Six Feet Under

i too find the girl the most anoying, shes kinda emo adn tahts like eew

I just met a girl tonight who is a mortician. rock on.

It's the best goddamned show on tv and you should watch it honey.

And Federico turns me oooooooon.

he, of course, had never seen the show and only went for the free booze. grrr.

I really like Rachel Griffiths but her character on this show hasn't struck a chord with me. The mother is excellent, though.

P.S. My sister had a friend in school who lived the not so popular funeral parlour girl lifestyle. The family kept some of their food - like the cake at the bday party- in the death bits fridges.

Shows on HBO have enormous advantages over shows on network TV. There is less fear of being cancelled quickly (thus writers can feel more comfortable spreading out plot arcs, having quieter episodes, etc.), there are no ads (thus fewer constraints on pacing), and there is a world of content that would otherwise be forbidden. I think this show makes great but limited use of these advantages. I wish the crises wouldn't come so soon and so often, and I wish the very accomplished subjective camera style was parcelled out at wider intervals.

This Tv show and the other dramas on HBO now represent an established mode of "Quality TV" so I suspect they will become an easy target for would-be populists if they're not already. I hope that doesn't obscure their real virtues. I really like watching this show, even if I don't typically think about it much afterward.

Did anyone see this year's season finale?

I think the mother is not well-drawn. Actually I think I liked her better at the beginning, when she was bigoted and needy. They've made her "mature" and "grow beyond" her faults and I think she's less of a character for it. Also the stuff they're doing with Nate is a shade over the top. It would probably be more affecting if it were pitched lower. Rico is a great character, but he sort of exists on a different level of stylization--more broad--than the Fisher family. Like all the best dramas these different levels can coexist well but one has to be very careful if they are going to actually *interact* in some meaningful way.

X-post. Mary: I think I mostly agree with yuo. I think what this show has going for it, aside from a few pretty well-done characters, is a really confident visual style.

Sopranos seems more acute, more observant and more interested in the world--it actually seems to want to do something with its audience, to offset the blanishments of u-m-class life with grotesque violence etc. I think that show's drifted way too much from its strengths but it is much more ambitious than SFU which is among other things emotional pornography (of the MAGNOLIA variety).

Then again, maybe this love for the show comes from my own personal experience--my mom runs a hospice.

Sorry to be all schmaltzy, but I really think this show is wonderful--and I very rarely use that word.

I have waited about a year to see these episodes, and I am not sure if it is this that makes it feel as though I have entered some sort of slightly tweaked alternate reality. All of the characters appear to have been shoehorned into situations that they seem uncomfortable in, as if they were poised to spring back into the patterns they developed during series 1 & 2. I find Nate's situation particularly puzzling, as well as his odd and unwieldy new hairstyle. Is he meant to have reached some sort of epiphany? If so, it doesn't convince. I guess time will tell. I miss angry, cursing Nate.

Claire is indeed hot as hell (I shouldn't really be saying this on a public forum, but she kind of reminds me of my wife...), although I'm still not sure how much we are meant to be laughing at her. Some of her scenes are bordering on My So Called Life teenage melodrama, but she's not a high school kid anymore! What gives?

I agree with Amateurist that the mother is the weakest character, although I like her as an idea, I find many of her plotlines a little predictable and repetitive. The family sem to be interacting with each other a lot less in this season, though I guess that a lack of communication is one of this show's primary concerns.

David is probably my favorite character, and as such, I am interested in seeing how this series deals with him in particular. I sometimes wonder if he isn't a little too much of a gay everyman, though would love to hear a gay viewer's perspective on him. His plotlines seem sometimes like an attempt at an accelerated depiction of one idea of a modern gay experience, and I worry about his character being spread too thin.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm a little disappointed so far. Nice to see Patricia Clarkson again, though.

I don't like Arthur at all, though.

dmr is correct, both in assuming which episode was That One and in his assessment that the episode itself wasn't as iffy as its immediate aftermath. That whole plotline felt kinda inorganic and out of sync with the rest of the show.

