I know a lot of you are wondering what I thought of last night's finale of Six Feet Under. Well, I'll tell you: The last thing that made me cry that much was The Iron Giant.

Of course I'm talking about a large metallic buttplug, not the animated feature film.

All kidding aside, I thought the episode was good, though it did dash my season's long hope of seeing Ruth's creamsicle-colored bush once and for all. But Six Feet Under only took home the silver at my television olympics this weekend. The gold went to Big Brother 6, which managed to deliver the single greatest hour of television ever produced.

First, some background on the show: It is my belief that Big Brother is the best reality show on television today. The reasons are manifold, but let it suffice to say that it is unadulterated. There is no island nor pretense of hunger and the need to survive. It's just a bunch of people locked in a house with nothing to do but scheme against one another in bikinis.

Next, some background on this season: The way things have turned out this year differs from previous years in that there are two well-defined alliances and the members of each are known to everyone in the house. Where it is normally a smile and a stab in the back, this year it is open war. On one hand there is The Sovereign Six (now Three.) They were led by an Iraqi gentleman named Kaysar who at one point a few weeks ago actually uttered the words, "I will terrorize them." The remaining members of The Six are Janelle, an overtanned VIP cocktail waitress and thief, Howie, a nine-fingered former male stripper and wannabe weatherman, and Rachel, a horse-faced horse breeder. On the other hand there is The Friendship -- a group of alarmingly self-righteous, quasi-religious shitheels who were led by a musclebound firefighter from Las Vegas prior to his eviction. Though The Six seem more objectionable on paper, the moralistic bullshit continually spewed by The Friendship combines with their bizarrely cultish name to make the stomach churn.

It should be noted that these names -- The Sovereign Six and The Friendship -- are not formally required by the producers. That is, they don't appear on any jerseys or anything. They're chosen by the contestants to refer to their respective alliances.

Now for this weekend. What happened was that Howie and Janelle decided that, in the wake of a rather bold betrayal which resulted in Kaysar's ouster, their best course of action would be to basically torture The Friendship. They got in their faces and taunted them. Called them names. Called their family names. The insults weren't particularly cutting, as neither Howie nor Janelle is very bright, but it was obviously an uncomfortable situation. Imagine being locked in a small house with someone who, every time they saw you, called you a douchebag. Not the best put down, but irritating after repetition.

During a particularly heated moment, Howie said to April, a ditzy blonde member of The Friendship, that he'd put Pepperoni on his pizza and eat it. Of course, this was no ordinary pizza topping. Pepperoni is the name of April's dog -- a pet she's been vocal about missing.

It was hilarious enough that Howie could threaten to do something as ridiculous as eating a pet, and do it with a straight face. But what put the episode over the edge is that they cut from his absurd but apparently earnest threat to April, in the diary room, crying over his comments.

You can't write that kind of comedy, Alan Ball.

Analogcabin @ 4:51 PM
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