Six Feet Under

I made it to the end of Six Feet Under the other night. There are five seasons, sold separately on Amazon Video. I used to watch Six Feet Under on HBO. It’s a show I got into during my first year of living on my own. That was 2001, the year I moved out of my mom and dad’s house and into the apartment in town. I remember being in a chat thing online where Freddy Rodriguez was answering questions from fans. I had a question for him, but the questions were being fed to him by a moderator. My question must have been deemed not-interesting-enough because it never appeared.

I loved Six Feet Under, but I didn’t make it to the end of the series. I was staying at a girlfriend’s house so much that I decided to cancel my cable service. When I got cable back on, I didn’t feel like adding HBO or any of those extra channels. So, Season 3 was the last season I had seen of Six Feet Under.

Until now.

I’m going to put a spoiler alert here. I’m not one who worries about spoilers for books, movies or shows that I plan to read or watch. I don’t care if I see spoilers or not, I’ll still read or watch it and I’ll probably enjoy it. But some people don’t like spoilers. So, below this paragraph, there are spoilers.

Six Feet Under is a powerful show, and heartbreaking in places. Right at the beginning of the first episode, Nathaniel Fisher is killed in a car accident. His family never quite gets over their loss. Nathaniel was the owner of Fisher & Sons, a funeral home. Now the business is left to his sons, Nate and David.

The show has a lot to do with death, loss and grief. There’s a new death in every episode, usually at the start. Some of those deaths got to me, like the one where the newborn baby died in his crib.

Keith is my hero, especially in the first couple seasons. Keith is a cop and David’s boyfriend. I really liked how Keith was there for Claire after Gabriel took a shot at someone while riding in her car. Nate was being an asshole to Claire, but Keith stuck up for her. Keith explained to Nate that the reason Claire still cares about Gabriel is “because she loves him.” I know it’s hard for the willfully ignorant to understand, but sometimes it really is that simple.

Keith tells Claire that she has to go to the police department and talk to the detectives about what happened. Claire asks Keith if he’ll be there with her, because she doesn’t want to deal with the detectives alone. Keith says he’ll be there.

Life for the Fishers is a struggle. Ruth goes through a series of boyfriends and then marries George. But after they’re married, Ruth finds out that life with George isn’t exactly the picnic she thought it would be.

Claire is an artist, but she feels that she’s not getting anywhere and she’s not sure what to do with her life. Art school isn’t working out for her and she quits  While working in an office building, she meets Ted, a young lawyer, and they hit it off.

David is trying to keep the business afloat while butting heads with Nate and Rico. His relationship with Keith has its ups and downs. Eventually David and Keith adopt Anthony and Durrell.

I knew Nate was going to die at some point. I had thought it would be in Season 4, but he made it most of the way through Season 5, and then AVM struck again. They thought he was going to recover. He was awake and talking, but then he died, unexpectedly. David was with him.

At the end of the last episode, Claire is leaving for New York where she hopes to pursue an art career. Before she drives off, she inserts the CD Ted gave her, that he made her promise not to listen to until she was leaving. The first song on Ted’s Deeply Unhip Mix is Breathe Me, by Sia. The song plays slow and soft at first, and then “Ouch.”