Is it possible to be in mourning for a TV series? Or, to put it differently, if I mourn for a TV series, does that make me a sad someone with a less than firm grasp on the distinction between reality and fiction?
After Six Feet Under finished, I missed its protagonists – the dysfunctional Fisher family, neurotic brenda, impulsive Keith, nervy Rico – with an intensity that was almost scary. To me it felt like I’d lost someone close to me. Of course I could always re-watch the DVDs, but that didn’t bring them back. It was like looking at old photo albums of people who’d passed on. It was like remembering them.
No other series has had that effect on me. Not poor, doomed Firefly, gone before its time. Not The Wire (arguably the more consistently excellent HBO series). Not Deadwood, killed off three quarters into its overall story. More than any other series, Six Feet Under feels like family. And, like most families, there is a lot about it that is neurotic, depressing, even annoying at times. Its characters can be gratingly self-involved and at times I’ve wanted to slap every single one of them. They all have moments, even entire seasons, where they are infuriating. We’re even allowed to hate them at times.
Few other series are as willing to show their main characters’ negative sides. Even with a murderous criminal like Tony Soprano, part of us is rooting for him, not least because he’s fun to watch (and the lesser evil compared to most of his cohorts). The Fishers are sometimes difficult to like, but the things we dislike about them are all too familiar. It is easy to see ourselves in their failings, their fears, their hopes – their lives and their deaths.
I’ve seen all of Six Feet Under at least twice. It broke my heart both times, in different ways. I miss them: I miss Nate, David, Ruth, Claire, I miss sarcastic, dead Nathaniel Sr. I miss them all. Every now and then, I remember the moments I’ve shared with them. And part of me still hurts. It’s not an acute, fresh pain, but it’s there nevertheless.
I’m ready to get out the photo album once more, and remember.
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Matt K. is a survivor of academia. He's fanatical about good TV and movies. He lives in Switzerland, which means that he gets his chosen drug mostly in the form of boxed DVD sets. You can read more of his musings on TV, life, movies, books and video games at http:\\goofybeast.wordpress.com. 
Six Feet under was simply inspired television, and thank goodness it was allowed, unlike many of the Fishers’ customers, to run its natural course. Because the final episode is without question one of the finest pieces of television ever made. It reached me in such a deep, profound and shocking manner, it affected me for days, and I’m not sure I could ever watch it again. It brilliantly, brutally, exposed our fragile mortality for what it is, and was all the more effective (like the ending of Blackadder goes Forth) for the gentle comedy that pervaded the series. Tragedy and Comedy are powerful, if uneasy, bedfellows.
I don’t know what awards it garnered as a series, but it should have swept the board.