Six Feet Under revisited

Cafe Society
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My wife and I just watched the first three seasons of Six Feet Under in just about 2 weeks. We’re now taking a break from any more seasons, because, yowzas, I’m rocking myself to sleep at night in the fetal position while sucking my thumb.

I watched it when it was originally on, so I knew that it was dark, that death was central to the show, and most of the characters were very troubled.

That being said, when I watched it on HBO I only had to endure the Fisher drama for one hour per week. But we finished off season three yesterday by watching four episodes. I was completely exhausted by the end of it.

I love the hell out of this show, and my wife-- who at first didn’t think she would like it-- is constantly forcing us to stay up late by asking me “One more please?” Which is only adding to my now-constant fear of walking out to our backyard, driving, bloody noses, walking into a party store, eating while alone, exercising, etc, etc, etc, etc.

I love Riann Wilson. His “Arthur” is one of my favorite supporting guest characters ever. I wish he was on for a longer stretch.

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Thanks for the thread - I’m almost finished with Season 3. I agree Rainn Wilson is fantastic. I love how his character starts off as really creepy and gradually becomes more endearing.

I have to say that Lili Taylor’s Lisa is one of the most unlikable characters I’ve ever seen, and I never thought I’d say that about anyone Lili Taylor plays. It’s a testament to the show’s writers (and to Rachel Griffiths) that the audience roots for Brenda and Nate even after everything they put each other through.

And Lauren Ambrose - wow.

3

Yeah, to me, Lisa’s character became unlikable. I liked her a lot at first, when she was a hippy, but she gradually lost that quality.

4

I originally got into it when Bravo started showing it- and since the schedule was unpredictable- I missed alot of the second season and didn’t get to see it till I’d already finished the series (have all seasons now so I can torture myself anytime). It made a HUGE difference in how I felt about Brenda when I watched the second season and also made Nate’s whole dissolution into jerk-dom a little more sympathetic after watching Lisa manipulate the situation.

Brenda and Nate both did things that were pretty unforgivable to each other- so that cancelled itself out in most instances but I thought at least Brenda kept trying when Nate just was either in a pity party or a selfish funk. I think Nate used up all his trying on Lisa, out of guilt.

5

Card-carrying “I love six feet under so much I want to marry it” member here. No other show I’ve watched has had gnawing at my fingers so much, or in tears so often. The only other show that has had me as attached to the characters that much is the new Battle Star Galactica.

The bits I loved especially were (and these are in series 4 so don’t look ahead if you’re not that far!):

[spoiler]Watching David slowly come out of his cocoon and have a meaningful relationship with Keith.

The whole tension after Lisa disappeared and the climactic discovery of who killed her.

When David was kidnapped and held at gun point by that crazy freak - I was having nightmares for days after that.

The finale - I am absolutely certain that no piece of television will affect me as deeply as that stretch of 10 minutes ever again. Outstanding.[/spoiler]

I watched SFU over the course of about 9 months on DVD from my rental service, it would have been less but I had to wait for series five to come out on DVD. I now own them all, they’re so great. I think this show should be required watching as it really makes you face the reality of death and mortality in a way most other things don’t. It actually contributed to me realising that, one day, the person in that opening scene would be me, and then I’d be gone.

Fave character - definitely Brenda, and by association her fucked up family. I did find myself wondering if she wasted her life being a masseuse though, considering how intelligent she was supposed to be as a child (not to be down on massage as a career, you understand…).

6

Six Feet Under, although I watched every episode religiously, gradually lost me more and more as the show went on. By the end of the series, I was watching out of momentum more than anything else, but it still had its touches of greatness. And although the ending was exactly what the show deserved, and was pitch-perfect across the board, and it’s how it had to end, God I hated it because it really meant the end of all those characters.

When it was on, it was on…but at the end, I felt it was off too often.

Wow, I must be in the minority on Brenda. What a miserable, awful human being she was. A messed up family can only excuse so much…

Keith and David, though…they could have their own show and I’d be perfectly happy.

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Agreed on almost all counts. I liked Brenda towards the end, but how she treated Nate in season two was just too much. And I flip flop constantly on whether I merely dislike seasons 3 & 4 or whether I truly hate them.

But totally agreed on the Keith and David Show, I would so watch that.

