Nate's death didn't affect me AT ALL and I don't know why.

I've cried in the past over other shows, some even on HBO, that involved the death or serious injury of a character.

:sigh:

Nonetheless...

I think this is the most interesting turn the show has taken in a while. Too bad there are only 3 more episodes to see where they go with it.

Maybe it is because Nate's been a bit of a prat lately. Plus he cheated on his pregnant wife in the prior ep.

Episode 61 synopsis from HBO.com:

While David attends to family business, Keith makes an embarrassing self-discovery on the job; Brenda is challenged by Nate and answers a hard question for Maya; Maggie gets a door shut in her face; Margaret compares herself to her daughter; Ruth lets Bettina play nurse; Rico and Vanessa decide to protect their future; Claire is comforted by Ted's squareness and George makes a speech about love.

Wow. That was pretty heavy. This show can take drama to a whole new level. One of the most depressing hours of TV I've ever seen.

I still, though, never felt like I was grieving with the Fishers. I don't know. Kinda feels like the same disjointed feeling I had over Nate last week.

The only part that really got me was when Ruth took the towel and started cleaning Nate's body.

:sigh:

I cried.

A nice NYT article on last night's episode:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/arts/ ... 8unde.html

Though the Academy rarely reverts back to has-been nominees (as we've seen with the lack of nominations for the final seasons of such shows as Friends, etc.), I'd like to see Emmy nominations next year for virtually the entire cast: Frances Conroy, Michael C. Hall, Freddy Rodriguez, Lauren Ambrose, and especially Rachel Griffiths. (And also Tina Holmes and Justina Machado, neither of whom have been nominated before.)

Last night's episode was a showcase for those 5.

Could you copy and paste so we don't have to sign up?

On 'Six Feet Under,' Grief and Authenticity -- by Virginia Heffernan

For those of us who have been trying to come to terms with the death a week ago of Nate Fisher (Peter Krause), the hero of HBO's "Six Feet Under," last night's ambitious episode of the upper-middlebrow melodrama offered several alternative ways to grieve.

There were, of course, drugs. Nate's mother and sister - both panicked with misery as the episode opened - turned to pills and pot, respectively. But when Nate's pregnant widow, Brenda (Rachel Griffiths), was offered shots of edge-eroding vodka, she declined, saying, "I don't want to take the edge off."

Then there was the poetry: three kinds. First, the Republican lawyer who last week saw Claire (Lauren Ambrose) through her brother's sudden hospitalization made the case for pop music, as treacly ballads, including the Dixie Chicks' version of "Landslide," played in his car. "I love Top 40," the lawyer admitted. "I'm sorry. It just sounds so good sometimes."

Next came an extremely pretty, slightly anodyne poem by the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi that Nate had requested be read graveside. It entreated the assembly, "Regarding him, say neither bad nor good."

"Mystical, maudlin'' stuff, said Brenda, whom Nate had dumped on his deathbed.

Finally, the episode took its title, "All Alone," from a lyric to the Nirvana song "All Apologies," which could be heard twice as Claire reflected on her brother. The first time, the music came with a memory: Nate in 1994, stoned, weeping at the suicide of Kurt Cobain, whom he called "too pure for this world." The music's reprise came later as Claire herself lay grieving, the acoustic version of the song back on the stereo, and then on the show's soundtrack, with Cobain's echolalic "All alone is all we are" repeating and repeating and repeating through the closing credits.

In choosing among these idioms of mourning, Lionel Trilling's great series of lectures, "Sincerity and Authenticity," published under that title in 1972, comes to mind. Sincerity - what Trilling calls "congruence between avowal and actual feeling"- once seemed (to the Romantic poets, x say) like an exalted state of existence that could be achieved only with conscientious attention to the heart.

But the ideal of sincerity has long ago been devalued, rendered commercial or quaint. Today, for example, it is associated with Coldplay, mewling God-and-country Republicans and weepie cable-television dramas like "Six Feet Under" that appeal mostly to women and gay men.

Authenticity, on the other hand, is regarded as rougher stuff, a man's job. Authenticity is gin to sincerity's chardonnay. (Look for it on "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood.") It suggests, as Trilling puts it, "a more strenuous moral experience" than does sincerity, as well as "a less acceptant and genial view of the social circumstances of life." Authenticity, in other words, is a confrontation not with the self, which its practitioners regard as elusive and false, but with death, horror, being, nothingness.

On "Six Feet Under" these days, authenticity's name is Brenda, the Woman Who Won't Take the Edge Off. On last night's episode, she looked with contempt on a gift bought by Maggie (Tina Holmes), Nate's recent concubine and the show's avatar of sincerity.

"What is this, some sort of Quaker thing?" she asked, continuing her challenge with profanity: you have sex with someone's husband till he dies, "and then you bring them a quiche?"

