This week's Six Feet Under was actually watchable (except for the nate-maggie bs and keith-turning-into-his-father trope). This is in part because of Patricia Clarkson, in part becuase they seem to have cut back a bit on the "Claire as five year old in twenty-one year old's body" trope, and Ruth and George finally split up, making me less irate about the abominable george-freaks-out flashback from the premiere. If killing off a previous guest star is what it takes to make the show less crappy, though, then the writers may run out of options before the season ends, at which point Gabriel Demas clearly returns from the dead as a vampire and tries to eat Cordelia and Nate finds his true calling as a wisecracking sportscaster opposite the boyfriend from Don't Tell Mom, The Babysitter's Dead. Then he does the Babysitter's funeral, of course.