So, Spelling Bee, I See You Too Watched “Six Feet Under”

I was fully prepared for Spelling Bee to reject the word “Ecotone“¹. Imagine my consternation when it was accepted and (almost) ruined my scheme to get a quick-n-dirty post out of it.

For those who are unfamiliar with the word (and have not seen the pivotal Six Feet Under episode of the same name), an “ecotone” is:

From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition:

• noun: A transitional zone between two communities containing the characteristic species of each.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun: In phytogeography, the line along which two types of vegetation compete for the same ground. See tension-line.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun: A transition area between two adjacent ecological communities (ecosystems).

As previously mentioned, it’s also the ninth episode of the final season of Six Feet Under, in which Big Things Happen. They pack a wallop, but I won’t say what they are, exactly, so as not to spoil it² for future generations. How’s about I show you the “alternate trailer” for the final season instead, where somebody replaced the trailer’s original music with the song “Breathe Me” by Sia?

If you’ve already watched Six Feet Under all the way through “Everyone’s Waiting”, then you know why whoever made this change did it, and why everyone is using sobbing emoji in the comments …

1. As per the rules, the Spelling Bee word list “does not include words that are obscure, hyphenated, or proper nouns.” Their idea of “obscure words” frequently doesn’t match the community’s idea of “obscure words”, and one of the games I play with myself is to try to solve it without guessing any words that Spelling Bee has excluded for obscurity. Unless of course I see something amusing I can use as a blog post. ↩︎
2. Even though it aired, as of the time of this writing, 20 years ago. Good Lord. ↩︎