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August 21, 2005

The Highbrow Horror Show

In which we reflect on five years of Six Feet Under and acknowledge that, more than anything else, the show was really scary

No more Six Feet Under after tonight. This is it: the "series finale" (and a tip of the cap to whichever Hollywood marketing department came up with that phrase -- it really communicates the gravity of the whole enterprise...). After five seasons of death, death, mourning, and more death, we can all pay our final respects to the Fishers (I bet that phrase shows up in at least 85 percent of the accounts of tonight's show).

Admittedly, I had a mixed run with Six Feet Under. I was a huge fan of the first couple seasons, I think because it was the first of the big HBO dramas that I started with from the beginning; we got HBO just a few months before the show premiered. It had its own style, its own quirky tone, and definitely a very juicy sense of humor. The laughs were all deadpan when they came, and in the general context of all of the death-and-dying flavor drama, the yuks worked (I think my favorite all-time line was "I don't care for movies about retarded people"). Also, the entire Nate-and-Brenda romance was spectacular, of the car-wreck-TV variety. Sure, it was nice when they got along, but it was so much better when they didn't. Put Nate and Brenda down as my favorite on-screen fighters ever: when they screamed at each other, it was mean, it was ruthless, and it was nasty. It was great TV.

Still, I started to lose the plot circa Season Three. I'll have to check my facts, but I think that was the season where "nothing happened." It was mostly about Nate being passive-aggressive and miserable with his new life as a married father. And hey, could you blame him? That Lisa he married sure was a loser! No wonder he didn't want to be married to her, cause I sure as hell didn't want to watch her in a TV show! Season Four was pretty dull as well; we spent thirteen (13) episodes dealing with Lisa's death? I mean, I understand the metaphor and get the theme, but that doesn't mean it makes for interesting television. Also, I will own up to my ageism and just say that I enjoyed Ruth a lot more as a bit character than I did as a lead. Her efforts to find happiness and/ or mate never really did it for me. There. I said it.

I think what really did me in was that the whole enterprise became, well, really goddam depressing. I mean, sure, it's a show about a funeral parlor, and every episode opens with someone dying, so I understand it's bound to be a bit maudlin. But still. Instead of showing people who deal with death and mourning trying to find happiness and joy in other parts of their lives, pretty much everyone on Six Feet Under was depressed, or miserable, or troubled, or all of the above. The show didn't really have any characters who went to work, played fantasy football, watched sitcoms, and hung out with their family. Nope. Everybody was pretty miserable, even the ones who didn't work in the embalming and comforting departments. And, not to be insensitive about it, but are that many people really that mentally ill? You can be an interesting fictional character without being mentally ill; seriously, there are plenty of them. Yes yes, we all have problems, even in the idyllic suburbs, but need the whole thing be so depressing?

I suppose when the show's creator has his name appear on a tombstone in the opening credit sequence, we should know what we're getting into. Still, the more I think about Six Feet Under (full disclosure: I really enjoyed this past season), I think that when it did work it was because it was more scary than it was depressing. The show was scary in a very real, very quotidian way, not in a there-are-space-monsters-chasing-me-down-a-hallway sort of way. Six Feet Under did a spectacularly thorough job of cataloging the sort of the horrors that people who don't find their town overrun by zombies or hippies are likely to face. And it wasn't just each week's opening death, which tended to remind us that death is often extremely sudden and/ or accidental, and happens in just the goshdarndest ways! (Though it's worth noting that accidents are only the fifth leading cause of death in the US; most people die from cardiovascular illness or cancer -- find all sorts of exciting facts about death here!) No, the horror on Six Feet Under was all the more scary for just how precisely it mapped to the sorts of horror you might actually encounter.

Horrors like having a secret/ never-diagnosed brain disease that almost (and then eventually) kills you. Like ending up a married father following a one-night stand with a former fling you didn't really love, and trying to defend your loveless, lifeless marriage to friends and family who know it's a charade. Like finding out the man you'd chosen to remarry after your husband of 20+ years dies is actually mentally ill and had been married half a dozen times previously. Like helping someone to fix a flat tire and ending up being kidnapped and doused with gasoline. Like finding out the wife you didn't love in the first place was murdered by her brother-in-law, with whom she was having an affair.

And Six Feet Under certainly didn't shy away from the horror genre cliche of punishing objectionable behavior with spectacular terrors. (If the kids make out in the woods, chances are Jason is about to show up.) Trying a new drug for the first time, Claire? The phone's for you -- your dad is dead! Indulging yourself with a prostitute in Vegas, David? Uh oh. You're under arrest and you probably got yerself a fresh new disease! Been a bit promiscuous? Gonna be tough for you to have kids! Inasmuch as Six Feet Under aspired to exist outside of mainstream values and ethics, these moments reminded us that the writers couldn't help themselves -- you want to believe the rules that we use to terrify ourselves into conformist behavior are all a sham, but you can't help but think that we really will pay for our sins, and pay dearly.

Sigh. And now Six Feet Under is leaving us for good. The whole show's been leading up to this, I suppose. On the whole, I'm going to miss it (though the characters had probably run their course, or whatever). I'm going to miss the laughs (I got back into it this season, I think, mostly because it rediscovered its sense of humor), and I'm going to miss the way it made me think about all the horrible things that could easily happen to me. Brain disease. An unwanted child. The sudden death of a family member. The kind of shit that makes people miserable. And how lucky we should feel if we manage to live a tragedy-free life.

Six Feet Under, rest in peace.

(Couldn't be helped.)

Posted by thatkid at August 21, 2005 7:00 PM under Stuff To Buy

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