SHOW NOTES: S02E02, "Out, Out, Brief Candle"
Welcome back! This week we're starting off with Caroline's favorite thing: incomprehensible statements about time on Six Feet Under! Claire and Parker make a big deal about the fact that they go to school all year, which we were very skeptical about—we've watched a lot of shows set in high school in California, and none of them included year-round classes. But according to this blog, 156 of the 1054 school districts in the state of California actually do have year-round programs. So it's totally possible that although Buffy got a summer vacation from Sunnydale High and Veronica Mars got time off at Neptune High, Claire could conceivably go to school all year. (It does make it much harder to know what time it is, though. So sorry, Caroline.)
After this week's episode, we were very curious to know more about fry, the drug Gabe makes from the embalming fluid he steals from the Fishers. The Department of Justice website informed us that "Fry is a street term for marijuana or tobacco cigarettes that are dipped in PCP (phencyclidine) and/or embalming fluid and then dried." We also learned that this drug has a lot of other names: it's also called "amp, clickem, crazy eddie, dippers, drank, fry sticks, fry sweet, happy sticks, Ill, Illy, milk, purple rain, sherm, wack, water-water, wet, wet-wet, and wetdaddy. Cigars dipped in embalming fluid are called smurfs, and the term water often refers to marijuana mixed with another substance—such as PCP—in a cigar." (We're a little disappointed that Gabe wasn't selling smurfs, to be honest.)
Caroline theorized in this episode that The Plan is basically a combination of Mary Kay and Scientology, which led us to investigate whether or not Mary Kay is, in fact, a pyramid scheme. Perhaps this question is best answered by the fact that when producer Alison typed "Is Mary Kay a—" into the Google search bar, it autofilled "pyramid scheme." But in case you like your evidence a little more concrete, here's an article from CBS in 2012 about the subject. We also learned that Mary Kay is now rewarding their top sales staff with black Mini Coopers with pink racing stripes instead of the pink cars that used to be associated with the brand. So snazzy!
This episode is full of amazing guest stars. First we have Julianna McCarthy, who plays Beatrice. Jenna mentions that she was on Dark Shadows, but she was actually only on the 1991 remake, not the extremely popular original series. The remake ran for only one year and won one award: a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Hairstyling. Here's a picture of her in that role:
Alice Krige, who plays Alma, leader of The Plan, is also well known for her role as Maddie, a badass madame on Deadwood. Caroline is a big fan. Here she is playing that part in a truly phenomenal dress:
Our last guest star is Tuc Watkins, who plays Trevor and is familiar to all of us from when he played Pistol Pete on Parks and Recreation. (Another Parks and Rec guest star is coming in a few episodes... GET READY.) Here he is that very important role:
Finally, Brenda tells Trevor's wife in this episode that when she was a child, she looked up the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder in order to act them out and throw the psychiatrists who were researching her off the scent. In case you're curious, according to this website, the nine main symptoms of BPD are: fear of abandonment, unstable relationships, unclear or shifting self image, impulsive and self-destructive behaviors, self-harm, extreme emotional swings, chronic feelings of emptiness, explosive anger, and feeling suspicious of or out of touch with reality. (Like... that doesn't NOT describe Brenda...) If only tiny Brenda had been as excited about her diagnosis as Rebecca Bunch in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend...