Got through the first three Season Three episodes. First two were fine. They seemed to be missing those really quiet, poetic moments that came out of nowhere and made Season Two so amazing, but then the ending of the second episode, with Frances Conroy and Kathy Bates on the hammock, was perfect. I thought the third episode was the first somewhat clunky one, but there was one great moment even there: when David and Keith singing "Tiny Dancer" turns into Elton over the credits.

i'm near the end of s3. v odd season. not a great deal happens. good though, nonetheless. some of the stuff about relationships and commitment goes way beyond where other shows have gone.

I watched seven or eight episodes this weekend and finished Season Three. With a few reservations, mostly strong.

Occasional detours weren’t necessary; I thought the worst example was Keith and the other security guy at the mansion. The art teacher was pretty much a parody of such a character, a straw man for Claire to set straight (even though I enjoyed it anyway when she did). And Nate’s story goes off the rails the last two episodes. But that was saved in the end by the season-ending shot.

I’m continually caught short by how moved I am by certain moments. There were a couple of scenes between Ruth and Claire that really got to me--all I could think about was my own mom. The paintball episode had maybe the two funniest lines thus far: Ruth’s “Help yourself--I’m out of control,” and Keith’s “Jeanne...Triplehorn,” the best tagline Arnold Schwarzenegger never got to say. Arthur’s right out of David Lynch, but he makes me laugh anyway. Joanna Cassidy and Patricia Clarkson and Kathy Bates and Lili Taylor were all great. The rehabilitation of Brenda as a character--she’d become a total drag at one point--was deft. I like her again.

Keith and the security guard, is that the stuff with Bobby Cannavale? I remember liking that alright

I checked the name, and no--that's Season Four. I meant when Keith and the guy who works for the same company arrive late at the break-in, after the police. It seemed like a clumsy 10 minutes to show us something we already knew well: Keith has a temper.

I'm glad to get past Season Four. The last episode seemed to find the right tone again, but most of the way I felt like they weren't sure where to go. Not terrible (although there were three dream sequences that were the worst yet), just drifting. The Russell character went from really interesting to an annoying cipher lurking around the edges. I don't find Rico's problems especially compelling. The opening deaths were sometimes dropped after the first scene, and those back stories had always been important. I could go on, but the biggest loss has been an almost complete abandonment of those poetic moments I mentioned above (poetic for me--I'm sure they'd come across as precious to someone else). Nate standing beside David after he's gone back to work to help out is the only great one that comes to mind. "That's My Dog" got my attention all right. Not sure if it was too much of a break. Some great music, usually just tacked on at the end: "I Saw the Light," "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," "Something in the Air." No idea what's going on with James Cromwell--intrigued by that.

Final season: while I don't think they ever got back to the consistent excellence of Season Two, most of the time Five held together. There was more of a return to risky emotional stuff. Sometimes these scenes were overwrought and soap opera-ish, sometimes they were very moving. "All Apologies" to end the one episode was great (its first appearance, earlier in the same episode, was a little corny). There were a couple of scenes with Ruth and Claire that got to me. And the final five minutes of the final episode did not let down (bad makeup notwithstanding).

Lauren Ambrose became too much the last couple of episodes. Same with Ruth's ups and downs with George. Bringing back the spectre of David's assailant as a symbolic plot mechanism seemed clumsy. My favourite character throughout was Ruth's sister--I wanted her in every episode.

just finished watching this myself. overall it felt like it could have been a much better show. they were quite deft at the start and dealt with death and mortality in a blackly comic way, but as it progressed it ceased to be about the funeral home, i suppose inevitably, and became more about their lives. this wouldn't be a problem but it all got a bit overwrought, plus their problems seemed to be quite one dimensional and last for an entire season. or recur. as a result the characters became annoying.

once nate passes away and it's this massive vortex in their lives that's mirrored by the vortex of charisma in the show, it's like practically everyone else is hard to like.

the final scenes were quite cool but they didn't really earn the right to that kind of payoff, if they had really hit the bullseye through the whole show that could have been amazing, but it was more like forcing myself to feel emotion rather than actually feeling for any of the characters.

