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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Six Feet Under: Series 5. The UK thread

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Regrettable Juvenilia

11:21 / 20.09.05

Yeah. I mean, I think this:

for me in many ways Lisa always seemed to be constructed as an interuption in Nate and Brenda's relationship, and though her death had 'obvious' (to me) affects on Nate, his marrying Brenda seemed almost inevitable.....

...Is on one level totally true, and definitely one of the things the show wanted/wants us to think. In real life, people do this all the time too: we get hindsight, but actually what that hindsight is changes all the time, so you might say "in retrospect Von Mises and I were always going to get back together", but six months later you might say "God, what a mistake it was for me and Von Mises to give it another go, I was so deluded". We see our lives as narratives and I don't know which came first, that tendency or fictional narratives themselves... We want things to be tidy: for there to be resolution after a period of chaos and bad shit. But it's never that comfortable, is it?

14:35 / 21.09.05

We want things to be tidy: for there to be resolution after a period of chaos and bad shit. But it's never that comfortable, is it?

Doesn't look like Nate's getting his resolution after all.....even though he did produce a truely magnificent line: Love isn't what you say, its what you do. And we all love Clare again, what with the pantyhose song'n'all. And super-loving the ever-bickering Keith and David, and all their issues. Ahh, Six Feet Under, gonna miss you when you're gone....

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:12 / 04.10.05

Uh oh.

For some reason I don't think I would have been surprised even if I hadn't encountered some vague spoilers that made it seem inevitable. Once we knew this was the last series, the chances of Nate's BrainWrong making a reappearance was always quite likely.

I will come back and talk about how fantastic the last three episodes have been in terms of Claire at work and Keith, David and the kids, but for now, let us just collectively say:

Uh oh.

OJ

09:46 / 05.10.05

Uh oh indeed. But very well done. I encountered a very explict spoiler (on the US thread on here) so I've been waiting for it to happen for weeks and sort of hoping they'd make it inevitable and sudden.

There was a definite feeling of loose-end knitting in the whole episode. That sort of cosy returning to the start that perhaps we all would like to do in real life, but only actually ever do in television. Ruth and the hairdresser, Clare and the art-opening etc. Rico looking like he may finally get a resolution to his marital problems.

Is it shallow to admit that I'm really liking Clare's pre-Raphaelite secretary look?

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:13 / 11.10.05

So
Farewell,
Nathaniel Fisher, Jr
In the end you were
A fucking dick
Who couldn't commit
Or learn the lessons life
Was clearly trying to teach you.

Tryphena Absent

22:43 / 11.10.05

Eep.

Dead with a white screen and everything and the sea. Yikes.

And Ruth wasn't there. How awful. For a stupid camping trip with Hiram. And Brenda. And Maggie and eep.

05:46 / 12.10.05

Brenda pretty much sums up Nate when she says that he'll always want someone who will make him think he's a better man than he is. In the end, Nate is victim of the fact that he just can't make a relationship work because he's always looking for something more. I don't think that makes him a bad person, though he clearly treats Brenda poorly, it's more that he needs something different than what normal people do.

The way Nate ended up makes the Lisa storyline much more important to Nate's overall progress. At the time, I thought it meant that Nate was supposed to be with Brenda, and the reason he was unhappy with Lisa was because he wanted Brenda. However, the way this plays out implies that Nate always wants what he can't have.

I think Ecotone is one of the absolute best episodes of the series, I don't think I've ever been as affected by a TV show as when that final white screen appeared. And the whole David stoner dream sequence was brilliant too.

OJ

12:14 / 12.10.05

I agree that it was a good episode: the tense dialogue, the awful interaction between Brenda and Maggie, David's ability to actually communicate with Brenda about the baby or indeed just be nice to her, Ruth taking potshots....

But I came up a bit short on feeling "affected" by Nate's death I must say. I suspect this is because I've come to side so much with Brenda (not identify with, side with) that Nate's narcissistic whingeing about his spiritual life has been grating for a long time.

Is this a woman-thing do we think? Am I making excuses for instinctively siding with the wronged, pregnant wife. I don't think so, because it's his self-absorption that makes me want to make a cuppa whenever he's on screen. But it could be argued, perhaps....

