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Six Feet More
By briantologist | June 8, 2005
Just when I’d nearly reached the end of my rope with watching “90210″ reruns on the Soap Network, “Six Feet Under” returned for its final season. One premiere later, I think it’s safe to say my HBO bar has been raised irreparably high by “Deadwood” being so unbelievably fucking awesome; “Six Feet Under” is a strange place to go after something so mind-blowing. That is to say, a domestic drama is jarringly quiet after a show that left us with a Chinese gangland hit, a ten-year-old trampled to death by a horse, a prostitute-killing geologist hanging himself from a balcony, and the miraculous recovery of a 400-pound fratricidal prospector. It’s not a reflection of “Six Feet Under” being less than great, so much as it’s a reminder of how fucking badass “Deadwood” was.
Nate’s just as self-righteous as ever. Claire’s not quite as insufferable as she was at the end of last season (but give it time, it’ll come). Brenda’s become one of the more sympathetic characters on the show, which means terrible things must happen to her. I feel awful for Ruth, and am kind of thrilled to see how the sudden, constant burden of Farmer Hoggett’s mental illness has chipped away her soft maternal armor, and how she’s a lot sharper and less patient than in prior seasons. And David and Keith are still my favorite people on the show, as we keep seeing them improve their relationship and genuinely try to be better to each other. Plus Rico’s suddenly a lot more interesting to me than ever before, and in the few minutes when he’s talking with Ruth as she drinks in front of the TV, I suddenly wanted to see much more of them together.
As is always the case with this show, the reasons I bitch are the very reasons it’s such a fucking spectacular show: If these characters weren’t such fully realized, if I hadn’t just had to go back and delete the word “people” and replace it with “characters,” I wouldn’t have stuck around this long. Often the Fishers are less unbelievable than many of my closest friends (Dookie, I’m looking at you, with your two-year mansion-sitting stint and beating up Mr. Peanut on the Coney Island boardwalk and spending an evening drinking with Creed and berating them for being so sucky), and frankly, if I couldn’t sympathize just a little bit with their self-destructive tendencies or Nate’s self-righteousness, I’d really not give a shit what happens to him, instead of just kind of not giving a shit what happens to him.
Topics: Stuff | 10 Comments »
June 8th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
He was in a protective suit, it’s not like he got beat down.
Besides, I’m sure that shit happens to him like every week.
June 8th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
I need to convince Rita that we need HBO.
June 8th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Fisher & Diaz . . . & Swearingen. How badass would THAT be? “Rico, take that cockersucker down to the basement and suck out his fucking blood, fer Christ’s sake!” Or, “Nate, why the stiff prick for this cunt who’s steeped in her own filthy betrayal?”
June 9th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Dude, that would fucking rock. Maybe they could sell Claire off into prostitution and be done with her.
June 9th, 2005 at 9:11 am
She could work for the “chinks” in the alley for 10 cents a throw. And Brenda could work alongside her, y’know, just for the experience. And when she’s tweaked out and used up and eventually succumbs to smallpox, they can feed her carcass to Wu’s pigs. Wait, can pigs get smallpox? Maybe she’d have to be burned.
June 9th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
They get pig smallpox. They don’t die, but they do turn into smaller pigs. Pot-bellied pigs. Essentially worthless when it comes to disposing of bodies. I mean, they work, but you need way more of them, and really, when you have a swarm of tiny pigs eating a human corpse, it’s just cuter than it is intimidating.
June 9th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
So, if THAT happened, Wu could hire Klytus who could (presumably) dispose of bodies using bore worms. How “America” is that? Wu SUBCONTRACTING his fucking job to a metal-faced guy from another planet.
June 10th, 2005 at 1:35 am
I think Dookie just became my hero over that Creed thing.
June 10th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Seriously, in terms of a legacy of good works, he’s already outdone me several times over with that one, no matter how well I help raise this kid.
June 14th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Robert and I found most of the characters to be more whiny this season. David and Keith are the best but everyone else needs to be bitch slapped.