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Good timing. I’ve been itching to re-watch SFU from beginning to end in one big marathon, rather than one episode at a time the way I did the first time around.

I loved, loved, loved the show… to this day, the final episode is still the single best piece of television I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. I think it’s the first show I watched where the characters seemed like real people to me, rather than fictional entities that changed to suit the plot needs. I guess part of me worries that I won’t love it as much the first time around, but it sounds like it’s much more intense on the second viewing.

Besides, it’s not like there’s anything good on TV at this point, right? :slight_smile:

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The Wire is finishing up its final season on HBO, and Breaking Bad on AMC is worth watching, if you’re looking for drama.

I don’t remember what happened in which seasons on Six Feet Under. My favorite seasons were the first and the last. I had to force myself to watch the season with Lily Taylor – I hate those tea-drinking self-centered whole-foods types. I never believed the baby was Nate’s.

I wasn’t that fond of Claire either – I couldn’t get past her sense of entitlement to appreciate that she was just a young woman, floundering.

Loved Billy, and Arthur, and Ruth’s Russian boyfriend.

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I’m with ya. I couldn’t stand her one iota.

My fave regular character (up through season 3) is definitely Nathaniel Sr. I know he’s not so much a character, but rather a memory specific to who’s mind he’s visiting, but I love that he was slightly different to every character. I loved how on Ruth’s wedding night to George, she looked in the utility room and saw Nathaniel crying on the floor, but it barely affected her. Very powerful. She still felt some vestigial guilt, but her sleeping with another man was now ‘legitimized’ because she was married to him, and so she was able to look at her memory of Nathaniel and walk away relatively unphased.

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I loved this show. My least favorite character was Ruth.

When she blew that money on the track, and then when she hooked up with that Russian guy…yick.

I liked her sister and her friend, though.

I loved Claire and her story arc. I also loved Brenda and Nate. David I did not like at first, but came to love him. Frederico and Vanessa were ok, too. I loved the story of Lisa–all the twists and turns.

12

I didn’t have HBO when it ran the first time, and I’m most of the way through season 2 (episode 11 I think) now on DVD. It is now one of my favorite shows.

I really like Ruth and David, hated Lisa from the start, and would really like Brenda as long as she wasn’t involved with anybody I cared about - since I sorta like Nate, I have mixed feelings about her. Claire annoys me, as does Ruth’s sister and Keith. I really like Mitzi but probably just because she’s my type.

13

Brilliant ensemble acting, fantastic scripts, everything spot on for me. I agree with whoever said that the finale would stay with them forever. I was sobbing throughout the episode, but as luck would have it I have just purchased all seasons from Amazon for $19.99 each. So I didn’t get the little box with the fake grass on top, oh well I still saved about $80.

I so love David. But my secret crush was Rico. When he turned up as a bad ass in GrindHouse, I just about died. Too cute!

I don’t think you are supposed to like Ruth, but that actress is amazing. They wrote some excellent scenes for her. And yes, her “boyfriends” were all fantastic.

14

I saw the show for the first time when it aired on Bravo.

I just found myself profoundly moved over and over yet again. I have always loved *Roseanne * because the show featured such human characters; so very deeply flawed and yet so likeable and understandable.

This show touched me in the same way. It was like seeing the best novel ever written televised. Even when I found myself yelling at the television screen I still found nearly minute of every single episode of the show worth watching.

So very many scenes come to mind. Ruth seeing Maya for the first time. Ruth’s sister’s speech to her about how it’s all hard for everyone and her dancing to the tape as Clair watches. Her interaction with the adopted boys. Nate and Brenda’s wedding. Claire’s telling Nate not to tell her about how to have good relationships. Vanessa’s speech to Rico about how she always loves him because she had no choice. The whole David and Keith interaction.

The ending just blew me away. As good as I thought the show was, the ending was perfect icing on the cake. I sat there sobbing the whole way through.

I remember wondering what all the fuss was about when I heard the kudos for the show. Then I saw it and understood after the first episode.

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Loved the show, for all the reasons listed above and David’s need to be accepted by his father even after death, capped by his son fulfilling the experience he had wanted to have with his own father - a perfect bookend between the first episode and the last.

Claire won me over during her art school interview where she burst into tears after (what was it?) more than a year or two of suppressing her grief.