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:28 / 12.10.05

I think it's very brave of the show to make the character who would likely be seen as the main protagonist into a cautionary tale, whose death then informs the rest of the character's lives. In that sense, I think viewers probably do feel less affected by Nate's death than we might expect - there's an element of bathos there. Of course we're going to feel for Brenda and David and Clare more - they haven't been such unrepentent douchebags as Nate has.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:23 / 12.10.05

I don't know how emotionally effected I was by Nate's passing, but I did audibly gasp when his white card came up.

I was more affected by the end of the dream, and I think I may have touched on this in the US thread, but I think that's what I fear the most about death: the slow leeching of all that is bright and vivid and colorful, as all focus and detail fades. The last few frames of the dream sequence captured that a little too perfectly.

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:24 / 18.10.05

"He was just too beautiful for this world."

Even though I think they may have taken some poetic license with his age / when he was at home, making Nate Fisher such a big Kurt Cobain fan = absolute genius. He even ended up marrying Courtney!

'All Alone' = best Six Feet Under episode ever (not written by Jill Soloway)?

Tryphena Absent

22:43 / 18.10.05

I thought that was a wonderful episode. I have always refused to read spoilers for 6FU and today's episode reminded me that it's been a consistently good choice. The scene in the cemetery really seemed to be organic, the taking of the spades, Claire running forward to grab the lines on the shroud.

I have two favourite moments from this season so far and both of them happened in the room where they enbalm the bodies- the first was when the women were singing Calling All Angels. I always find Ruth makes me want to cry when she sings because it's so nostalgic but also that fleeting closeness feels horribly familiar and very lovely. The second was when David yelled at his mother, utterly inappropriately and Claire just imploded. Really neat.

09:19 / 21.10.05

Have spent the past couple of evenings catching up on 6FU and Oh My. I found All Alone almost unbearable to watch, and had to force myself to keep with it (I have never before had to fight the urge to leave the room because a piece of fiction is too painful to bear). I was really suprised by my reaction because, like Patrick, OJ and Petey I had been loosing my patience/affection for Nate, and at the moment of his death in the Ecotone episode I wasn't that moved. Being led through his family's grief, however, was overwhelming. A particularly powerful moment for me was the final scene, with Brenda and Billy - during the episode I kept thinking that the director was overplaying the 'Brenda-all-alone' theme. I felt it was fair enough that in the midst of grief Ruth, David and Claire might overlook Brenda, but couldn't help feel that Ruth's sister and friend (can't remember name of Kathy Bates' character), being old school sisterhood feminists, would have rallied round Brenda, especially with her being pregnant. Having said all that, it worked 'artistically', and the final scene, showing that Brenda only actually feels safe with Billy, for me reinforced how alone she is in the world (her having been Billy's primary carer for so many years, his mental illness making him essentially unreliable etc.). I was also interested in how the episode seemed to push further into the realm of confronting the viewer with the actuality of death; the shots of Nate after organ donation, David washing Nate's body, his body in the shroud, without a coffin to sanitise and remove. And like Nina, I found the scene at the cemetery beautifully done, especially the moment where Clare runs to help carry the shround and where Brenda throws her shovel down. Overall it just flowed as a piece of beautifully crafted television that focused on the everydayness of grief and avoided the temptation to manipulate and overstate.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:58 / 21.10.05

Yeah - I think in terms of how this episode presents Nate, it's all about George's statement that he wasn't perfect, but he was an idealist, and also the line from the reading at Nate's grave, something like "of him say neither good nor bad, for he is gone beyond the good and the bad". Not everything said of Nate at his funeral is true - "he always knew how to make the best of a bad situation", ROFL! - but some of it is, and in a sense it doesn't matter. It's still a loss.

There's a really interesting interview with Alan Ball conducted by a writer who takes a dim view of Nate, in which he explains and, to an extent, defends what makes him tick. Interesting because I don't necessarily agree, and I think some of the show's other writers critique that worldview in a very necessary way - but I'll wait until the final episode before I link to it.

23:15 / 24.10.05

What episode are you UK Barbeloids up to? Is anybody at the end?

