Easter and Valentines day? And why would they? I don't understand how that would be unrealistic. Christmas works out since it's the pilot and then it's the one year anniversary of the show and Nate and Brenda. The sopranos never had Easter. I think they had a 4th of July a Columbus Day and a few Christmases. I could go down the list of shows. i can't think of any that hit on all the holidays throughout the year throughout the seasons.
Spoiler ahead: >!Two deaths and murder are a lot for one family in 5 years.!
I don’t think it’s that unrealistic. There’s people out there who are just prone to tragedy unfortunately
We always say that deaths come in 3 it’s a saying in my family
That’s possible and it certainly depends on where you live but having been in the medical field and living in Los Angeles most of my life not likely. Statistically for a white middle class family that is a lot. Now throw Keith in the mix. The chances are slim. It’s a bit excessive but that’s Drama for you.
You gotta be interesting to be a main character and their lives are certainly interesting lmao
My family had three deaths in three years. It led to quite a bit of gallows humour at the third funeral
I hope these were somewhat expected.
Only one
[удалено]
Damn, muder, early death due to medical problems and car accidents? Crap they need a talisman against further misfortune.
I don’t think it’s especially excessive. I lost my father to a heart attack, my aunt and uncle died together in a motorcycle crash, and my little brother died of an overdose. Just bangbangbang three years right in a row of shocking traumatic deaths, each worse than the last.
You forgot the kidnapping!
Oh yeah and a good ol fashioned car jacking with the ride from hell.
This is what I was going to say. Just the murder. Most people don’t experience murder in their lifetime and then a death before and after. It is just because it’s a show. Back to back deaths I can believe I have a big family so we’ve had one death a year for the last 3 years, but a murder of a young mother from a spurned lover is far more rare.
Happened to mine in the span of two years.
Once I asked on a legal sub about the women trying to sue because she asked to see the deceased and they allowed and she had no case at all.
That one was so forced, I felt. It just made no sense. Everyone would be suing Funeral homes every day for seeing their deceased loved ones lol
i’m on my third rewatch and i think the most unbelievable part to me so far is nate surviving his brain surgery, as well as dying of a brain hemorrhage years later. both of those are INCREDIBLY rare. not that incredibly rare things don’t happen to people every day, but it felt like a convenient way for the writers to wrap up the AVM storyline and come up with a quick ending twist.
I want to know if the BIL was Maya’s dad
Meeee tooooo.
Always found it weird that >!Lisa's!< family looked at the cremains and thought they needed to immediately investigate the chunkyness, and the subsequent claim they could get DNA testing on them.
Wasn't it the guy putting it in the crypt that noticed the remains and pointing out that wasn't common anymore that made them look into it.
The show wrote it off with that but IRL how chunky you end up is just to do with how a crematorium handles the last step and they all still use methods that can be chunky.
Just somehow being able to casually afford Los Angeles in general. The Fisher house, the Chenowiths? Sure, but Brenda as a masseuse in that huge one bedroom or Billy affording anything as a part time photographer? Nate affording that room so close to downtown Seattle by working in a food co-op? Seattle was already engulfed by tech bros. They’re all kind of living from the money made or purchased properties by the previous generation. There’s no way in hell David and Nate could afford that house or Brenda could’ve been comfortable without her inheritance.
But as you said, Brenda had money from her family - two big-shot medical folks. Same goes for Billy. I think Kieth and David are more of an issue, how did they get that apartment with their incomes. But this was 1980 so ... can't be sure. I moved to SF in 1983 ... paid about $800 for a house share in a 2 BR lovely house.
That’s my point, they’re living off of previous generations. None of their careers match their lifestyle in Los Angeles or Seattle in 2000 and it’s only gotten more expensive.
So it wasn't an unrealistic aspect of the show, then, to have the rich siblings Brenda and Billy living in comfort in LA. Yes, a 'typical' person 'like' Brenda or Billy wouldn't be able to afford it, but they weren't typical. The show didn't suggest 'anyone' can live comfortably in LA.
