Fans, we feel your loss over 'Six Feet Under's passing

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Saturday, August 20, 2005

Fans, we feel your loss over 'Six Feet Under's passing

By MELANIE McFARLAND
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER TELEVISION CRITIC

Longevity is a prized concept in American culture. We strive for it in life, and we expect it of our favorite television shows. It is no small irony that focusing on one often comes at the expense of the other, which is probably one of the reasons we saw Nate Fisher jogging far more than watching the tube.

As it turns out, neither Nate (played by Peter Krause) nor "Six Feet Under," the HBO series that took us along for the ride as Nate searched for greater meaning in life, were long for this world. Full of life and crazed optimism as the series began, Nate was batting birds out of his house on his 40th birthday -- hard not to see the symbolism there -- and found real love with a woman not his wife just in time to die. Three episodes later, his and the Fisher family's stories are ending Sunday at 9 with a rich 75-minute finale, preceded by a retrospective at 8, and fans of monumental television are sure to feel the loss.

"Six Feet Under," one of three series that propelled HBO to the top of the heap, leaves with fewer episodes than "Sex and the City" had under its belt upon ending, or "The Sopranos" -- which may or may not end after its sixth season. (HBO recently announced it would have an eight-episode extension in 2007.)

Those series were credited for bringing about the return of great writing and frank conversation about sex, modern careers and relationship, and were often imitated, making them the premium of premium programming.

"Six Feet Under" gave us some of the richest characters on television, played by top-drawer actors, and indelible guest appearances by James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson and Kathy Bates, who also directed a number of episodes.

Although it was credited for inspiring Showtime's "Dead Like Me" and the A&E series "Family Plots," its pop culture spike mostly had to do with normalizing discussions about living wills and Elizabeth Kubler Ross' stages of dying and grief.

From its first moments, when Nathaniel Fisher Sr. (Richard Jenkins) died in an automobile accident, it became clear that "Six Feet Under" wasn't just about death. Sure, almost every episode commenced with a scene from someone's last moments on Earth before rolling into Fisher & Diaz, some of which were darkly hilarious, and Dad had a habit of nagging his family from beyond the grave. They had revealing, sometime premonitory dreams while awake or asleep, some of them musical. But Nate, David (Michael C. Hall), Ruth (Frances Conroy) and Claire Fisher (Lauren Ambrose) were singularly concerned with what they could wring out of life.

At its best, the drama made you giggle, gasp and tear up in the same hour. It drowned in soapiness at times, but then, what do you expect? The central romance, Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) and Nate, kicked off with the pair anonymously grinding in an airport closet after Nate's flight home from Seattle for Christmas.

Denial

So much about "Six Feet Under" revolved around holding back and being frozen in place, starting with Ruth and the family home. Mother and kitchen remained stuck in the drabbest part of the Vietnam era, awash in bland colors and severe frowns. Conroy played the Fisher matriarch a bit over the top at times, but for the most part, she gave us painful comic relief, as Ruth's every attempt to stretch out in life ended in frantic disaster.

Similar implosions occurred whenever anyone let go: Brenda, a character Griffiths made equally vexing and intoxicating, fell into sex addiction; her mentally ill brother Billy (Jeremy Sisto) became violent and obscene. David pulled himself together enough to come out of the closet, but fell apart in severe crises. It'll be interesting to see Hall top his work here.

And what about Ambrose's romantically morose, yet relatably cool Claire? She faced every combative relationship -- with men, her controlling mother and her art -- with a mixture of sarcasm, anger and tears that drove us to the edge while defying us to stop loving her.

Krause almost achieved the same feat with Nate, who began the series as a typical Seattle man-boy (i.e. must be sensitive, love lack of responsibility and organic "Stevie Nicks" raspberries) and ended up a self-absorbed, almost hateful creature.

The only truly liberated spirit in the series was Brenda's mother Margaret -- Joanna Cassidy at her most fabulously evil -- who became a series favorite because she's such a giggling succubus.

Scarred as they are, all of them are defended by series creator Alan Ball like his own children -- especially Nate. "Nate is one of the characters whose tragic flaw is also his salvation, and I think that that flaw is that he can always envision a better life," he told reporters earlier this week. "How does the world get better without people who can do that? But at the same time, that creates a pretty constant state of dissatisfaction with life the way it is."

Anger and bargaining, or the lack thereof ...

An apt enough launchpad to talk about its derailment during the third and fourth season, when the show lost its sense of humor and wallowed in misery. We treat those we love best most harshly -- that may be why it was easy to forget that even then, when Nate stopped being cool and Claire started getting on our nerves, it arguably remained better than most scripted content on television.

Arguably, we say, because for a study in life's harshest realities, the series teemed with moments that strained credulity. Such as, what was Ruth thinking in marrying mad George Sibley (Cromwell) after a spark-short romance?

How could David's out-and-proud lover Keith (Mathew St. Patrick) fall into the trap of sleeping with an obscenely self-involved female pop star?

