Six Feet Under (Season Five)
HBO
2005
Rating:


In the history of television, there is only one series that could bring a happy ending to its characters by showing every last one of their deaths. That series, not surprisingly, is Alan Ball's "Six Feet Under."

After five years as the blackest of black sheep in HBO's formidable arsenal (though it's on the cultural radar to a greater extent than the woefully under-seen "The Wire"), creator Alan Ball's show of morticians and their loved ones in a constant state of existential suffering finally closed its last coffin and did so with a display of unbridled emotion that would cause any other show to bristle.

It was clear that the finale was going to be special from the moment Ball, who wrote and directed the swan song, substituted the death that usual opens each episode with the birth of the daughter of Brenda (Rachel Griffith) and the departed Nate (Peter Krause). The scene at first seems like a subversion of the "Six Feet Under" M.O., but it isn't. For all its morbidity, Ball's show has always been about that far messier business, life. At the end of the fourth tumultuous season, the ghost of the Fisher patriarch, Nathaniel (Richard Jenkins), told his much-tortured gay son David (Michael C. Hall), that suffering was worth it because he was still alive.

"Six Feet Under" overflows with so much humanity that it even risks making its characters realistically unlikable. Nate (Peter Krause) died with three episodes left in the series, and many were glad to see him go, wailing against his narcissism and horrible decisions. Youngest sibling Claire (Lauren Ambrose) has likewise been criticized for her self-involved obsession with hipsterdom. What many have failed to grasp is the realness of these characters, the way that their poor choices and egocentric worldviews are not that different from our own. In the end, Nate finally accepts his mortality and Claire, likewise, learns that being hip is a childish pursuit.

The final five minutes showed a flash-forward of the extended Fisher clan as Claire drove to New York. With Sia's "Breathe Me" providing the soundtrack, we watched with teary eyes as Ruth (Frances Conroy), Keith (Michael St. Patrick), David, Rico (Freddy Rodriguez), Brenda and Claire breathed their last breath. The ending was bittersweet. "Six Feet Under" ends with a hopeful vision of the future. The show radically dissembles the patriarchy, living Ruth and Brenda to care for Nate's children and placing David and Keith at the head of the newly refurbished Fisher household. David and Keith are even seen being married by a priest. The Fishers may have died, but they finally found what has been so elusive to them: happiness.

Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005

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