My understanding of the show, going in, is that Six Feet Under is a character-driven drama that largely just revolves around the interpersonal dramas between the members of a family-run funeral home. The plot is mostly things that come up because of their relationships and arguments as well as dealing with the other families that they serve. The show is as one would assume, about life and death. The one notable detail I'm aware of is that people regard its ending as one of the best TV show endings of all time. Though what about it is notable, not a clue. At one point I watched the first episode or two. I do recall enjoying them, but just never got around to actually watching it.

Review

Season 1

I think when we do TV I may break up my reviews on seasons. Certain other shows deciding on a whim to be wildly inconsistent has spooked me, so I want to document things as they are happening. At least for a bit until I mentally recover.

Really great stuff thus far. This feels like an anti-Boardwalk Empire in some ways. People just behave like people. It is in fact a character drama. Characters have desires and personalities. They do actions based on those desires and their personality. This causes drama when they come into contact with other people, thus creating the plot. I know that what I am saying is among the most 101-level understandings of what a story is and how it functions. But thus far it stands in stark contrast to recent watchings. Nothing has really happened just because. Pretty much everything that has occurred is directly because a character behaved in a way that was entirely consistent with their stated positions. It's really enjoyable to watch because someone will say something and, because you have an understanding of how the other characters behave, you can immediately say "Oh shit, well they ain't gonna like that one bit...". And lo, said character responds exactly how you would expect them to. Or in the other direction. Nate and Brenda will be arguing and then one will stop and say "Hey, I'm feeling this way because of so and so." And the other will respond and say "Yeah, I get it, that makes sense." And they just move on. They're like people. Human beings. They talk to each other like human beings do. When someone has a misunderstanding of a situation, someone else will correct them. Or when a character is angry, their position tends to be totally understandable and defensible. People don't just blow up for no reason. It's wild stuff.

Moving past the most bare-boned discussion on how thus far this is a character drama that functions like a character drama, let' talk about some of the characters themselves. There isn't really anyone I dislike. Claire started off at an 11, but she's been growing on me. She settled down to a level I find acceptable for a teenager and although she has a terrible habit of coming at people real strong, she also tends to be a truth-teller who is observant and cuts through bullshit. Nate and David make for good foils to each other. Nate being far more emotional and empathetic, David tends to hold his cards to his chest. Which makes sense given his positioning as the heir apparent to the family business. Why would he not hide his emotions when every day he is playing the part of a strong person helping people go through one of the worst times of their life? And you know the gay thing. I love the mother, Ruth. She strays really closely to Lynch land with her mannerisms. There's kind of a glamour over the whole show, actually. It's not that it feels like we're in a Lynch film. More like there is a Lynch film happening in the same city and we're experiencing the radiation-like fallout of being near it. Like we're orbiting the event horizon of a red room. The general surreality is something I jive with. I like how we represent people's thoughts and emotions physically with visions. Anytime Dad shows up is a joy. I've generally really enjoyed any time we're talking to the dead. They're real mouthy gits.

My closest comparison thus far with Six Feet Under would be to The Sopranos. They have a very similar sense of humor even if Sopranos is more grounded and less absurd. Both have a generally strong script. There is some similar cinematography happening. As well as the aforementioned most of the plot occurring simply because of people interacting with each other, rather than arbitrary events causing things to happen. I'm sure the shared time period also has something to do with it. But I have good feelings thus far.

Season 2

Now that I've got a bit more of Six Feet Under under my belt, it feels...like maybe...we are safe from things flying away from us. I know that literally the first two seasons of other shows have been totally fine, but this show has been remarkably consistent with its themes and overall quality thus far. I am still quite interested in these characters. I like the situations they get into. I enjoy seeing how they are affected by all these peoples' deaths and how the Fishers affect the families that come through their business. And I would like to see where the show continues to.

In general, one of the things I've crystallized on that I like about the show is that it's very good at exploring small human moments that you might not initially think are important enough to make it into a screenplay. I have an example. The first time that Nate has a seizure after we found out he's got a rotten brain last season. He and Claire are in a fast food drive thru. Nate gets up to the speaker to order and then he starts majorly slurring his words and getting nauseous. He has to get out of the car and vomit in the little green area most fast food places tend to have that the drive thru itself wraps around. It's decidedly unglamorous. In the dramatic sense that it doesn't happen after some big notable story moment. Nate and Claire were just getting some food. But the seizure hits, Claire has to tell the guy over the speaker to shut up and hang on, something real bad is happening. I like how non-important the location is. Like we've seen in every episode where Death hits at any moment, at totally inconvenient times. The event itself is notable obviously, but the location couldn't be more pedestrian. He's just gotta deal with it in the moment, vomit off to the side. And then get to a hospital as soon as possible (and talk to the goddamn worst doctor...). There's other cars in the drive-thru as well, everyone just trying to get food. I think it's really well-done.

