(As someone that abhors the word "nice," the summation below (scroll down) by Matthew Gilbert of the show rings true from it's title and most all that follows.)
My spouse and I watched SFU from it's premiere episode.
I'd read a preview/review of the show which described it as quirky and compelling and noted as well that Alan Ball was the force behind it.
So spouse agreed with me about giving it a go. ( We have very little time for teevee so we select carefully and try to watch one family show a week and one like this--after (hopefully) all kids are tucked away in golden slumbers.)
There was no question in my mind as the first episode of the first season of Six Feet Under drew to a close that I'd be watching more. And we did--all the five seasons--every episode, staying with it during the slump of it's third and part of it's fourth season.
This fifth and final season has been electrifying---great ensemble acting along with an amazingly artful and sometimes beautifully stark cinematography has never wavered as Six Feet Under's strongest suits.
Though at times some of the characters have been grating--the actor inhabiting that character always gave a strong performance.
I'm going to miss the show (a lot) but indeed it does leave with the bar set that much higher for the next truly unique television series to set sights upon.
--Cyn
http://tinyurl.com/9rqyb
Remembering 'Six Feet Under': It was honest, fearless, and never nice
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff | August 18, 2005
It's easy to bury most TV shows and shovel the dirt on their caskets
about how they overstayed their welcome. But I truly grieve the death
of HBO's ''Six Feet Under," which goes six feet under for good Sunday
night at 9. A unique, fearless, and gorgeously messy TV narrative, it
will leave prime time a flimsier place as it permanently fades to white.
After all, no other series in the history of the medium has so
honestly and steadfastly rendered death and grief. I mean, TV is
riddled with cadavers on slabs, organs spilling from them like rubbery
fruit, but those crime-show fatalities are always investigated,
understood, explained, made logical. They exist in a packaged TV world
of law and order, and they feed our collective denial of the randomness
and inevitability of death. You can use many phrases to describe ''Six
Feet Under," but ''in denial" probably won't be among them. The drama
was never -- block your ears if you don't like four-letter words --
nice.
Indeed, the show was madly in love with brutal honesty and
psychological dissection. Like Brenda's mother, ''Six Feet Under"
refused to sugarcoat its tangled, modern truths -- about death and
about life. Sometimes it embraced dark nights of the soul so
indulgently it seemed sophomoric, particularly when Claire's artist
friends angstfully held forth about the cosmos, or when Nate's
self-blame about his wife's death turned him into a raving maniac.
But other times it captured human despair so perfectly and valiantly
it was transcendent TV. David's anxiety attacks, Ruth's journey of
self, Brenda and Billy's incestuous bond, the ebbs and flows of George
and Billy's mental illness, they were all shown with a disarming
frankness. They were unvarnished, and undiminished.
The writers, led by creator Alan Ball, brought their rich cast of
characters -- and actors -- to places of rage and fear we rarely
encounter on TV. ''Six Feet Under" let the Fishers feel their despair
over and over again, not just having them make mistakes but having them
repeat the same mistakes in a kind of no-exit hell. Nate's identity
swung from family man to vain wanderer with the regularity of a
pendulum, as he and Brenda replayed their set-piece argument endlessly.
One episode, they were meant to be happily together; the next, they
were doomed to crash. And David never strayed from his masochistic
pattern, returning for Keith's abuse so many different times we knew he
must be comfortable with it on some level.
All the relationship back-and-forths may have looked like
redundancy, and sometimes it did seem as if the writers were out of
ideas, as Rico and Vanessa bickered ad nauseam. But mostly, the plot
perseverations were the show's way of capturing the cycles of love, the
ons and the offs, the steps forward and backward. The goal was
psychological realism. In a lesser show, David and Keith would have
split a long time ago; or else turned into an ad for the Martha Stewart
lifestyle. Instead, they've reenacted their central conflict, locking
horns in between moments of respite and love. They've tried, and
failed, and tried all over again.
The raw melodrama of the writing was beautifully served by its
actors, a few of whom deserve Emmys they may never get. Michael C. Hall
was most extraordinary as David Fisher, bringing great life and nuance
to David's pale, stiff mask of a face. Hall disappeared behind his
character, so that the question of his own sexual orientation was
wonderfully irrelevant. He made the contradictory sides of David --
needing to be in control, needing someone else to be in control --
coexist naturally. And he let David's grief at the loss of Nate ennoble
the last weeks of the series. The image of David unable to leave the
car at Nate's burial, his expression twisted with dread, is indelible.
David grew after his first closeted season, and yet Hall kept the
character's essence remarkably consistent and real.
Lauren Ambrose, as Claire, created one of TV's most faceted teens
ever. Her red-haired pothead found both comfort and loneliness living
on the fringe, and she delivered Claire's gallows humor with subtle
comic timing. Claire is in love with cynicism, as attached to it as her
mother is afraid of it. Indeed, Claire and Ruth Fisher are beautifully
designed characters in part because they define themselves against --
but in relationship to -- each other. And Frances Conroy brought
unexpectedly touching dimensions to Ruth, a classic mouse, but a mouse
whose roar can be heart-rending.
In the midst of all its chaotic emotionality, ''Six Feet Under"
rarely looked disheveled. The visuals were unfailingly exquisite, from
the meticulous opening credits to the oppressive drabness of the Fisher
home and the cold steeliness of its basement. Last week, as Nate's
ghost told a stifling Brenda ''You should have married Billy," the
elevator she was riding in elongated and narrowed, like a coffin. It's
the kind of throwaway shot that filled the series, and it highlighted
the glibness of most network camerawork. Even the show's trademark
fades to white had a carefully gauged airiness that spoke of eternity.
The symbolic flourishes have also given ''Six Feet Under" an artful
atmosphere, in the manner of the garbage dancing in the wind in Ball's
''American Beauty." This season, as birds descended on Nate Fisher --
on his wedding cake, at his birthday party -- his death became more and
more inevitable. It was a lovely, nonverbal heralding of fate. And then
his liaison with Maggie, an angel of death with a tragically peaceful
face, sealed the deal.
Yes, the series had its share of trying moments, particularly last
season, as the story veered into turgid cliche with the resolution of
Lisa's death. Ball has chosen the right time to put his show down. But
this last season has been a knowing and stirring farewell, giving fans
the best the show has to offer -- originality, character depth, and
visual poetry. And we can be confident that the final episode, which
will be 75 minutes long, won't suddenly flatten out that fullness.
Whatever happens to the people of ''Six Feet Under," it won't be pat.
And another tribute...
