COTD5

season 4 episode 7:

In this episode the director just tries to get everyone accustomed to what is going on in the show.  He made me see exactly what the characters have to do with death and the situations that they face with death.

The way that the director shows us how the characters deal with death is that some of the main characters work at a funeral home.  One of the characters had a near death experience which really affected how he dealt with death because everything that reminded him of his experience sent him into a state of panic.

season 4 episode 8:

This episode focused more on some of the cases that they had in terms of peoples funeral arrangements.  The director really wanted us to see how people wanted their death to be taken care of when they passed away.

The most important part of this episode for me was when a man drives up to the funeral home and sits there and closes his eyes, then the scene cuts.  One of the workers at the home comes to the funeral home and sees the man in the car, dead.  Later while talking to his family they had told him that this had been his plan all along.

Season 4 episode 9:

In this episode they had a man who loved comic books that had died and requested to be buried with his most famous comic.  When he died his "friends" tried to sneak into the funeral home and steal the comic book because it was worth over $4,000.

Although the workers at the home did not personally know this person it did affect one of them greatly.  When the funeral was going on he started to cry because it occurred to him that although he was a "nerd" it was still a sad thing to see for him.

These three episodes really got into the dominant social practices of care of the dead in the way that they showed their side of the situation.  When someone came to them to do a funeral they did not act like it was just some person who they did not know they made the situation personal in a way.  They tried to give these people their last wishes and make it as amazing as possible.  In the case of the friends trying to steal the comic book they fulfilled the mans last wish by letting him be buried with his most prized possession and not letting it be stolen.

Also in episode 9 the mother of the family went down to mexico for a vacation.  She went on a horse ride and the horse that she was riding got sick and had to be put down.  This hurt her terribly inside and made her feel awful.  For someone who has witnessed so much death and so many tragedies the death of a horse affected her so much that she cut her vacation short and went home.  It is very interesting that how something so little like this can trigger some emotions that haven't been let out all this time.