Who buries the undertaker?

Meet Nathaniel Fisher. Undertaker. Sings along to the car radio, badly. Has a high blood pressure. Lies to his wife Ruth about his smoking. And he’s going to die. It’s the cigarettes that kill him… the cigarettes, and the bus that crashes into his hearse as he leans down to light up.

The first five minutes of the Six Feet Under pilot almost overflow in dramatic irony, as the characters’ dialogue takes on a more morbid note based on Nate Sr.’s death (which we know about, but not the characters). And then we cut to the thing that usually goes with death: no, not taxes, but sex. Our first impression of Ruth and her son David, his father’s partner in the undertaking business, is that of repression, of things unsaid; and then we meet the other son, Nate Jr., as he’s picked up by a woman on the plane offering him a ride. Yes, that kind of ride. Brenda Chenowith isn’t the kind of woman who doesn’t just take what she wants. Although there may be just a hint here that Brenda and Nate’s fling in an airport utility closet may be the flipside rather than the opposite of repression.

Meanwhile, Ruth and Nathaniel’s teen daughter sits in a dilapidated living room with her friends, smoking crack and complaining about her crappy, dysfunctional family. She is not looking forward to Thanksgiving – and she’s even less looking forward to it when David calls her to tell her that Dad’s just been squished by a bus. Death sure harshes her high.

Death, sex, rebellion, repression – these might make for a boring melodrama, and there are some people who never saw anything else in Six Feet Under. What puts the series in a whole different league, making it into something very different than an adult soap opera are the morbid humour and deep humanity that are its hallmark: the series watches its characters with a critical eye, but it cares about them, even when they screw up. Especially when they screw up.

The pilot does an extremely good job of introducing the characters: we understand who they are very quickly, so the series can quickly move on to doing interesting things with them. And it does. We’ve met the Fishers. Personally, I can’t wait to get to get back to them.

Stray observations:

• I’m glad they dropped the weird, snarky ads for funeral parlour goodies. These veer too close to facile comedy. When I first watched the series, some of the black humour did strike me as somewhat smug and kept me at a distance for a couple of episodes, but I’m so glad I stuck with it.
• HBO series: god, they’re so extremely well filmed! It isn’t just television, indeed… (Doesn’t excuse their killing off certain series before their time, though…)
• In many series, the actors take a few episodes, up to a season, to ‘get’ their characters. These actors? They nail their characters from the first scene.
• Gotta love the look on Claire’s face when she sees closeted David and his lover Keith and the penny drops. There’s surprise, but she also seems genuinely happy for her brother, not least because his lover is one hot guy.
• We see the first of many dead bodies on this series – and the first dead guy who stands there and talks to the other characters, telling them how it is. Are the dead on this series psychologically astute or what?
• The series isn’t entirely consistent with its reappearing dead people: most of the time they are pretty obviously a psychological projection of the characters. Every now and then, though, we’re the only ones to see the walking, talking dead. Or are they audience surrogates in these cases?
• Ambiguity: another trademark. We’re not told what to think or how to feel about the characters.

Quotes:

• Nate, about his family: “Actually, we’re pretty normal.” My first thought: “Yeah, right“. After having seen the entire series: yeah, that is pretty much right. The Fishers are dysfunctional in ways that feel uncomfortably familiar at times.
• Ruth: “We didn’t die.” This is pretty much what the series is about: exploring what it’s like to be left behind. Saying our goodbyes. Missing our chance to do so.

Related posts:

1. Six Feet Under – Episode 2: The Will
2. In Remembrance of Six Feet Under
3. Six Feet Under – Episode 3: The Foot
4. Six Feet Under – Episode 7: Brotherhood
5. Six Feet Under – Episode 4: Familia