I was guided here by the Wikipedia page on the New Sincerity movement. I love the project of New Sincerity, and believe its power lies not just in creators' ambitions to create something meaningful, but in viewers' willingness to view things through the lens of meaningfulness.
So, after learning about this show, I started watching in the hopes that I would be rewarded with another example of New Sincerity. Until this episode, I thought that the show was pleasant and mildly entertaining and each episode was enough to get me to watch the next. Then I watched this episode and now I am sold on the show and its contributions to New Sincerity thinking. The episode was everything that DFW wished for television to be. It was clever and self-aware in places, and also it was unflinchingly earnest and pure.
The train of thought and setting leading up to the waterfall scene makes it so that, when you watch follow the pumpkin along and see Pera's reaction to it, you undergo the same transformation of soul that his character does, and you come to an understanding of the true beauty and solemnity of life and death, and the absolute grandeur of life, if we have the eyes to see it, like how Pera views his Buick.
I think the New Sincerity will save the world, and it is well on its way to do just that. Episodes like this one remind me of that.