11:43 / 25.10.05

Penultimate episode tonight on E4, I think, followed by the Retrospective. Hopefully no more tears for me, but it's hard to tell. Claire better not die.

13:14 / 25.10.05

Interesting to see the Nate-neutrality here, I was just wondering this morning if I’ll bother to watch the rest of the series now that Nate’s gone. He was the ‘viewpoint character’, as it were.

Was the episode just shown on E4 the first to start without a death and white-out? I completely missed the ‘Lisa season’, so it may not have been the first. Just curious.

14:14 / 25.10.05

I understand your dilemma with Nate missing, but believe me (because I've seen it all) it is worth it. Really. Really worth it.

15:17 / 25.10.05

All right, you talked me into it.

18:03 / 25.10.05

The one post Nate's death is the first to not have a death to open it. The last episode of season three closed with the white screen and Lisa's dates, like Ecotone did for Nate.

And definitely stick with the series. Not to spoil anything, but on this show, just because Nate's dead doesn't mean he's gone.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:52 / 26.10.05

I was just wondering this morning if I’ll bother to watch the rest of the series now that Nate’s gone

Even if you take the view that Nate is the only character worth caring about, one of the show's biggest obsessions is how a person's death affects the people around them. How what we leave behind says things about who we were. So the ramifications of Nate's death are, in a sense, still about him - the coda to his story.

Of course, how anyone could watch five seasons of this show and end up only caring about Nate is beyond me...

08:37 / 26.10.05

Exactly – the episode dealing with his funeral was so well done, that for me a couple of episodes dealing with tying up other plot threads was less appealing, which is why I was hmm-ing about watching it all the way to the end.

Nate’s not the only character that I find likable, but he’s the one I found most relatable generally; as I say, he was the viewpoint character, really, with his return to town and meeting Brenda providing a fair bit of the opening season. I find Brenda hard to relate to, and ditto Billy and Brenda’s folks. Claire was kind of relatable, but her story feels a bit like it’s in a holding pattern since the split with Billy, and Ruth’s storylines also feel rather as if they’re raking over old ground (Hiram reappears, etc). David and Keith with the boys is interesting, though, and I find myself intrigued as to how that’s going to pan out.

09:19 / 26.10.05

Nate seemed in it more than ever last night, even if he is dead, everything was revolving around him.

One episode left now.

OJ

09:56 / 26.10.05

Nate seemed in it more than ever last night, even if he is dead, everything was revolving around him

I know! I'm not a huge fan of the conversations with the dead as I think they're self-indulgent and a little bit too navel-gazing a lot of the time.

But it was quite nicely done in this episode: the way that Ruth's Nate and Brenda's Nate were clearly projections of their states of mind rather than being some magic realist concurrent reality, was great. Claire's Nate encounter was actually quite darkly funny.

Brenda and Claire both stood out for me in this episode actually - the latter temporarily regressing to the fucked-up aggro kid we met in Series 1 and Brenda finally confronting the incest accusations that have always seemed to hang over her but have never been voiced.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:27 / 26.10.05

Claire was kind of relatable, but her story feels a bit like it’s in a holding pattern since the split with Billy

See, this is one of those "we're watching two different shows" moments. I defy anybody who ever had to work a shitty temp/office job, whilst dreaming of spending their life doing something more creative, and then found out that despite everything, there were people they could connect with there, not to relate to Claire's storyline this season.

and Ruth’s storylines also feel rather as if they’re raking over old ground (Hiram reappears, etc).

Ruth is raking over old ground, as the fantasy scene in which all the men in her life appear and are literally shot down by her reveals. That's not the same thing as the stories being repetitive.

10:56 / 26.10.05

Paradoxically, it may be because I spend my day doing just that kind of temp job that I find Claire’s storyline uninvolving - busman’s holiday and all that.

But I didn’t quite buy her vague sense of superiority to the other office drones, and the implied plot element that she’s a stifled creative talent, at a time when she’d pretty much hit a dry spell creatively speaking. Though maybe that’s her character arc, to come to some kind of realisation about self-imposed outsiderness or something, guess I’ll have to see.

