Recently, our esteemed editor and I made an ill fated attempt to get back into Six Feet Under. We had stalled at around episode three of season four, so we launched back in with episode four.

The "pre-credits death" in episode four begins with a lone woman, after dark, walking up to a dark building in a thunderstorm. Spooky music plays. THIS WOMAN IS GOING TO DIE scream the writers. "No she isn't" we reply, she's going to meet somebody in that building and they're going to die."

The woman walks into the building, and meets a spooky old man coming down in the elevator. The old man looks at her very closely and says "you're ... beautiful" in his best serial killer voice. THIS WOMAN IS GOING TO DIE scream the writers. "No she isn't, that man there is going to die," we reply.

The woman gets into the elevator. The old man takes his umbrella. There is a long shot of him picking up his long, metal-tipped umbrella as he walks out into the storm. THAT WOMAN WHO GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR MIGHT STILL DIE YOU KNOW scream the writers. At this point we made ourselves the private bet that if the guy got struck by lightning, we would turn the episode off in disgust.

He did. We did.

We then made the mistake of giving the show yet another chance. We got through about one and a half episodes, and it was merely very, very bad. Then we got to the (seemingly quite famous) episode "That's My Dog" in which David gets carjacked by the world's least convincing crack addict.

It was painful. Partially, I admit, it was painful in the way that serious challenging television can be painful. Blah blah comfort zone blah blah confront blah blah issues. Mostly, however, it was painful because it was really, really, really bad.

It all begins with David picking up a hitch-hiker. The alarm bells start to go off here already. I'll admit that I had expected it to end in tedious gay sex rather than a tedious carjacking but either way you just don't pick up random guys you meet by the side of the road in LA. You just don't. Particularly if your boyfriend is a cop and has presumably shared with you his hilarious work-related stories about people getting carjacked.

So David picks up this hitch-hiker because he wants to fuck him. Because Keith is away and he feels insecure. And because as a gay man all he wants to do is have sex with men. All the time. Always. Anyway he picks up the hitch-hiker, who introduces himself as "Jake" (Jake the carjacker, it's like they were going to call him "Jack" but decided it was too obvious so went with "Jake" instead) and says that his car is out of gas and he needs a lift to a gas station. By the way, David is transporting a dead body in the back of his van (he's on a pickup) and it is at present broad daylight. Both of these facts will become important, or rather incongruous, later.

Later on (so much later on that the midday sun has dropped well below the yardarm clearly they were travelling through rural Los Angeles, where there aren't many gas stations) they arrive at a gas station and Jake the Carjacker informs David that he's run out of money and the ATM is bust. David, who wants to fuck this guy, because he's gay, offers to pay for the gas. Jake the Carjacker says "okay, but only if you let me carjack... I mean 'drive me to an ATM so I can pay you back'."

David gets all happy and gets into his car with Jake the Carjacker and fantasises about having sex with him.

David and Jake the Carjacker drive to another gas station (or possibly liquor store). It is now late at night, so late that there is nobody else around except the seedy looking mexican guy behind the counter. I don't know, clearly there are fewer ATMs in Los Angeles than you'd think. Or maybe David was having so much fun fantasising about having sex with the guy he wanted to spin it out. Anyway, they get out the van, and Jake the carjacker punches David in the face, then pulls a gun and tells him to take all the money he can out from the ATM, or he (Jake the Carjacker) will shoot him (David) in the spine.

David, not unsurprisingly, does exactly what the psycho with the gun says. On the way out of the liquor store Jake the Carjacker puts his gun away and picks up a bottle of tequila. Outside Jake has a quirky conversation with David in which he insults him, but isn't particularly threatening. All this time he very clearly has four hundred dollars in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other. David, very sensibly and very understandably says "okay, you can keep the money and the van, just let me go." Jake the Carjacker says no, you have to come and buy some crack with me. Jake the Carjacker then proceeds to casually turn his back on David and walk towards the van, still holding four hundred dollars in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other.

David's behaviour up until now has, I feel, been reasonable within the boundaries of the plot. Okay, it was stupid to pick the guy up in the first place, but he was lonely and looking for a piece of ass, and haven't we all been there. Having the guy smack him in the face and point a gun in his spine again produced a perfectly logical reaction he did exactly what the guy said because it was that or be shot. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Now, however, Jake the Carjacker is unarmed and has his back to him, and they are both a very short distance away from an open liquor store. Human survival instinct being what it is, there are three possible courses of action I could have accepted David taking at this point.