??? i never thought nate was that good a character

I bounced around with Nate. Early on, he was my favourite character; he seemed like a beacon of equanimity in the midst of everyone else. Later on, after Lisa was out of the picture, I found his sourness repetitive and sometimes cruel.

he just seemed like a boring well meaning guy, i never thought about him, i preferred like literally all the women

I liked Ruth a lot, most of the time. Both Brenda and Claire were victims of some really cringey writing and attempts to make them seem cool or edgy.

Especially Claire; while I didn't often like Brenda--knowing full well I wasn't necessarily supposed to--her character seemed quite real to me. (Re Nate: as a boring, well-meaning guy, all I can say is that we take care of our own.)

That paintballing episode from season 3 was a classic, just so many different brilliant strands in one episode.

Yeah that one was brilliant.

The "best" death for me was definitely the pyramid scheme guy from season 1.

stopped watching this after the first season cos i hate every character except ruth

Been watching this fairly intensively over the past few weeks - first couple of seasons are fantastic. But I'm at the end of S4 now and the resolution to the "what happened to Lisa?" storyline was so rushed and clumsy and stupid.

I'm still on board with the Claire storyline, and David and Keith, but really could not give less of a shit about Nate at this stage. The characters of George and Lisa appear to have upset the balance of the show in ways I can't really put my finger on.

Any scene with David and Keith just hanging out is great, and the gay paintball episode is pitch perfect.

Both Brenda and Claire were victims of some really cringey writing and attempts to make them seem cool or edgy

You think? Brenda maybe, but the scene when they're burning furniture and then Claire runs upstairs and puts Radiohead on made it explicit that they were sending Claire up as a gauche teenager. Like they're still more sympathetic to her than most of the other characters but they're pretty consistently taking the piss out of her as well, especially once she's in art school.

Re Nate: as a boring, well-meaning guy

He's actually a fairly terrible person with an apparently limitless capacity for self-delusion.

there are also times where it's trying to earnestly show claire's art school journey and it's really fucking cringey imo.

Pretty sure the writers want you to cringe though, although the music and fashion choices are always going to look terrible 10 years on. Maybe it changes in the fifth season but they're being pretty direct about Claire being a psued and a bullshitter surrounded by other pseuds and bullshitters.

There are definitely parts where they are being earnest but are clearly quite out of their depth. The entire vibe of the show has a cheesiness which reveals their fairly poor taste generally.

Its inconsistency and many flaws notwithstanding, I still often think about this three months after finishing it.

I finished it yesterday and wow the fifth season really does pile on the shit and misery doesn't it? The episodes immediately after Nate's death were so unpleasant, kind of the opposite of how you'd have expected that family to behave after a death. Although the last episode was very emotionally satisfying. Poor Keith, though.

Kinda think it general it lost its way from the point at which Nate and Lisa got married, there was a real sense they didn't know quite what to do with his character for ages.

The whole thing was spectacularly sour for most of that last season though, if it wasn't for the David and Keith storyline and the lols that were to be had with Claire working in an office it would have been borderline unwatchable.

The episodes immediately after Nate's death were so unpleasant, kind of the opposite of how you'd have expected that family to behave after a death.

i dunno, i feel like it had been pretty well established by that point that they are all train wrecks who struggle to deal with even the smallest emotional turmoil

i liked season 5, myself. 4 is easily the worst

Re Nate: as a boring, well-meaning guy

He's actually a fairly terrible person with an apparently limitless capacity for self-delusion.

OTM He is such a repellent character and the series would have been better off without him. Jesus the flashback scene where he is blubbing, listening to Nirvana. It doesn't always seem like the writers knew what they were doing with his character. Like they thought he was a sympathetic character rather than a manipulative, delusional narcissist.

I was pretty tired of Nate towards the end too, but didn't anyone else like him early on? I thought he was fine for the first two seasons at least. He was the one who was most empathetic to the families when he first started working, when David was still consumed by the business side and Rico by the science.

