Sometimes it’s easy to forget to filler myself when it comes to recommending a Netflix series to binge watch. At the lunch table recently, here at the continuum care facility, we shared what we were binging and without thinking of the content of my current obsession and the people present I recommended Six Feet Under to a couple of deeply religious women who have lived sheltered lives and don’t approve "the gays.” Six Fee Under is full of sex and nudity and not just ordinary sex, but gay sex. But the underlining theme in the series is so much more than that. A Rotten Tomatoes review sums it up like this: “Laced with irony and dark situational humor, the show approaches the subject of death through the eyes of the Fisher family, who owns and operates a funeral home in Los Angeles. Peter Krause stars as Nate, who reluctantly becomes a partner in the funeral home after his father's death.” Other reviews have called the Fisher family ‘dysfunctional’ and I’d agree with that but five episodes in I became fully invested in the family---flaws and all.
A Guardian Review depicts the series much better than I could ever do: “Many of the show’s themes are incredibly difficult: hard drug use, sex addiction, abortion, dementia, to mention only a few. But just like its treatment of death, Six Feet Under doesn’t insert these issues for melodramatic effect, or use metaphors or workarounds to avoid facing the hard stuff. It invests in its characters and their struggles, unpacking the issues they face and finding shades of grey and, crucially, some kind of understanding and empathy.
“Outstanding scripting is also supported by some of the finest acting seen on the small screen – there’s a reason the cast received dozens of Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations over the life of the show, and won a swag of them too.”
Everyone's family has a one or two gay people in their midst whether you know it or not. And while acceptance is better now than in past decades it’s still got to be a scary thing to openingly pin that label on yourself. One of the Fisher brothers is gay and the writer of the series is gay. In one interview Alen Ball (the writer) shared the fact that every situation that David Fisher was in was drawn from his own life experiences living at first in the closet and after coming out. One intense episode in particular had me sitting on the edge of my bed in the wee hours of the morning fearing that David was going to end up like Matthew Shepard, who you might remember was found on a fence in Wyoming after being beaten and tortured to death for being gay. That happened not long after I found out that someone I know and love is gay and it made an impact on me. Just this year, 25 years after they found Matthew, his mother said society’s acceptance of the gay community has recently been moving backward. One step forward, two steps back. Societal changes never take a straight line, do they.
I hate that organized religion has scapegoated our fellow human beings into becoming objects to hate. Biologists can explain until they are blue in the face that same-sex activities have been “observed in 1,500 animal species, from primates to sea stars, bats to damselflies, snakes to nematode worms” but it doesn’t get through to the haters. Logic suggests that these documentations in nature are an argument that same-sex behavior is not an 'unnatural choice' at all but rather part of the Master Plan.
Research scientists are on the edge of being able to fully understand "the interplay of genetic, hormonal and environment influences that start before birth" to cause homosexual behavior. I used to call it a birth defect but in the light of those 1,500 other species I’m coming around to not using that label. And also there is a debate going on over calling it a birth defect because on one hand that is the same as calling those born gay “a mistake” and, some say, it's not a defect that needs fixing---what needs fixing is society's mind-set on the topic. On the other hand science is close to being able to do treatments in-utero to prevent any ambiguousness in sexual orientation and why not give those babies an easier life? Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to come back to earth in a hundred years and see how all this pans out.
Before I end this post I want to explain what it is about Six Feet Under that I love the most besides the gifted writing and acting i.e. it’s the death and dying conversations that often gives me food for thought long after I turn off the TV. The series ran for five seasons and each episode is a half hour long and each one opens with someone dying. Things that the grieving family say or ask while planning the funeral or things said at the funeral or the way the deceased lived dovetails into the life of one of the Fisher's---what they might be going through at the time. Some of the ‘conversations’ the embalmers have with the deceased in the embalming room also make it seem like a perfectly natural thing to talk to the dead as I do to my husband from time to time.
So, after all this if you are curious enough to try this series give it until after the forth or fifth episode before giving up on it, if you do. It’s starts off a little weirder than we’re all used to seeing on TV and it took the director a few episodes to figure out what he was doing. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea but I'm glad I gave it a shot.
(Side note here: Fans of Kathy Bates will see her directing talents in five episodes and her acting skills in two seasons.) ©
Nate: “To Make life important. None of us know how long we’ve got, which is why we have to make each day matter.”
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| Nate quoting Bhagavad Gita while high and thinking the sage words were his own. |