In a caustic, near-Jamesian dressing-down (the episode was written by Kate Robin), Brenda went on: "He certainly wasn't in love with you, even if he said he was. Nate could be very convincing that way. All he ever wanted was someone who could make him feel like he was a better man than he actually was. It could have been anyone."

The dutiful brother, David (Michael C. Hall), by contrast, has so far dodged the imperatives of sincerity and authenticity both; these ideals are the prerogatives of authors, and David has typically been too afraid of gay-bashing and too busy with make-work to assume real authority. On last night's episode, he was more scared than ever, abandoned by his handsome, straight older brother, whose presence - we see now - David had conceived as his hedge against mortality. With Nate dead, the specter of the menacing hooded hitchhiker from last season appeared again to David. He fell apart. At last, for solace, he admitted needing the ministrations of "smooth jazz," shorthand for the show's (and everyone's?) lowest form of aesthetic experience.

There were other outlets, speeches and bromides. The ones by Sarah (Patricia Clarkson) seemed especially fatuous, even manipulative; the one by crazy George (James Cromwell) - about Nate the idealist - seemed passably good.

But only Nate's colleague at the funeral home, Rico (Freddy Rodriguez), managed to get Nate's virtues just right. Like Fortinbras in "Hamlet," Rico told his wife that he intends to concentrate on bottom-line business now that the melancholy heir is out of the way. But even while scheming, he recognized that Nate in his dreaminess brought something to the art of death that was good for the enterprise and - who knows? - maybe even good for souls.

"He had a natural sense of what to say to people when they were grieving," Rico said. For this viewer, at least, that clicked. Nate may not have been able to face death and tell the truth, in the cold and unadorned way that Brenda idealizes, but he was able to speak to survivors from the heart.

When confronting the dead, as characters on this show often do, anything but an idiom of absolute authenticity ("all alone is all we are") sounds hollow. But in life's much more familiar experience - speaking to the bereaved - we could do worse than to be sincere.

Episode 62, "Static," synopsis:

As David's fears take over, Keith tries to protect him - and the boys; Billy attends to his sister; Claire goes on a drunken harassment spree and pushes Ted away; Rico pushes for a talk about the business; George tries to help Ruth with Maya; Nate urges Brenda to embrace a taboo; and Vanessa sees the future in a funeral home.

There's also a two-part "In Memoriam" special airing the 15th (Monday) and the 21st (right before the finale).

HBO.com also has a viewer's choice poll going on right now:

http://www.hbo.com/sixfeetunder/poll/vi ... son1.shtml

Thanks DK.

Sure.

Come back and post more, too.

Six Feet Under fans always welcome.

Seeing clips from the 'In Memoriam' special, it's weird to see how much the characters have come into their own since seasons one and two (the pre-Lisa days).

Especially Brenda.

Sunday's episode was great. Not as good as All Alone, but no complaints from me.

75 minute finale next week. I'm sad, but I'm pumped.

Where are my SFU buds? When the show is ending and I need you the most...

Heh.

Oh, and some good ratings news: Sunday's episode pulled in 3.2 million viewers. Not as high as previous seasons, but the highest ratings of the season thus far. Let's hope the finale pulls some big numbers.

I might just be talking to myself, but that's okay.

Anyway, finale's in 45 minutes.

And I'm quite sad. But ready.

Aaawwww.

I might start watching it (through Netflix), just for you. I've always thought it would be fun to watch a whole entire series on DVD...

Brenda's dream about Billy, priceless.

That was exquisite. Just exquisite.

No ambiguity, which surprised me, but man...

I was enthralled by those final minutes.

Probably one of the most satisfying episodes of television of I've ever seen.

the final word on this subject (could be):

We all gotta go sooner or later. Just don't think about it too much.

BTW: Showing all their deaths was a bit much, wasn't it?

Maybe, but in the scheme of things, I think it fit rather perfectly.

You were... sorta right, loyal, about eveyone dying, by the way.

Here's an article from Village Voice that also praised the finale:

http://www.villagevoice.com/screens/053 ... 64,28.html

Tell me if you want me to post it if you have to log in or something.

Oh, and one more thing...

I've never been more attracted to the Prius.

I also think, though (hehe, sorry, need to talk), that even in its very overt final minutes, it still retained some of the elements that characterized the show as a whole: comedy (Brenda seemingly bored to death by Billy), tragedy (Ruth on her deathbed with the family by her side killed me), and love (David & Keith, Brenda & new husband, Rico & Vanessa).

I'm still thinking about this.

That's how much I loved it.

Rico is basically a bit of a rat. I expected to see him die violently.

Nate's ghost seems to have rescued Brenda and David at the end. In fact, David has a bit of Nate's serenity in the final scene.

The Fisher women are just plain awful. No man of woman born could survive their perpetual misery. It's a miracle the Fisher boys survived.