Yeah I suppose he wasn't as horrible for the first couple of seasons, but for me they could have killed him sooner.

yeah, i liked him at least up until lisa's disappearance. really, it wasn't until that final double whammy of fucking maggie and then trying to dump brenda that i decided i hated him.

He made for an exceptionally tiresome cynic in the episodes before he checked out. I guess the writers thought Lisa's death and his own medical ordeals would give weight to his words. He was just annoying.

ruth got pretty hard to take in season 5, as well

Biding my time until I'm able to get hold of the latest Leftovers, Twin Peaks, and House of Cards seasons, so I started this for a second time tonight. Not sure how it will hold up now that I've seen Mad Men and The Sopranos (hadn't yet done so the first time through), but the first three episodes were fine.

ime it doesn't hold up as well as i would have liked. still some great stuff but the state of the art has advanced.

I love Joanna Cassidy so much in this. They must have said "Have fun" to her the first day of shooting and then just left her alone the rest of the way.

Checked back on what I wrote the first time, and I didn't say much about Season Three. Second time around it struck me as so unrelentingly morose.

"So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna play Frankie Yankovic and Herbie Hancock. How's that?"

From the Americans thread:

I tried (re)watching Six Feet Under last year and realized I hated every single person on the show and gave up.
― Johnny Fever, Monday, January 22, 2018 9:36 AM

I've watched it twice, and I think all the principals run the full gamut. Nate's a menace at times, also really empathetic with some of the families early on; Brenda's really cold early on, sympathetic towards the end. I think David's likeable most of the way. The only character I didn't like from start to finish was Russell, Claire's simpering boyfriend.

"I no longer feel the urge to speak in building metaphors."

it doesn't hold up as well as i would have liked. still some great stuff but the state of the art has advanced.
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.)

Fair. Eight years ago, I said "Season Two was a work of art for almost the whole way." Third time through, it seems to have the same plusses and minuses as S1, with two great episodes ("Back to the Garden" and the Christmas episode) back-to-back. (Which is where I am right now--maybe S2 is great the rest of the way, I can't remember.) When I posted that in 2013, I hadn't yet seen Mad Men, The Sopranos, Friday Night Lights...I hadn't seen anything. The art had indeed advanced, and I hadn't yet caught up. It's a good, sometimes great show, but I don't think nearly as often as I thought then.

George makes me think of that one ILX thread title: "Kelsey Grammer looks like a motherfucker with some dark secrets."

My friend and I did a Zoom on the music in Six Feet Under (and one on the Leftovers that was posted at the same time).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=snh7pCYuDgo

The guy who played Gabe (Claire's good-bad-not-evil first boyfriend), Eric Balfour, was Dean Tavoularis in The Offer. I think he got mad about something in every scene he was in.

Was sitting in the coffee shop I sometimes post about in the CVS thread this afternoon. There was a huge crash at one point: one of those overhead ceiling fans fell to the floor.

No one was hurt, thankfully. A few minutes before, two women and an infant baby (held by one of the women) had been sitting at a table close to where it fell; they wouldn't have been hit. The two people sitting at the table almost directly under where it fell almost got hit. I was way at the back; if I'd just gotten my coffee, though, and had been making my way to the back, I could've gotten hit.

Seems silly to say your thinking was permanently altered by a TV show, but ever since I first watched Six Feet Under a decade ago, the way that life can change in a split-second is something I regularly think about. Definitely thought about it today. Even the guy who owns the shop, nicest guy in the world, his life could have been permanently changed had someone been seriously hurt (or worse). Probably something insurance would have covered, but who knows--maybe safety inspections weren't up to date or some other loophole would have factored in. Scary.

Wow. Feeling this

Glad you are okay

Thanks--I was way at the back in a separate room almost. The only thing that made it less scary was that I don't think the ran was rotating...don't even want to think about the implications there.

It really was a Six Feet Under moment; the show was often brilliant when it came to those prologues.

"ran" -- fan, obviously

Was picturing one of those battle pennants from the Akira Kurosawa movie.

The woman eating at home alone who choked to death on her food shook me.

I imagined death as a big dramatic event but after that I realized how mundane and simple (easy) it can be.