Firstly, he could have attacked the guy. I can see why he didn't, but he could have, and some people would have.
Secondly, he could have run inside the shop. He wasn't being held at gunpoint, Jake the Carjacker had his back to him. Running inside the shop was a perfectly good option at this point.
Thirdly, and this is the one that really pisses me off, he could have had a genuine panic reaction, he could have cried, or collapsed, or pissed himself, or begged for the guy to leave him alone, or done any one of the other completely stupid irrational things that very, very scared people do.

But he doesn't. Instead he just gets calmly into the car with the psychopath. It's as if he's developed rapid-onset Stockholm syndrome. He happily drives Jake the Carjacker around and for what seems like a full half episode he stoically ignores any opportunity to escape. His situation becomes more and more dire and Jake takes him on a late night tour looking for some "crack" and some "meth." (Jake is, apparently, a druggie. He constantly talks about wanting to get some "crack" and some "meth". He never uses any other names for these drugs, nor shows any real indications of being an addict. It's like the writers wanted all the fun of a junkie without any of those horrible track marks and that difficult slang).

He finally procures his crack by going to a park where there are some crack dealers. Just standing there in a row, like those guys you get doing surveys down Cornmarket. David suggests that they go to crack dealer number one (because he's got rapid-onset Stockholm syndrome and therefore wants to be helpful to crazy crack smoking guy), but Jake decides he looks too weird, so they buy their crack from the next dealer along. Because, y'know, that's the joys of the free market, and crack dealers thrive on a bit of healthy competition. Incidentally the dealer they eventually go to is keeping the crack in his mouth of all places. It would be uncharitable for me to suggest that the writers did this because they were looking for a way to disgust their audience, and couldn't think of any thing worse than a black man's saliva, so I won't suggest that.

So anyway, they buy their crack, and they go back to the van and Jake the Crackhead Carjacker (aren't all his internal rhymes cute!) starts smoking his crack. David, seeing that his captor is once again unarmed, has both his hands full, and is actually engaged in the process of getting off his face on crack cocaine decides that now would be an excellent time to do absolutely nothing. Then Jake the Crackhead Carjacker says "Hey David, you want some crack?" (by the way, some of the lines of dialogue in this article are exaggerated for effect, this one isn't). David replies that no he doesn't and adds that from his point of view the Jedi are evil. Jake says "David, you have to have some crack or I'll hurt you, possibly by poking you in the eye with the crack pipe I'm holding because I seem to have misplaced my gun again" so David takes the crack. Then David says "Wow! Taking crack rocks! That's so cool!" Then he fantasises about having sex with the crackhead who stuck a gun in his back. Because remember folks, he's a gay man and he's got, y'know, needs.

So they pass out after taking their crack. They get woken up by the crack dealer banging on their window with a baseball bat because crack dealers are like that. Cranky. Then they drive off. Then David shits in an alley and Jake says "yeah, crack'll get you like that" (again, I quote verbatim). Then they go looking for some "meth" because in case you haven't worked it out yet, Jake is a druggie. He loves the drugs, oh yes. Particularly crack and meth.

So they go looking for some meth, and they see this dog, and Jake the Crackhead Carjacker is all like "hey, that's my dog!" (which is the title of the episode and is, as far as I can tell, completely meaningless). He makes David drive slowly after a dog, then they get out of the van, and Jake decides that it isn't his dog after all, and so decides he's going to kill David because he's got bored of him. Then he beats him savagely, calls him a faggot (despite the fact that he doesn't know he's gay, perhaps he's just playing the odds), pours gasoline all over him, makes him suck on the barrel of a gun (again, why is this guy who doesn't know David is gay suddenly queerbashing him?) then tells him to close his eyes, then drives off and lets him go.

Because obviously you can abduct, torture, and savagely beat somebody, force them to smoke crack and make them suck on a gun barrel but shooting them would be wrong.

Words cannot begin to describe what is wrong with this episode, so I shall begin instead by responding to the usual defence that is made of it.

Whenever you dare to admit that you dislike something like this something "dark" and "harrowing" and presumably "real" - people always try to claim that you don't like to be "challenged." In particular, a lot of people defend this episode with the tired old response "unless you've had a gun pointed at you..."

