I clicked on my Amazon.com “Gold Box” of special offers for the first time in several months this week, and the first offer was the entire series of Six Feet Under on DVD for $114.99. That’s $89 under the regular Amazon.com price.
I owned the first season already, and my plan was to pick off the rest on eBay as they were attractively available, but this was a slam-dunk. Click.
I was raging, crackhead addicted to Six Feet Under. I believe it to be the most spectacularly beautiful and artistically pure expression of what is possible in the medium of television that has yet existed. We kept our HBO subscription solely so I could finish that series, and canceled it ten minutes after the credits rolled on the finale.
(I also didn’t care to be so involved with a television show ever again.)
It was a show to savor. I cleared my calendar for it. I wanted to do nothing but watch the show for an hour, and then sit and think about it (and sometimes watch it again) afterward.
I’ve stared at the screen for some time now trying to figure out how to write about it without diminishing it, and I don’t think I can do it. So please accept the following as only a piece of what I think made it great. Telling you what this show really was is beyond my abilities.
The pervasive theme in the show was, of course, death. The pilot episode asked, in essence, “why do we make this such an obscene topic?” And the series never shied from it throughout. I respected this deeply, never having understood most of the motions we go through when someone dies (the ritualistic preservation of the corpse, for example, which was frequently rich plot and humor fodder in the show).
Even in the midst of its surreal drama, I appreciated Six Feet Under for its genuine character portrayals. Everyone was real. I found this particularly refreshing for David and Keith, because they were actual, complex people who happened to be gay, rather than The Gay Characters. The latter sank lesser shows like Ellen completely, and it would have done this show serious damage.
It didn’t take cheap shots. It made you uncomfortable from time to time, but never for its own sake. It was always important, either to the plot or to something larger it was saying.
When it was funny, it was uproariously so. The humor was dry, highly intelligent, and often a punch in the stomach.
Truthfully, parts of it got just a little soapy to suit me in seasons four and five, but by then it had such standing with me that it didn’t slip much.
I’m absolutely delighted to own the entire series.
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I never watched it, but I’ve never heard a single person ever say, “You, know, I didn’t care for that show” or even “Eh, it was alright.” It’s always a rave. Someday, someday. I have more than one friend as fanatical as you about the show, so I’m hoping one of them cracks and buys the series so I can borrow it. 🙂 I’m curious, but not enough to pay to rent it (and I don’t have a Netflix membership)