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Drug-addict actress Rebecca Leah Milford overdoses on cocaine, leaving her fellow cast and crew members, including Rico's sponsoring obnoxious sister-in-law, to set up the funeral. A guide to parents with gay children recommends accepting them by welcoming their lovers for a family meal, so Ruth prepares to invite Brenda, Gabe, and Nikolai before learning that Keith is no longer part of David's life. David and Nate both get bad news on their MRI's: David has gonorrhea and Nate learns that his brain condition is indeed AVM, potentially (but not necessarily) fatal, but …
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A football player collapses of dehydration during a practice session, but doesn't die…but his fellow player and best friend Joshua Peter Lagmead is ignored as he falls a moment later. Nate and Brenda prepare to make her high-school boyfriend Trevor envious when he visits for dinner with his own family, but in between trying to succeed, Nate is plagued with visions of Josh weeping, afraid of what will happen to him in death, and does his best to ignore his presence. Robbie graduates from The Plan, and invites Ruth to be his witness, and she's intrigued by the …
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Michael John Piper finally passes away, depressed and delirious, after a long battle with cancer, and his “psychic” widow sticks around Fisher & Sons to discuss his funeral arrangements with him. She also predicts that one of the brothers will have a child, and perplexedly tells Nate she doesn't sense Nathaniel - though only because the funeral home is crowded so not everyone can be sensed. Nate is also baffled by Brenda's so-called ebb in sexual activity, especially when learning even Rico, with a family of four, has an extremely strong pattern of one. He does get …
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Harold Mossback falls asleep but doesn't wake up on a bus tour in Seattle, where his kids hire the Fishers but insist he should transported by land back from LA since he feared flying in life. Unable to get any transportation services, Nate chooses to fly to Seattle and stay at his ex-roommate Lisa Kemmel's, then transport him by rental-car, offering to take Claire along for the ride (and to help drive). David is stuck sitting Taylor for Keith when he's stuck on assignment for several hours, annoying Rico and causing Ruth, now trying to contact old friends and …
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Emily Previn chokes on her TV dinner and isn't discovered dead in her apartment until a week later. Her funeral has already been set up, but Rico finds it a time-consuming impossibility to let her have an open-casket one since she's in such bad shape and Nate and David are only able to contact one of her friends (the one who has a funeral-phobia). The questions left of who she is and why she lived alone have an even more profound effect on Ruth, who begins having troubling dreams of living in an empty environment. David hopes to begin a strong relationship with Ben …
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At a corporate-funded boat-party he denounces, Matthew Heath Collins has too much to drink, drops his latest beverage over the side of the deck, and in attempting to retrieve it falls underwater and is cut by the propeller. His widow Catherine first contacts Fisher & Sons for a closed-casket funeral without bodily repairs, then chooses to switch to Kroehner's instead, forcing David and Nate to think of a way to set a cheap, but reasonable, price to convince her to switch back. Ruth's sister Sarah comes to visit upon receiving her message after years of feuding, …
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Jeffrey Marc Shapiro performs asphyxiation therapy while watching an adult video and jogging on his treadmill, but winds up hanging himself after not using his lemon slice to assist breathing. Nate befriends the man's religious leader, Rabbi Ari, and asks her the Jewish beliefs on death and afterlife. Claire chooses to go to Tapenga Canyon to visit Sarah for a weekend, despite Ruth's objections, and is interested more in the teenage son of a pair attending the artists' party there than the partying artists themselves. With Claire gone, Nate busy, and David going out …
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Christmas Eve - and the 1-year anniversary of Nate and Brenda's meeting and Nathaniel Fisher's death - is approaching, and this year, the Fishers are requested by the Hell's Angels motorcyclists to allow the funeral home to be open on Christmas Day so they can have a party/memorial service for Jesse Ray Johnson, who was involved in a motorcycle accident on his way to his part-time job as a mall Santa while greeting some kids. The family (and Rico) each remember their last moments with Nathaniel and, in most cases, regret what they didn't do for him before he died. On …
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A construction worker's metal lunch-pail falls from his perch on the building and strikes Dwight Edgar Garrison on the head - resulting in a major family conflict between his current wife and her 2 stepdaughters from his first marriage, on whether he should be buried with his late wife or the widow. Besides having to deal with that, Nate remains unaware that Brenda is still seeing other men but wonders whether she still wants to marry him, or just does out of pity…and whether he should wed at all when Lisa meets him and announces she's pregnant with his child. …
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Benjamin Srisal suffers a heart attack at home, requiring a Bhuddist service at Fisher & Sons that Nate gets a crash-course in how to conduct, but he's still got no answers as far as what should be done concerning Brenda and Lisa. Lisa apologizes for her outburst in the store but requests she have full custody of the child, causing him to be haunted by visions of the first child they conceived, as well as all the others he lost to abortion. David and Keith begin to argue again, especially after Karla accidentally hits and kills a homeless man on the street, and Taylor…
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Edith Kirky is the 4th patient of the year to be brought to Fisher & Sons from Bay Breeze Hospital where Vanessa works, so David predicts Rico's usual pride over the fact…but no one predicts him, suspicious about her neck-markings, to discover a whole hot dog wedged down her esophagus. When informing the authorities, Fisher & Sons is forced to allow them to bring Vanessa and her partner to be examined since they failed to find the hot dog themselves. Rabbi Ari encourages Nate and Brenda to be honest with each other, but Brenda reacts badly when Nate informs her he's…
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The Diazes' friend and former neighbor Leticia Perfect Perez dies in her sleep at a beauty parlor and leaves his family a large sum of money, causing Rico to remember how he lost his father and got into the funeral business to begin with. However, she also leaves behind a son, never close to her in life, who wishes to give her a more expensive casket than her pre-meet's choice and is jealous of Rico. Nate and Brenda attend her parents' remarriage, he goes to cheer up Aaron Buchbinder, and Keith, David, and Taylor are visited by a social worker. Nikoai responds …
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Aaron Buchbinder passes away painfully shortly after Nate arrives to visit (after he argues with Ruth about her visiting and photographing his daughter Maya). Kroehner's last act against the Fisher & Sons funeral home is to hire an inspector to examine the place, and they're fined for the problematic drainage system. Nate has a bleed requiring a cranial surgery to cure. Vanessa encourages Rico to ask for permission to be a partner since he has the money to pay the fine, and he's given 25% of it only when Nate reminds David he may need a replacement for Nate. Ruth …