The Absolute Best of Dark Brooding: Six Feet Under is Back
The Absolute Best of Dark Brooding: Six Feet Under is Back by Roxanne McDonald
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The brilliant Six Feet Under has come to cable, so admirers can again experience some of the best serial drama to come along in decades and newcomers to the show can get hooked on worthy TV. |
I bought special high-priced cable packages so I could watch one show: Six Feet Under on HBO. I could get by with standard or basic cable for every other day of the week, but for Sundays, I had to have the extra pricey deal. But no sooner had I gotten addicted to my weekly show than it went off the air, and I was stuck with a hundred-dollar cable bill and jonesing for “my show”.
As of October 2006, however, Six Feet Under is on Bravo, the station that also airs such delightful and equally engaging shows as Project Runway, Top Chef, and Million Dollar Listing. This is a testament to the brilliance of the artists behind it.
The acting is stellar.
Understated Peter Krause is the brooding Nate Fisher, a troubled, introspective convert who went from managing a health food store to co-running the family funeral business. Spectacularly intense Michael C. Hall (who has transitioned to play a convincing role as a serial killer turned police helper on Dexter) is the younger but more self-appointedly responsible David Fisher, who is also a brooding but brooding with subliminal anger sort.
Unpretentious yet precocious (with creativity and rebellion combined) Claire Fisher is played by Lauren Ambrose, who delivers a teenage malcontent who broods alone and in tandem with, especially, her surrogate pop, Nate.
Exquisite in her private beauty and, yes, brooding, is the remarkably tortured quiet one, Ruth Fisher, the matriarch played by the brilliant (and award-winning) Francis Conroy, who is at once hands-off (wallowing in her own mid-life crises) and hands-on (insistent in her mothering skills that include advice about food choices and investigative queries into her children’s activities and practices).
The writing is dark, droll, and of a break-neck realism, exploring the anxieties and anger that is so high-pressured that the only relief is in sick comic outlets played through by the brilliant and versatile Rachel Griffiths who is Brenda Chenowith, Nate’s girlfriend; the exacting Matthew St. Patrick, who is David’s boyfriend, Keith Charles; and the meticulously supportive Freddy Rodriguez, who plays the undertaking specialist Federico Diaz.
Federico is often a reflector for the absurdities of the group; Keith is the rudder, steering David when his sails get too tightly wound about the mast that is the family; and Brenda is the borderline psychotic, the idiot savant who laughs inappropriately when, for example, Nate gives a try at the embalming process and loses a body’s foot and Brenda bursts out laughing.
Besides the blackness of the funny, the show also features ground-breaking television elements—those of magical realism: the dead, starting with the father who is slammed into by a bus and killed in the very first episode, show up to chat over the shoulders of the Fishers. Dad appears smoking and smirky; a dead gang banger opens his eyes to chide David for not being a man; and others return to provide not a sub-consciousness or alter ego as much as to deliver a much depended upon comic relief.
Besides the blackness of the funny, the show also features ground-breaking television elements—those of magical realism: the dead, starting with the father who is slammed into by a bus and killed in the very first episode, show up to chat over the shoulders of the Fishers. Dad appears smoking and smirky; a dead gang banger opens his eyes to chide David for not being a man; and others return to provide not a sub-consciousness or alter ego as much as to deliver a much depended upon comic relief.
That is, in only three episodes, when Claire is told her father is dead she is high on crank her new love interest has turned her onto; Ruth blows tens of thousands at the track; David refuses to speak up about homophobia; Nate is in all kinds of confusion about wanting to avoid getting involved in a death business he has for thirty years successfully avoided;
Fisher & Son is threatened by the incoming monolith, Kroehner, who is strong-arming the brothers to sell or crumble; the living grieving patrons of the funeral home have no money or lots of issues; and the dynamics are such that somebody is sniping at somebody else every ten or twelve minutes. So when a dead one returns to chat or chastise, when the surly father, Nathaniel, played by the quietly quipping Richard Jenkins, consistently admonishes and teases his sons, the only out for us is to giggle.
The characters are colorful and deep, the dialogue is devastating and daring and darling; and the show passes too quickly, leaving the masochists of Six Feet Under audibly regretting there is not another episode on at its heels.
Our gratitude then, extends beyond the quality of Six Feet Under…to the fact that the show is back on Bravo! Thank you.
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