"Six Feet Under" That's My Dog (2004)

Director:

Alan Poul

Writers:

Alan Ball (creator)
Scott Buck (written by)

TV Series:

"Six Feet Under" (2001)

Original Air Date:

18 July 2004 (Season 4, Episode 5)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

While celebrating her anniversary in a hot tub after her husband prompts her to enjoy drinking, Anne Marie Thornton falls in the shower and dies...

Plot Keywords:

Corpse | Support Group | Regret | Hot Tub | Hitchhiker

Cast

Peter Krause	...	Nate Fisher
Michael C. Hall	...	David Fisher
Frances Conroy	...	Ruth Fisher
Lauren Ambrose	...	Claire Fisher
Freddy Rodríguez	...	Federico 'Rico' Diaz
Mathew St. Patrick	...	Keith Charles
James Cromwell	...	George Sibley
Rachel Griffiths	...	Brenda Chenowith
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Brian Ames	...	Hot Student
Ethel Ayler	...	Ellen
Lauren Birkell	...	Elise
Joanna Cassidy	...	Margaret Chenowith
Idalis DeLeon	...	Sophia 'Infinity' (as Idalis de Leon)
Brooke Dillman	...	Becky
Ben Foster	...	Russell Corwin
Art Frankel	...	Bereavement Group Leader
Sprague Grayden	...	Anita Miller
Elise Robertson	...	Anne Marie Thornton
Brent Sexton	...	Lou Thornton
Brooke Smith	...	Carolyn Pope
Brenna Tosh	...	Maya Fisher
Bronwyn Tosh	...	Maya Fisher
Michael Weston	...	Jake
Marquise Wilson	...	Crack Dealer

Runtime:

Argentina:60 min | 56 min (DVD version)

Certification:

Argentina:16

Trivia:

This episode - which mainly focuses on the terrible events that befall David when he gets carjacked - sparked a great deal of online debate as many felt its violence to be extremely polarizing. However, it should be noted that the physical violence is mainly restricted to one scene at the end when Jake beats David up. The emotional torture he puts David through probably amped up viewers' perceptions of the amount of brutality that actually takes place.

Movie Connections:

References Showgirls (1995)

Soundtrack:

JAVA

The episode so horrible and misguided it nearly kills the series

It is rare in episodic television that a single show can be so dreadful that it upsets the integrity of a whole series. This is the case with the despicable "That's My Dog," a tasteless, out-of-control descent into cheap, anything-for-a-shock sleazoid TV hell. It is hard to take the character of David seriously after the bloody nonsense that he's forced to go through here. And this ultra-violent, druggie psycho with a gun episode thinks it's so "revolutionary" that it even dispenses with the successful "Six Feet Under" paradigm: the complex multi-story, multi-character editing. Nearly everything we know about David is smashed in this episode... especially his identity as a super-vigilant funeral director who would never allow anything despicable to happen to a body in his care! The whole show played like some third rate slasher film. How did the producers who created this magnificent series allow this lurid episode to happen? What kind of hold did writer Scott Buck have over these normally elegant artists? Were they so desperate to shake things up that they unwittingly risked the ruination of the series? This episode is an outrage.