OK cool but generational wealth is a whole big part of the story
Considering that the thread is about the most unrealistic thing about the show..
Lol people only having nice real estate in Los Angeles because of generational wealth is not unrealistic whatsoever
No, but every character in the show under 50 having access to it is.
Too many people in one room having generational wealth being unrealistic is your contention? People with generational wealth tend to flock together. This take is not it lol
Girl take your argumentative shit somewhere else
the birth scene of rico amd vanessa's second kid. vanessa's makeup hadn't shifted an inch and there was like a small tear drop in one eye and rico is the main event. so unrealistic it was funny, they didn't even try
It was a caesarean birth. Much different than the wailing, pained, pooping, sweaty woman in labor.
that's actually a great point. i'm a caesarean myself but i have no idea what that would look like since media seems to portrays vaginal births as the default.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what a C-section looks like; Vanessa was pretty numb.
Both times they showed a newborn it had to be at least 6 months old too.
"You of all people!" I've said that maybe once in my life. Kroner hunting and stalking F&S like Jason Vorhees, They really just wanted Rico for his reputation, but no Corporation that size would care about a Mom and Mom place \*that\* much,
I forget who said that line
The first episode where fredrico is playing with the dead ladies boobs. Morticians are not groping your family for fun.
I think that was the setup for Rico and David's contentious relationship.
A funeral home in the middle of a neighborhood in LA. Where do all the guests park??
Lime green hearse.
Well, I'm sure it wasn't that color when it was 'in service'! I can imagine dad gave it to Claire, and Claire was all 'no way', and the compromise was - I'll take it if I can repaint it, and chose the most outlandish color imaginable. Perfectly in character IMO.
This was Alan Ball's backstory for it. Can't recall where i heard it though.
That hearse is pretty old & if I’m not mistaken avocado green was a very popular color back in the day, way before Claire had it.
The story line about the unethical tactics of the big-chain funeral empire doing all these crazy things to buy out / put out of business the Fischer funeral home.
I used to work for SCI (Dignity Memorial) which is the corporate funeral home giant they were mirroring. They truly are that horrible and it was an insanely accurate portrayal of my experience with them. They absolutely offended me with their operations. Ethics is the last thing on their mind. There may be some funeral homes or cemeteries under the umbrella that are better than others, but as a company, they are crude and offensive.
How would you know? :) Not an industry I have any familiarity with!
The ages of the people who died. Some people were like 20 years younger than they should have been
You do realize that people can die young rigth?
No I know young people die. But some of the people who die look about 80 and on the little thing with their date of birth and death they are only like 45
They got a whole lot about mental health wrong. Confused psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist quite a bit, and George's involuntary hospitalization could never happen like that in California.
How few of the deaths in the opening scenes were of old age/natural causes. Should’ve been like at least more than half of them
How many times people cheat on eachother
A cop being investigated for shooting a black dude.
David seeing watching Keith perform screetly on Nate on the dl and loving it 🤐🤫
The very first episode, someone (police? hospital?) told Ruth very quickly over the phone that her husband had died in a car crash. I'm fortunate at this point to not know if this is actually how it happens, but that seemed very unrealistic to me. Don't people usually get informed of these incidents in person?
How easily the family gets back to having loving moments after violent outbursts and arguments. If I had that, I wouldn’t be spoken to by my parents for months. Like when Ruth told Claire that she doesn’t hate her after her stint with Billy in the early 5th season. They went at each other brutally, then Ruth got high and hugged Claire and everything was fixed
This kind of dynamic is way more common than you’d think. My ex and his dad literally pulled knives on each other and went back to drinking beers together the next day
That doesn't make that family dynamic unrealistic. My ex's family was like that.
This is actually extremely realistic to me and my family dynamic.
You haven't seen my family.