Six Feet Over

So we recently concluded our viewing of the classic MAX HBO MAX HBO series Six Feet Under, and along the way I accumulated a few interactions with and observations from my wife that I meant to turn into posts but never got around to doing. This seems like a good opportunity to collect them into a little omnibus of sorts, doesn’t it? And since these are all late-season occurrences, it goes without saying that there will be …

Okay, is it safe to proceed? Have all the spoiler-sensitive readers who haven’t yet seen Six Feet Under but might want to some day left the room? Does such a reader even exist? Assuming he or she does, and has moved on to other things—perhaps to watch the first episode of this now twenty-year-old series—let’s begin.

#1: The Reverse Frodo

Now, although for the most part Six Feet Under focuses on the Fisher clan and their immediate significant others (such as Nate’s on/off girlfriend Brenda, David’s longtime and only occasionally on/off boyfriend Keith, and Rico’s wife Vanessa), there are a number of recurring side characters. One of the most notable is Brenda’s brother Billy, who is bipolar. When he is taking his medication, Billy is a charming and gifted artist who is, briefly, Claire Fisher’s professor at art school and later, less briefly, Claire Fisher’s boyfriend. When he is not taking his medication, he tends to make let’s call them “bad decisions”. At the beginning of his relationship with Claire, Billy is taking his medication and is doing very well. But then he decides that the reason he’s doing well isn’t the medication, it’s because of Claire, who is young and talented and makes him feel alive, etc. etc. etc. In one scene he is telling Claire all this, then (at her urging) heads to the bathroom to take his medication. Cue a scene of Billy standing at the sink with the pills in his hand and the toilet open next to him.

Wife: “It’s not the girl, Billy, it’s the medication.”
(Billy stands there looking at his medication)
Wife: “Take the medication, Billy.”
(Billy stands there looking at his medication)
Wife: “DON’T THROW THE PILLS IN THE TOILET!”
(Billy throws the pills in the toilet, and dumps out the pills in the bottle for good measure)
Wife: “This is like the opposite of me yelling at Frodo to throw the ring into the fire, isn’t it?”
Me: “Pretty much, yes.”

#2: The Fishers Make Bad Decisions

We read once somewhere that Jon Hamm’s grandmother, I think it was, said that the title of Mad Men could have been Don Draper Makes Bad Decisions. After Claire started dating Billy, we decided that we would start keeping track of which Fisher made the worst decision in any particular episode. This prize were handed out fairly equitably, but Nate probably got the lion’s share of them.

#3: Most Definitely A Review Of Nate Fisher’s Medical Care

Way back at the end of the first season of Six Feet Under, main character Nate Fisher discovered that he had an AVM. He spent the second season in denial and finally had surgery to repair the malformation at the end of Season 2. During this surgery the AVM ruptured, but Nate seemingly recovered completely, and was fine, right up until he wasn’t: At the end of Episode 8 of Season 5, after just having finished up making the episode’s prize-winning bad decision involving his ex-stepsister Maggie, Nate collapses. This is the end of the episode, but not the end of our viewing for the night.

Wife: “They’re going to leave it like that?! We have to watch another one.”

In the next episode, Nate ends up back in the Emergency Department, where a surgeon comes out to explain to his family (and, uh, Maggie) that Nate developed another AVM, and this one went undetected and ruptured, causing a cerebral hemorrhage.

Me: “An undetected AVM? After he already had one? Why wasn’t he getting screened every year or two?”
Wife: “Maybe he has Kaiser*.”

The hospital takes Nate in for emergency surgery, while the family (and, uh, Maggie again) cools their heels in the surgical waiting room for a while.

Wife: “The surgical waiting room. I remember that well.”

Eventually the surgeon re-emerges from wherever surgeons go when they’re not around** to let everyone know that Nate’s surgery went well, he’s in recovery, and will soon be transferred to the Neurology Step-Down Unit (the equivalent of Telemetry).