Why would Federico (Freddy Rodriguez), solid to the point of being innocuous, suddenly cheat on his wife Vanessa (Justina Machado) with an unbalanced stripper?

And why did the writers make us suffer through the pain of Nate leaving sexaholic Brenda for a shrew like Lisa, only to emotionally abandon Brenda once she reformed -- and while she's carrying his child -- for mousy Quaker Maggie (Tina Holmes)?

Ball and the "Six Feet Under" writers always experimented with the limits of the show's characters, and by extension, the audience's patience. But it has resulted in some enlightening surprises. The best may be the developing tenderness Keith and David share for their foster kids, Durrell and Anthony, and our late introduction to Claire's boyfriend, Ted (Chris Messina). Ted's a Republican lawyer who loves Top 40 and stands for everything Claire detests politically and aesthetically -- and yet, has treated her more lovingly than anyone else.

Depression

Not every tortured twist, or twisted character, was embraced so roundly. "Six Feet Under" may be one of a few series with a character whose very presence sucked the life and humor out of the room every Sunday: Lisa Kimmel Fisher (Lili Taylor; see sidebar).When the characters weren't full of regret, the Chenowiths and Fishers ran on rage, a quality that threatened to sink the show in its third and fourth seasons, permeating even this summer's opening episodes with bleak undertones.

That's why Nate's sudden death with three episodes in the season to go was both shocking and perfect. Nate's passing also gave a purpose to every flaw, derailment and annoyance about the series' progression by reminding the characters and viewers of the importance of living for the now. Ball explained Nate's death was an inevitable end to a series for which he served as the primary navigator.

"Nate, especially, is a character, whose overall story arc has always been inching towards full acceptance of his own mortality," Ball said. "And what is the final step of acceptance of one's mortality? It's death."

He later added, "With the last four episodes, I wanted to create an atmosphere in which the show kind of forced one to grieve, and to experience what it's like to lose somebody, and to go through the process of grieving."

Acceptance

The coda to all of its ups and downs, Sunday's 63rd and final episode, "Everyone's Waiting," delivers a suitable payoff to a series fans are sorry to let go.

Written and directed by Ball, it grants the mercurial brood a portion of happiness that makes you realize, in the end, we were merely seeing a few rocky years that commenced with the death of a father and ended with the death of a son and brother. The Fishers finally embrace life, starting with the birth of Brenda's child. Fittingly, a tender montage shows us how each one dies. Each ends their life much in the way the series does -- some quietly, others with unexpected brutality, all having lived with a sense of dignity.

That's the best epitaph anyone can wish for.

Six things from 'Six Feet Under' we couldn't wait to bury...

1. Lisa

We couldn't stand that meatless meatloaf-making harpy from the moment we met her, and it just got worse once she trapped him into marriage. Even after her murder, Lisa refused to go away, haunting Nate into romanticizing their relationship. That is until he found out about her affair with her brother-in-law, who might be Maya's real father.

2. Nate's ever-growing selfishness.

We loved Nate so much when "Six Feet Under" first began, but a combination of marriage to Lisa and what looked like a midlife crisis turned him into a whiny, navel-gazing jerk. Ask yourself: When he died, were you sorry to see him go? Or was your sadness on behalf of those he left behind?

3. David's near-death experience.

Just when you thought David had gotten over his self-loathing, the writers throw in a carjacking. You could argue the event's lasting effects served as another tool to demonstrate how fragile life is. Either that, or it was a convenient tool to get Nate back into the family business -- his deparure was a pivotal fourth season story line.

4. Ruth and Claire's infantile histrionics.

Another favorite character ruined by her constant need for crisis and drama, the youngest Fisher became nearly unbearable once she became more artsy. Then the writers did us a favor and stuck her in a creative slump. Whenever Ruth tried to leave her holding pattern, she became interesting. But then she'd backslide into being a screeching, eye-rolling martyr again, and again, and again. Cringe.

5. Brenda and Billy's icky relationship.

The incestuous implications between the Chenowith kids provided eerie background noise since the first season, rearing up every now and then when bipolar Billy would go off his meds. Still, the close pair had reached a peaceful stage between them until Brenda's shocking dream sequence in last week's "Static," a cheap moment that just made you want to shower in bleach.

6. Maya Fisher, Turnip Child.

I know it's mean to pick on toddlers, but come on. There's non-responsive, and then there's Lisa and (maybe) Nate's kid Maya. Twins Brenna and Bronwyn Tosh, who really make you appreciate Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsens' fine work on "Full House," portrayed Maya. Why? Because Maya faced every situation -- funerals, parades, horoscope readings -- with the same blank stare into nothingness, occasionally chirping "Dah-dee!" to mix it up. The producers could have gotten the same effect out of a log in a onesie.

P-I TV critic Melanie McFarland can be reached at 206-448-8015 or tvgal@seattlepi.com.

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