“Six Feet Under” Passes Away

A serial drama about a funeral home isn’t the most promising of TV settings. Yet HBO’s “Six Feet Under” managed to move beyond cult hit into a critically acclaimed series. In confronting the one taboo America still has – death and dying – it broke some new ground. Despite wandering a bit in a few of its story arcs, it was a solid and reliable adult drama. The finale, which aired Sunday, came two episodes late, but the final few minutes rounded out the story in an artistic and satisfying fashion.

“Six Feet Under” started in a timeslot just as a season of the established hit “The Sopranos” was ending. A great many stayed on to watch this quirky and unlikely show. Unlike “Carnivale,” which was simply weird, “Six Feet Under” stared at death from the first episode with the passing of Nate Fisher, Sr., funeral director. Thus the first rule of TV was violated – don’t kill off the patriarch in the first reel.

The most interesting character in the series was David Fisher, who came out of the closet, had several weird homosexual relationships and finally settled down with Keith Charles, a macho black homosexual. They adopted two black children in this final season and managed to work through the usual trials and tribulations of life. If nothing else, this series let the gay characters be gay characters without apology and without campy, over-the-top stereotyping. Apart from a truly awful episode in which David picks up a hitchhiker, this was the most intriguing part of the program.

Less likeable were the rest of the Fisher clan. Nate Junior was sort of an aimless jackass whose death one felt was overdue, Claire was an annoying suburban wanna-be artist, and Ruth was an old woman of middling charm and deep-rooted bitterness. Yet, somehow Alan Ball and his writers turned their interplay into something one could pay attention no matter how much one wanted to slap some sense into them. The supporting characters could be equally irritating and infuriating, but one got the impression that if they had simply avoided the Fishers, life might have been easier for them.

The final episode should have been Nate Junior’s death and burial. Spending two additional hours explaining what happened to everyone seemed a contrived effort to resolve things that needed no resolving – life goes on and that's that. At the same time, finding out what happened to the main characters does scratch an itch – especially since the years of this program made one care about them. The way in which it was presented, with Clair driving off to a new life, interwoven with the deaths of each many years in the future, could have been done in perfect silence rather than with a soundtrack – a glorious piece of writing all the same.

Just one quibble with the whole series. In the first year, there were some rather amusing advertisements for death-related products. They died off far too early - -their commercially crass pitch juxtaposed with the serious of death in a way that belittled the shallowness of business in general.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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