Me and Wife (simultaneously): “The step-down unit?!”
Me: “He should be going to ICU!”
Wife: “He definitely has Kaiser*.”

Once in the step-down unit, Nate wakes up and is talking and lucid, but as far as we can tell, they aren’t keeping a very close eye on him.

Me: “Aren’t they going to at least do Dopplers on him?”

But, no, there seems to be none of that. And at the end of the episode, David—who has been asleep in the chair next to Nate’s bed***—suddenly wakes up to the sound of a heart monitor flatlining.

Wife: “Oh, no, not another cliffhanger!”
Me: “I don’t think this one’s a cliffhanger.”

#4: That’s Some Nice Life Insurance You Have There, Nate. It Would Be A Shame If You Were To Have To Buy New Life Insurance Now.

Nate’s death results in a number of changes at the funeral home, including that third partner Rico wants to be bought out so he can go and start his own funeral home. Remaining partner David Fisher is wondering how he can come up with the money to do this without selling the property, when Nate’s widow Brenda comes to the rescue, informing him that Nate had good life insurance and that she can use the money to help David buy out Rico’s share.

Wife: “Nate must’ve gotten that insurance before they discovered his AVM.”
Me: “That’s just what I was thinking!”

I routinely get solicitations in the mail for life insurance. They always say you don’t need a medical exam, you just have to answer a few simple questions. One of those simple questions is always about stroke.

#5: The Big Finale

Now, it appears to be a consensus among critics and viewers that Season 4 of Six Feet Under was its weakest (we agree), and Season 5 was its strongest (we do not agree; we like Season 1 the best). It also appears to be a consensus that the final three episodes are some of the best you will ever find on television, and the series finale of the show was the Best Finale Ever. I may have erred and set my wife’s expectations too high by telling her all this before we got to those episodes.

Me (coming off the end of the penultimate episode): “So what do you think so far?”
Wife: “They’re good, but I wouldn’t say they’re the best episodes of anything that I’ve ever seen. And they’ve got a lot of shit to wrap up in the finale. I don’t know how they’re going to do it all in one episode.”
Me: “The last one is a long one … An hour and twelve minutes.”
Wife: “That’s not long enough.”

We then proceeded to watch the last episode, “Everyone’s Waiting”, which was a lot like any other episode … Until the last seven or eight minutes, when Claire left for New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer and the entire tone shifted. Instead of explaining it, I’ll just show it to you.

For my money, Halt and Catch Fire still has the best final few episodes I’ve ever seen (closely followed by Dark****), but, wow, those last few minutes of Six Feet Under are really something. My wife agrees.

Me: “So what’s the verdict?”
Wife: “I’m not sure it’s the best series finale ever, but they wrapped up a lot more shit than I thought they would. If there were an award for wrapping shit up, I would definitely give it to them.”

And there you have it, folks. Nobody ever wrapped shit up like Six Feet Under.

Except maybe for George’s son.

* We have never had Kaiser. However, when we first moved to California and I was evaluating health plans offered by my employer at the time, I was talking to one of our executives and mentioned that I was considering Kaiser. He said, “Don’t take Kaiser. Kaiser killed my father.” I initially reacted as if he were maybe making a joke, but he said, “No, I’m serious. Kaiser killed my father.” We have since heard (and observed) a number of horror stories related to Kaiser from people we know, and when I was in the ICU during The Event—at a hospital that was not actually part of my health plan’s network—one of the nurses made the observation that she was glad I didn’t have Kaiser, because Kaiser was “very aggressive” about moving its members into their own hospitals. In her opinion, Kaiser would have insisted on transferring me, which she didn’t think would be safe. (To be fair, at one point my insurance did float the idea of transferring me via “mobile ICU” to one of their facilities down in San Diego, but the doctors told them I wasn’t stable to transport and they dropped it.)
** The operating room, presumably.
*** Sleeping in a chair next to a hospital bed: Another thing my wife remembers all too well.
**** Known to my wife as “That German show where it’s raining all the time and everyone’s sad.”