I think we're still good on the character front. They do infuriate me, but not in a sense of them devolving or being badly written or anything. They just have clear flaws and we see those flaws front and center all the time. These people needs to tell their goddamn mother that they love her. She is a saint.

Season 3

God is with us and he is good. Multiple times we screamed for justice, for the flaming sword. And it was delivered to us exactly as asked. Praise God. Praise Poseidon, the Earthshaker. Nate really needs to get right. I sincerely hope we've seen his rock bottom and that he realizes that he's putrefied into a foul monster of the night. The overwhelming theme this season was very much "life doesn't stop". To the point where we had one or two deaths that we barely even got into because of just how much drama we had going on with our main characters. That's HBO, baby. Pretty much all the other main people I'm quite happy with. The goddamn kids are still not as nice to their mother as I want, but they at least seem to have some passing understanding that they should not goddamn be little gits. We get some very sweet moments. Claire breaking down at the wedding. Sad thinking about her father, but happy for Ruth. That felt like a good standout to me, a little microcosm of where we've gotten to character-wise.

So sad, but happy for Brenda. Get the hell away from Nate. I hope it works out with Justin Theroux.

Season 4

The last episode of the season brought it together for me. When I was starting to write up some of my thoughts on the season, I was a bit cooler on it than the previous seasons. There's some plots that didn't fully work for me. Though we ended up going some very unexpected places that kept me on my toes and kept things from being predictable. George...some excellent hints there that I did not put together until it happened. 2 == 3 > 1 == 4 is generally my ranking. I did like the first season but it has some early show weirdness where we didn't fully have the tone and the characters in place, as is pretty typical with TV. I think it's very telling that the show completely dropped its central antagonist from the first season and a half (the corporate death-Nazis) and everything improved in the 2nd and 3rd seasons. An obvious case of gaining confidence and a better understanding of what your show is about, IMO.

There's one plotline from this season that I'm not convinced about and that would be Rico. I feel like we weren't sure what to do with him. The central themes of Six Feet Under are, of course, how death affects these people. And the thing with Rico is that he's never really shown himself to be all that affected by his work. I would say generally one of the more well-adjusted of this lot. (at least in that respect, we've seen the stupid machismo rear its ugly head before) The acting out and the general personalities we see from the Fishers are often directly tied to their relationship with death and a desire to feel alive. Rico's always been a secondary character in the show, and that's fine, but with his whole affair situation, I felt like we were devoting more time to him than is really necessary. It's not that I think the plotline itself doesn't make sense. It's a natural continuation from where he and Vanessa were at in season 3. However, I think I would cut the scenes where we are actually seeing him at the stripper's house. Have it just be a situation where we see the initial infidelity in the car and thereafter we see him get calls at Fisher and Sons (and Diaz) occasionally from the stripper and we fill in the details ourselves. I think that would be better, because I mostly just feel we're devoting too much time to him when he doesn't directly relate to those central themes. Not bad, I just could see improvement by making things a bit more slim and focused there.

Other than that, I like that we continued following Brenda, even when she wasn't with Nate. Brenda is a good character with depth and way back when they split at the end of season 2, I was afraid we were gonna give her the boot. But she's more than interesting enough herself and has enough history with our main family that it would have felt bad moving away from her. So, glad that fear was definitively squashed.

Nate, I dunno what to say at this point. At one point I called him "a stain" and I don't really think there's any coming back from that. I know that being over the top is our bread and butter, but that's a pretty damning thing to say about a person. Like, I get that his wife died. And I get that the fact that he didn't love her makes him feel even more fucked up about her dying. But, man, I wish he had not looked Poseidon's gift horse in the mouth and just moved on. It's more sad because we've seen numerous times how emotionally intelligent and caring he's capable of being. David was never that great at being the shoulder for the dearly departed's family to cry on. But the sheer contrast between him and Nate of the last season or two makes David look like a saint and a scholar. And Nate's continuing problems are entirely self-created. He is capable of better, but chooses not to be. Throw him into the fucking sea.

Season 5

Noticeable increase in quality compared to the previous season. This show is kind and giving. There is a presence of justice that can be felt, particularly in season 5. When people do or say things beyond the pale, there is always always their just deserts on the horizon.

I feel Six Feet Under is exactly what was needed after previous unnamed shows. I wanted character drama and that is what I received. Very rare in this show for plot to happen just because. The writing was never arbitrary. It's always serving a purpose. For a show where we frequently commune with the dead, it also felt pretty realistic to me. The drama is real. People will say real things, sometimes cruel sometimes very kind. But always believable from what we know of them.

Overall, highly recommended. Ending is as good as I heard. They wrap up the show in a very satisfying way. There's no things left unsaid that you wish they had done.