Everybody dies. Everybody grieves. And there is dark humor in the ways people cope with loss.
That was the essence of “Six Feet Under”, and over the course of five seasons, the overly cute, self-indulgent, trippy, sometimes brilliant HBO drama tried our patience.
To mark its passing we offer an honest eulogy. (No spoilers here. Just know the 75-minute finale at 7 tonight is breathtaking for the amount of closure it provides). Grab a shovel: We come to bury “Six Feet Under,” not to praise it. The denizens of Fisher & Co. would want it that way.
“Six Feet Under” brought passion and pain to the screen, often in cinematic ways. But if its point was the fragility and difficulty of life, the message often got lost in the showy weirdness.
The human condition, as sketched by Alan Ball, is pretty pathetic. Ball, who won an Oscar for his take on suburban existential angst in “American Beauty, shares the Lemony Snicket view of life: It’s a series of unfortunate events. Tonight’s finale seems intent on celebrating the heroic human spirit that was often missing during the series’ run.
Thank goodness Ball dropped the faux commercials for funeral home accessories after the pilot. They seemed a holdover from his sitcom days, undermining the drama’s more serious intentions.
Death was always a co-star on “Six Feet Under.” The signature opening sequences demonstrated that some of us die in idiotic ways (a radio falling into the bathtub), some in absurd ways (the guy who ran over himself trying to retrieve the newspaper from his driveway), some in ironic ways (the fit trail runner attacked by a mountain lion), some in nauseatingly painful ways (the worker who fell into an industrial mixer) and some in a rage (the recipient of a lethal injection).
Rarely did anyone die peacefully – leaning against a loved one watching a movie, or under a hair dryer.
In interviews, Ball cited the untimely death of his sister, who was driving young Alan to a piano lesson on her 22nd birthday when she was killed in a traffic accident. His lasting anger is understandable.
From the start, Thomas Newman’s main title music always seemed perfectly suited to the erratic nature of the series. Like the show, it’s surprising, goofy, intense, despairing, witty, classically informed and experimental. Beautiful, crazy and ultimately unhummable.
After the novelty faded, Nate, David and Ruth Fisher got on my nerves. Nihilist Nate (Peter Krause) and whiny brother David (Michael C. Hall) made every breath seem traumatic; Frances Conroy was terrific as impossibly repressed Ruth, but that brittle characterization wore thin.
Claire (Lauren Ambrose) and the Chenowiths – Rachel Griffiths as Brenda, Jeremy Sisto as Billy, Joanna Cassidy as Margaret – were my favorites. The incestuous brother-sister angle played out delicately and the desperately neurotic, sexy swinging matriarch was the antithesis of Ruth. Ambrose was luminous, fiery and vulnerable in her portrayal of teen apathy and cynicism in a well-written role. No wonder her character is pivotal to the end.
Frankly, the third-season opener, “Perfect Circles,” might as well have been the finale. That hour began with the death of “Nathaniel Samuel Fisher Jr., 1965-2002.” In a hallucination during brain surgery, Nate experienced alternate realities: What if he died? What if he and Brenda had a child? What if he had a totally different personality?
What if the series had cashed it in then, skipping the out-of- nowhere violent attack on David, Nate’s endless mourning of annoying Lisa (Lili Taylor), Federico’s (Freddy Rodriquez) infidelity, David and Keith’s (Matthew St. Patrick) adventures in parenting, that creepy undertaker Arthur (Rainn Wilson), and George’s (James Cromwell) mental problems. What if, instead of outlining future episodes that way, Ball let the circle finish there?
Shoving embalming fluid in our faces was one thing, excusable as a commentary on the death industry, perhaps. But having blood erupt from the drains in the funeral home basement was a typically over-the- top stunt that added little to the already thick irony.
Maddeningly gimmicky, with goofy dream sequences through the finale, the series was more jokey than profound; philosophical musings on the afterlife were provocative but unsatisfying, particularly in exchanges with the deceased Nathaniel Fisher (Richard Jenkins).
For all its flaws, “Six Feet Under” was the rare television overreach able to move us to heated arguments. For that, it deserves thanks – and lilies.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
