Two weeks ago, HBO's Six Feet Under aired its darkest, most disturbing episode ever. Gay mortician David (Michael C. Hall) picked up a hitchhiker from hell, who started out flirtatious, then turned ferocious, beating and torturing him. (The whole thing played like a bad student film, but we needn't digress...) What made the show subject David to such abuse?

"It was kind of a form of gay-bashing," Mathew St. Patrick, who plays David's boyfriend, Keith, tells TV Guide Online. "The guy turned out not to be gay. He was just a psycho. Those things do happen."

Still, the whole improbable scenario seemed to come out of nowhere. St. Patrick rationalizes SFU's wacky twists thusly: "I may not have happened to get hit in the head with a golf ball and die, but it happens. People do fall out of windows, get electrocuted in the tub or fall into blender machines at work. Or like the girls' night out we had, when they stuck their heads out of the top of the limo and got them taken off. All those things actually do happen!"

Let's flash back to a little earlier this season. Remember when the pipes backed up at Fisher & Diaz funeral home, and after the hunky plumber fixed it, he serviced David's personal plumbing? Following that X-rated bit of fun, David casually confessed his infidelity to Keith over Chinese food. And Keith just laughed it off. What, no drama for these two drama queens?

"Keith and David have come to a place where they're going to be open about their relationship," St. Patrick explains. "Not 'open' in that they're out seeking sexual opportunities; I mean they're honest with each other and themselves. Keith really loves David. He doesn't know if David's the person he'll spend the rest of his life with, but he doesn't want to lose him and is committed to the relationship.

"They've said, 'We don't know where this is gonna go but we should take the ride and feel it out.' They understand that things happen. Are you gonna end a relationship because something happened once?"

St. Patrick prefers the new and improved Keith to the old one, who probably would've slammed David up against a wall. "Keith dealt with [David's tryst] in a loving, sensible way and didn't push David away by being overly alarmed," he says. "Keith allowed David to be honest and comfortable with him — and that was lacking in their relationship before. They are moving along the right path. It's not a relationship built on fear. It's honesty, love and respect."