By Jason Haskins
Six Feet Under is a dark soap opera from HBO that follows a family that comes together because of the death of the patriarch. Peter Krause plays Nate Fisher, who travels all the way from Seattle to Los Angeles to help out his brother with the family business, which happens to be funeral parlors. His brother, David (Michael C. Scott), is an uptight guy who is struggling with his own issues and clashing quite a bit with Nate for the first half of the season especially after their father gives Nate half of the business. Nate must decide if he wants to help out or return home to Seattle (the outcome is fairly obvious).
While all that is happening Ruth (Frances Conroy) is dealing with a ton of guilt relating to an affair she had while she was still with Nathaniel, Sr. She's trying to find meaning in her life as well as rekindle some relationships she has as a way to get over the grief. The youngest child, Claire (Lauren Ambrose), is in high school. She's like any normal teenager--drugs, sex, and total angst is a part of her character's basis and feels like the odd woman out because she's not really close to David or Nate, who moved away when she was very young.
Nate starts a relationship off immediately with this woman he meets at the airport named Brenda and doesn't really know what he's stepping into. Her family is crazier than his--especially her brother (played by Jeremy Sisto) and it makes their relationship much more complicated. I myself didn't really like this aspect of the show. Nate and Rachel are very stiff together and both actors just don't play off of each other very well. I don't know if that's how it was written or if it was the performances themselves, but I think it's a combination of the two.
In fact, there were a lot of aspects to this season that I thought were lacking. Ruth's love triangle with two men wasn't very interesting to me, though I felt for her predicament. Frances Conroy isn't the best actress and she really doesn't carry weight for the show. Maybe this changes in later seasons, but I didn't really care that much. Claire is having this weird relationship with this d-bag guy and I was frustrated because of how stupid the dude was and how he treated her, but I guess teenagers will be teenagers. The only love story I found really good and made the show compelling for me was David and Keith.
Michael C. Hall plays David extraordinarily well and is easily the best character of the show. He strives to keep his sexuality a secret from his family, but as things would have it his true side is shown throughout the first season. Keith is frustrated that David won't just be himself and when they split briefly David goes on a huge self-destructive quest to explore his sexuality. Their relationship is warm and loving and I thought that it was certainly the strongest part of the show.
Aside from all of the romantic content, the show works in a very interesting way. Each episode starts with a death of some kind, from a porn star electrocuted to a guy getting chopped to bits, and each death sort of metaphorically shapes the show and makes situations for how the characters interact with the family of the departed. Freddy Rodriguez plays the embalmer and master artist who helps the corpses look presentable upon open-casket funerals. His character creates some interesting comic relief at times, but also struggles this season from his financial motivation when a mortuary corporation comes to try and buy the Fisher & Sons business. The main plot of the show, however, is about all of these characters dealing with the death of Nathaniel, Sr. in their own ways as well as resisting the big bad corporation who are trying to close them down.
There are thirteen hour-long episodes in the first season sprawling four discs, which include deleted scenes, commentaries from Alan Ball (who went on to produce another fantastic show, True Blood), and some interesting featurettes. This is a soap opera disguised as a drama, and a very adult one at that. There is sexuality, coarse language, and some violence, but it's everything you'd expect from a premium television show. None of it is really inappropriate, though, as it matches the style of the show. Six Feet Under has a ton of melodrama, but it also carries a dark humor that's so dark it's not even funny sometimes as it's pretty morbid (they do operate a funeral home...). However, it's still enjoyable.
At the same time, this show seemed very mediocre to me. It's watchable, but it only started to get interesting halfway through the season. More than that, there were a lot of flat moments and dull characters that didn't really leave me on the edge of my seat. There are boring episodes as well as ones that I laughed at because of how ridiculous they were. Some of the writing is positively atrocious. All of the relationship between Brenda and Nate is comprised of Nate complaining or reminiscing about his relationship with his father, which gets old rather quickly, and what's worse is that the show is pretentious at times.It thinks it's deeper than it actually is and that it's tackling life's biggest questions because of the setting. That's definitely not the case, though. All in all, this is a pretty average show and one I'd recommend. I'm probably going to watch the second season and hope that it gets better, but I guess this succeeded in making me even more curious to see what it has to offer.
3 out of 5 stars
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