TV Jots

Running from a Dead Guy

[Episode 1.06] It’s Bobby’s birthday, but that’s actually the least interesting thing going on because Smith’s Episode Six belongs to Jeff.

During the best opening segments ever, Jeff returns to the house on the beach he shares with Tom after a morning surf. He grabs a beer to drink while throwing together a nauseating omelet breakfast made of eggs, a cup of butter, two raw hot dogs, and spoiled Chinese lo mein. Yeah — that’s my stomach’s righteous indignation that you hear.

After he finishes eating — how, I don’t know — and takes out the trash, Jeff finds a lovely copy of Surfer Girl, which he takes back inside to enjoy. But just when he’s about to get into the “articles,” Kala Tafattafua (Sidney S. Liufau) smashes threw the wall-length window right beside him.

Hell breaks loose, fierce struggling ensues, gunshots are fired, and Jeff finally manages to get away after Kala nearly drowns him in the bathtub. As he runs for his life down the street, Jeff spots a white Taurus parked outside the house and assumes Kala was driving it. He’s wrong, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from freaking out every time he sees another white Taurus during the episode, which is often.

Jeff goes where he knows he’ll be safe, which happens to be his doctor father’s gated estate. It turns out Assassin Surfer Boy comes from an extremely wealthy family whose members have given up on him after a life filled with psychiatrists, special schools, and arrests.

It’s clear, too, that Jeff understands what a disappointment he’s been to his parents from the painfully guilty look on his face as he avoids eye contact with them. He comes to get his father’s gun collection, but his frustrated mother asked the doctor to sell the weapons. Yet later, Jeff’s father pulls Tom aside and gives him one of the few guns he held onto while asking Tom to keep his son safe.

Before that request, Jeff tells Tom how he shot the two dudes in Honolulu because they kicked him off the beach. Really. That’s it. Jeff had no other motive than that Kala’s brother and cousin ruined his fun surfing time. As lovable as the character is, you have to admit Jeff is well on his way to becoming a card-carrying sociopath.

But Tom already knows that, and he surfs the ‘net to learn that the huge attacker from that morning is Kala, a Hawaiian methamphetamine kingpin who’s so connected, he’s gotten off the hook for four murders, including a decapitation. Oh, sh*t!

Jeff and Tom are really terrified now, and they spend most of the rest of the episode paranoid, jumping sky high at every sound, and trying to avoid booby traps and surprise attacks inside the darkened beach house. Just when the tension becomes unbearable, however, following a night of hyper vigilance, Tom discovers Kala’s body in the bedroom, where it’s been dead since that morning.

Yes — the buddies have wasted an entire day running scared from a dead man. Now all they have to do is get rid of Kala’s huge corpse, which they take care of by leaving it on the beach for little children to find. Really.

As for birthday boy Bobby, after he meets with his accountant to have him wash his recent million-dollar payoff “squeaky clean,” his wife Hope surprises him with a special visit to an old favorite bar, where his former band mates call him on stage for a little impromptu piano playing. Afterwards, Hope finally reveals that she misses the crime life, too, and knows he’s up to something fishy.

Still, Hope wants Bobby to realize that their cozy little suburban life and boring jobs are necessary now that they have two kids and can’t run all the time to stay ahead of the law. Bobby insists he can’t get by with such an existence, but he gives in at the end and goes to a neighborhood barbecue, where he and Hope are shocked to learn the host and half the guests are cops. Ha ha!

There’s no Annie in this episode — she gets center stage in the seventh and final produced installment — which is fine by me. So, the two remaining plot threads involve the Feds, who arrive in Reno to find nothing new, until a report about a stolen gold bar that turns up in Boston, and Joe and Macy.

Joe begins feeling guilty about sleeping with his best friend’s wife after Shawn and Macy’s son Ryan sees him in his underwear one morning. Macy’s response: Get over it, lover, because I feel wonderful sleeping with my husband’s best friend. What a waste — Team Bobby should have found room for her on their jobs to assist equally heartless Annie. Two tough chicks are better than one.

Up Next on the Series Finale Episode Seven: Annie works her charms on several people — or should I say “men”? — and the Feds continue hunting down the team as Smith bows out permanently.