01:38 / 27.10.05

What do you mean, 'not buy' her sense of superiority, she'd definitely look down on these people, especially considering she spent the past two years in the art school bubble. I think the whole story's great, and the perfect antidote to the stuff with her in season four. I still like her story there, but it's so insular, you can tell she's losing touch with the outside world. That's what makes it so difficult for her to relate to these people in the office, and naturally she looks down on them. I like the fact that she laughs at their suggestion to get drinks at a bar in the mall, but then winds up just sitting home alone.

Ultimately, this office work broadens her horizons, something that's made clear when she goes back to the art school show and finds that everyone there is in the exact same place they were when she left.

Plus, you've got to love Ted, they really pulled off the likable Republican.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:14 / 27.10.05

Also, I think talking about the implied plot element that she’s a stifled creative talent is a little off the mark. As I said earlier, the thing about this show is that is often very good at resisting the temptation to tell the audience how to interpret a scene. Witness Claire having to deal with the possibility that she is not "really" an artist. Now, I think a lesser show would spell that out for us: Claire would realise either that she is not destined to be an artist, or else that her creative talent was being stifled. Six Feet Under leaves us as unsure as she is. Because life's like that.

09:29 / 27.10.05

I guess I don’t buy her sense of superiority insofar as I don’t think it’s justified, as evinced by the behaviour you cite, PatrickMM. It’s not that I don’t think it’s convincingly written or portrayed, just that it seems unwarranted by her … well, not necessarily being any better than the people in question.

Ted’s likable enough – I liked the way they ended up rowing at the restaurant the other week.

And I appreciate the distinction you’re drawing between what the programme’s showing and what I’m concluding from it, Brutal Petey; it may indeed be that I’m drawing certain conclusions from it (which as you say, is a good thing, that the show doesn’t have stuff stated explicitly – a lesser would have Claire end a screaming row with Ruth with some awful expository dialogue about ‘and I have to work in an office where my artistic talents aren’t appreciated’ or somesuch), and that I’m imposing a negative interpretation on the events as presented.

None of which is to really knock the show that severely; in a way, the fact that I take the events as presented and mull over their justifiability is a good sign, as opposed to many TV shows where I argue the plot elements on the grounds of implausibility or spuriousness (as in ‘what the hell did the writers think they were doing there?’).

23:41 / 28.10.05

The news just broke that Alan Ball is doing a new series for HBO, about vampires! The basics are in that article.

I think it's interesting that Ball is going for a more supernatural/genre story next, his scripts for SFU always seemed to have the most paranormal events, and so did American Beauty, so perhaps this is the logical progression. Either way, having more Alan Ball on TV is a good thing.

OJ

08:50 / 31.10.05

Thanks for that news PatrickMM. I wonder if the lighter tone alluded to means that former Buffy fans are going to be very, very happy.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:22 / 02.11.05

So, who caught the final episode?

I had tears in my eyes during the final montage, I must admit.

Best show on television ever?

Best. Show. On. Television. Ever.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:44 / 02.11.05

Having dropped out, I think, at the end of Series 4, I came back in for the final two episodes, and I too was teary at the end. The Brenda/Nate/Nate Sr. reconciliation/reconnection was also very touching (although I would have been more concerned that Maya has yet to display an emotion at the age of three or four).

08:31 / 02.11.05

I had tears of laughter in my eyes also. Particularly Keith’s tragic, last-day-on-the-job-before-retiring death in a hail of bullets. And I’m amazed it took another 50 years for Billy to finally bore Brenda to death.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:13 / 02.11.05

I like both of those - Keith, as you say, getting retirony, and Billy quite possibly still going on either about Claire, their mother or wanting to put his happy stick in Brenda as she dies. The message bbeing that if you're not a Fisher, you don't really get a look-in, possibly. Also, I like to believe that George's diet of springwater ad raw fish made hhim IMMORTAL.

Best moment? I'm going for Ruth, weeping hysterically and clawing at Maya's monkey bellowing "take a sweater!" to Claire. Ma Chenowith sneering about okapis a close second - oh, and Ruth's absolute insistence that there was No Hope.. you think she's gotten over it a bit, and then when she's saying goodbye to Claire, it's baaaaack. Oh, and Rico being a tiny, tiny dick. Always a winner.

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