Season 4 of Six Feet Under has gone down in the history books as the one with the episode. That episode. The episode in which David (Michael C. Hall) gets held hostage was so disturbing to watch that some viewers were furious, others physically nauseous, and, yes, some in awe once the credits rolled. As Emily Nussbaum wrote in New York magazine in 2004, “It’s unsurprising many viewers felt abused, and taken for a ride. But there’s something thrilling, too, about creators willing to jeopardize their unspoken contract with their audience: to risk our loyalty in the name of something new.” 

The episode, titled “That’s My Dog,” is still just as upsetting as it was when it first aired decades ago. With a corpse in the back, David picks up a hitchhiker named Jake (Michael Weston) who punches him, robs him, forces him to smoke crack, pours gasoline on him, puts a gun in his mouth, and ultimately leaves him alive, if broken. The episode comes nearly halfway through a season filled with violence and loss, for all of the Fishers. And yet it’s also a season that ends with the theme that despite all the suffering that life brings, it’s still better to be alive. 

Do we find out how Lisa died?

The season begins with one of the most creative death-openers, that of Bruno Baskerville Walsh, who died in 1972. By the end of the episode, we see his relevance; Nate (Peter Krause) passes off his cremated remains as Lisa’s (Lili Taylor) when he gives them to her family. Insisting she wanted to be returned to the earth, he buries her in the desert. It’s a decision that will come back to haunt him, when Lisa’s sister Barb (Julie Dretzin) finds out the remains they were given are likely not hers. 

Barb and her husband, Hoyt (Jeff Yagher), threaten to take Maya (Brenna Tosh and Bronwyn Tosh) away, until Nate finds a picture of Hoyt and Lisa taken the day she went missing. He confronts Hoyt, who admits to an affair with Lisa, but it’s never made clear if he killed her. He does, however, kill himself with a gun from his desk in front of Nate and Barb, who’s listening to Hoyt’s confession nearby.

Where’s Brenda in all this?

Very much with Joe (Justin Theroux) at the beginning of the season and very much without him by the end. Maybe it’s that he likes BDSM, maybe it’s that shopping for duvets put her over the edge, but Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) starts sneaking around with Nate by Episode 6. She confesses to Joe that she cheated on him and though they initially try to work through the betrayal, when Joe walks in on Brenda and Nate, the relationship ends with some particularly cruel words. In the end, Nate decides who he wants to be with. “I’m done looking back,” he tells Brenda. “I just want to look forward with us.”

Who is Celeste?

“If Jessica Simpson is the poor man’s Britney, what’s Celeste?” David asks Keith (Mathew St. Patrick) before he begins his new job doing security for the hilariously high maintenance pop star (Michelle Trachtenberg). (Look out for Bobby Cannavale as fellow bodyguard Javier!)

Ultimately, Celeste’s storyline ends after seducing Keith — yes, Keith sleeps with a woman — and then firing him the next morning. It’s not the only time Keith has an unanticipated sexual encounter. The unfortunate connection originates when post carjacking, an emotionally volatile David gets into a fist (and ear biting) fight with a rude guy at a sushi bar, who happens to be Hollywood bigwig Roger Pasquese (Matt Malloy). In order to convince Roger to drop his $500,000 lawsuit against David, Keith agrees to a sexual encounter with the plaintiff. By season’s end, Keith is contemplating a bodyguard job working for Roger, who has tapped into Keith’s annoyance at David, not to mention Keith’s desire to make good money. As for David, he goes to see Jake (who doesn’t even remember him at first) in prison. “All I have is you, David. And you hate me,” he tells his victim, before asking him to come back again or perhaps to have lunch with him if he’s ever released. 

Rico learns a lesson the hard way…

And that lesson is: don’t pay for someone else’s boob job. After seeing Sophia (Idalis DeLeon) perform at a strip club, Rico (Freddy Rodríguez) somehow winds up becoming her one-man ATM. Vanessa (Justina Machado) finds out, bashes in Sophia’s car, kicks Rico out of their home (he lives at Casa Fisher for a while), and by the end of the season asks for a divorce. 

… and Ruth’s having relationship issues, too.

George’s (James Cromwell) romance with Ruth (Frances Conroy) hits the skids early on in the season with the Fisher kids visibly annoyed by his lectures. “I’m finding your family a little difficult to connect with,” he tells her. After a series of fecal deliveries arrive — which Ruth blames on Arthur (Rainn Wilson), prompting him to leave the house — Ruth finds out George has been keeping information about his family from her. There’s a nice little interlude of a fed up Ruth and Bettina (hooray for the Kathy Bates return) taking a trip to a seedy hotel in Mexico, but when Ruth returns home her problems with George aren’t over. “The apocalypse will be over water,” he says, getting increasingly agitated about natural disasters and climate change. (How prescient!) In the final episode, Ruth wakes up in the middle of the night to find George in a bomb shelter that Nathaniel (Richard Jenkins) had built years earlier. When she tells him to come back to the house, he replies, “No, Ruth, this is where I live now.”  

And then, there’s the artsy kids.

Claire’s (Lauren Ambrose) storylines this season involve her art school friends, including her ex, Russell (Ben Foster), but also series newcomers Jimmy (Peter Facinelli), Anita (Sprague Grayden), and lesbian performance artist Edie (Mena Suvari, reteaming with series creator and American Beauty writer Alan Ball). There’s a lot of getting stoned and a lot of various pairings of that crew having sex, including an awkward hookup between Claire and Edie. But the most complex moment occurs when Russell helps Claire come up with an art idea that she runs with and gets accolades for, not to mention a gallery show. They get into a screaming match (she’s high on cocaine at the time) at her show over his involvement and the fact that she had an abortion without telling him, and ultimately Billy (Jeremy Sisto) sends him away. A shaken Claire asks Billy to take her home and though we don’t see what happens after he walks into her room, it’s pretty clear where things are headed. As far as Claire’s success storyline goes, don’t miss Nicole Richie as the celebrity initially interested in buying the work of Claire — who is, frankly, pretty unimpressed. 

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