Last June some friends made me watch the Pilot episode of Six Feet Under. I had heard of the show as it had been quite popular in the early years of the new millennium but got it confused with other shows with provocative titles that I assumed I would never see. Today I finished the series and I felt the same sort of loss that one feels when a long term house guest finally heads back to their home. Six Feet Under was an exception to me in that it dealt with social issues and did so in a way that did not leave me feeling preached to in the same way that the television shows of my teenage years used to.
Six Feet Under was an imperfect series in that it made strange leaps in odd directions but it never felt inorganic. Rather, it felt as though the characters sort of led the show astray, they often made decisions that made me cringe but I cringed in the same way I would if I were watching my own friends.
I was especially moved by the fact that the show could so completely overturn some of my own preconceptions in real socially pertinent issues such as gay marriage and adoption. I felt myself both repulsed and enamored with many of the characters on the show [Billy and Maggie both come to mind] and felt my already strong adoration for Kathy Bates grow even stronger.
My friend had described the last episode of the series as being 'Mind Blowing' and his appraisal did not disappoint. I was moved to a comfortably melancholy mistiness by the singular conclusion of the story.
I feel that Six Feet Under will be remembered as a sort of strange metaphor for this new millennium that seems to have had a difficult time defining itself in a positive manner. Almost all of the the last eight years have been taken up by a saturation of pessimism spurred on by a presidential administration that was unable to communicate itself in any sort of palpable way. Similarly, many of the films and television programs of the era have sort of had to run in place in much the same manner. They seem to have difficulty deciding which direction they should take: sure, they hate the way things are at the moment but any of their alternatives present themselves as equally suspect.
Six Feet Under kind of side stepped that and never really said anything yet at the same time said everything.
- Kurt Weller