Ruth was wonderful, hateful when needed, but honest enough to be sympathetic. I adored the scene when she imagined hosing down one of David’s boyfriends, before confronting her son about his homosexuality in an accepting way. The only thing that hurt was that he hadn’t trusted her.

So many good things. Thanks for reminding me of some of the other great scenes.

“MOOO!” … “MOOO!” … BANG!

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I had a great deal of sympathy for Ruth, but just couldn’t understand the choices she made. The actress was amazing. I liked all of them, really. Brenda’s mom, Margaret was a real piece of work.

Loved the finale and thought it one of the most uplifting bits of drama I’ve ever seen.

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I liked her at first too, but if you look at the arc of the character, she was likeable at first. However, since it was hinted at that she she got pregnant on purpose to trap Nate, it became obvious to me that she was never that great a person to start with.

Lauren Ambrose: one of the most natural actresses I’ve ever seen. I’m a gay man (not sure that matters), but never saw the connection between David and Keith and was happy when they broke up.

I’m not ashamed to say I had been crying a little during/after each episode for a few weeks before the ending scene – during which I lost it – in mourning for these characters who had entranced/engrossed me for so long.

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Well, if there was ever an appropriate thread to zombie, it’s this one.

I just finished watching Six Feet Under. I actually watched the first two seasons with my ex girlfriend (who had a huge Peter Krause crush ever since Sports Night) when they first aired, but after we broke up, the show & I parted ways.

Over the last couple of weeks I rewatched the entire series. It turns out that the show started to get pretty lame right around where I stopped (Nate’s first wife was one of the most annoying characters ever, and I was HAPPY when she was finally found dead!), but the last season and a half more than made up for it.

I did a pretty good job keeping myself from getting spoiled on what I missed, especially since I kept hearing over and over how SFU has the best series finale in the history of TV. The only big ones I knew were that Nate was going to experience NARM (but I always assumed it would be in the finale, not a couple episodes before) and that the show would close with everybody’s dying scenes, so it was still exciting and touching to watch the remaining episodes. I would have to rank the finale as the #2 best one (behind The Shield’s, which aired later than SFU’s), and I admit I really had to clean my face after it finished.

The last montage flew by so fast that I may have missed some things - was that Billy with Brenda when she died (and if not, I’m wondering what happened to him afterall)? Did they ever show when George died, cuz he was at a bunch of funerals and it was starting to look like he was immortal. And since it said Claire lived to 2085, I guess this means she finally gets her shit together once she moves to NYC?

Six Feet Under was the first of its kind in a number of ways. I can’t think of a show before that which really showed, for better or worse, an actual long-term loving relationship between two men. Nowadays they have whole series about that, but it was nice how that was just one of the many aspects the show had going. It was also, I believe, the show that really invented the “day dreams as real life” scenes, between conversations with ghosts (which Rescue Me totally ripped off) or the “what I WANT to do” followed directly by the “what I WILL do” scenes. It does get kind of confusing at times to tell which was really happening and which was in a character’s head, like the fake scene that showed Lisa coming home after being missing. The “opening every episode with a death” was also pretty unique, especially since many of them were really out there. For a while, they tried to turn it into a guessing game by always having you THINK someone was gonna die, then have someone else in the corner of the screen get it instead. It was nice that they more often than not incorporated the death into the plot, whether directly or thematically.

This show had some serious talent on it, both in front of and behind the camera. I hope it gets remembered and watched by those who didn’t get to see it yet.

Also, I wonder if Rainn Wilson got his role on the office solely due to his role on SFU?

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My TiVo recommended & recorded an episode, and that hooked me. I think (hope) I currently have the whole series recorded on it. I was watching it pretty regularly for a while but had to stop. Last ep I watched was when Nate saw Lisa preggers at the supermarket. Think that may have been a season ender.

Love crazy Brenda! I get the feeling that that actress is only acting a little bit to play her, i.e. that she’s really like her character. Love Claire too. She’s so cute w/o being generic model cute. So wish she could get over being attracted to complete losers!

And I’m glad people are using spoiler boxes here! :smiley:

P.S.
Didn’t know that The Office’s Rainn Wilson was in it! Can’t wait to get to those…

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I didn’t see any mention of Ruth’s sister and Brenda’s parents. Good stuff in supporting roles there.