Now it is absolutely true that people overestimate the amount of composure that they would retain in a crisis situation. It is absolutely true that, when put in fear of their life, most people will do absolutely anything in order to give themselves a chance of survival, they will submit to any indignity, they will do irrational, desperate things. What they do not do is go out of their way in order to prolong their predicament. David's actions in That's My Dog can only be explained in terms of a deliberate attempt to make things worse for himself (it's almost as if his actions were being dictated by somebody else...). Had he actually panicked he would have been better off, but he doesn't. Time after time he chooses to blithely follow his captor around instead of making a break for it, and while I'm sure being held at gunpoint is extremely frightening, being held by somebody who technically has a gun in their possession but seems for the moment to have left it in the car is rather less horrific.

A lot of people complain that David is portrayed as weak in this episode. I don't mind that so much actually. I think it's lazy: "hey, David's a sensitive gay guy, so wouldn't it be really interesting if we made him act like a complete wimp that'd add an unexpected new dimension to his character!" but I can see how being kidnapped by a madman with no discernible personality could freak you out. What bothers me is that he doesn't really have any kind of reaction to his kidnapping except absolute (and extremely plot-convenient) compliance and stupidity. He would actually have been better off in the long run if he had just collapsed and had a panic attack at their first stop. I don't care that they made him weak: I care that they made him weak enough to submit but strong enough to calmly drive this guy around LA until his situation was as hopeless as it could possibly get. To quote randomly from a webcomic I stumbled across, it was a very specific level of weakness.

That's My Dog was hard to watch. The things that happen to David in it are truly, truly awful. They are also truly, truly forced. The carjacker has no motivation, no personality, no reason to exist except as a device through which David can be forced into a traumatic plotline. Hell he even forces David to take crack, so that he can have a drug-addiction plotline as well.

The thing that really offends me, though, about this episode is the way in which David's ordeal is arbitrarily associated with his homosexuality. He repeatedly fantasises about having sex with his kidnapper, Jake repeatedly refers to him as a "faggot", makes him suck on a gun barrel, and at one point ties him up face down with the comment "what, did you think we were gonna make out?" When David is on his knees with his eyes closed waiting to die he has a "life flashing before his eyes" moment, which focuses almost exclusively on gay-themed events (the boy who died in the queerbashing in season 1 features prominently).

Now I don't think they're punishing David for his homosexuality. I do think that they've forgotten that David has any character traits other than his sexual orientation. If your life's flashing before your eyes, wouldn't you think a bit about your family or the business you've devoted your life to? But no, had he died then and there David Fisher's last thoughts would have been "gay gay gay gay gay gay, I'm a big gay, I am sooooooo gay."

There were two specific moments in the carjacking sequence which I thought were especially indicative of the absolute, undeniable death of Six Feet Under as remotely intelligent television. One is when David and the carjacker (it sounds like a children's book, doesn't it) are bombing it down the freeway and David finally cracks and asks Jake why he's doing all of this. Jake doesn't reply. Of course he doesn't, because he isn't doing it for any reason at all. He's a gratuitous plot device. Presumably the writers found him shooting up in the Room of Requirement. David might as well have asked "why is it that I picked you up in broad daylight, and drove you around until after dark" or for that matter "why did I, a man who takes my work very seriously, decide that instead of taking the dead woman in the back of this van to the funeral home, I would cruise around looking for an ATM with a guy I want to shag?" It's sheer authorial fiat. David has to have A Traumatic Experience and come hell or high water or ludicrous implausibility he will have it.

The second thing which reminded me, rather poignantly, of everything that the show had lost since the first season, was the scene in which Jake makes David dump the body he's been transporting in the middle of the street. Jake gets out the car and goes around the back. David, rather than driving away (because that wouldn't be a psychologically realistic portrayal of a man in a crisis situation) gets out the car and tries to stop him. By "tries to stop him" you understand, I mean "helps him". He does, however, utter the fabulously telling line: "That is somebody's wife."

And in season one, it would have been. It would have been a character to whom we had been introduced in a small vignette at the start of the show, which concerned itself with humanising the people who were about to die. We would have seen the Fishers making arrangements for her funeral, talking to her family, ordering flowers. We would have known and cared who she was. Instead this woman died off-camera while the writers cleverly "misdirected" us by showing her obese, semi-conscious husband sinking lower and lower into a hot tub. As a result, when Crackhead Jake dumped her deliquescing corpse onto the LA streets, I really didn't give a crap.

Which curiously mirrored my feelings about the show.