We all know HBO’s “Sopranos” in just a few seasons has become part of American popular culture. Superbly performed with an outstanding cast from Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) himself down to the most minor walk-on, the series, under the guidance of David Chase, reflects not just the life of New Jersey Italian-American Mafia families, but captures the mores and anxieties of most middle-class Americans, no matter what their ethnic background.
Now HBO has ventured once again into the world of another dysfunctional American family, this time living in Los Angeles, with “Six Feet Under,” whose first program was aired June 1 and ended last Sunday, August 20. An estimated 8.3 million viewers saw “Six Feet Under” every week, either on the Sunday night premieres or by catching one of the repeats that followed later in the week. The series’ first season concluded with what HBO called a two-hour special, but which was actually two separate episodes shown back to back.
Alan Ball, creator of the series (and screenwriter of the Academy-winning, “American Beauty”), both wrote and directed the final episode of the series. One of the most remarkable facts about “Six Feet Under,” apart from any of its artistic qualities, is that it deals with death … in every episode.
The Fisher family runs a mortuary; they live in part of a large old-fashioned house and operate the business on the ground floor and basement. Each episode opens with a death. Sometimes as unexpected and cruel as death can be. The very first in the series opened with the death in a car accident of the father of the family on his way to pick up his oldest son, Nate, flying in from Oregon where he’s been living.
Each sequence on a death closes on a gravestone with the birth and death dates before continuing with the story line. Details of the funeral and the handling of the body are treated with discretion, intelligence, compassion and, on occasion, even humor. Like no other program on American television, death is recognized as part of our lives – neither rendered as maudlin nor overly dramatic. It’s quite amazing.
The family grows and develops with each episode. Nate (Peter Krause), the oldest, who has essentially run away from his family 10 years ago, finding it too stifling, is startled to find himself named in his father’s will as sharing the business with his younger, very repressed brother David (Michael C. Hall). The mother (Frances Conroy in a beautifully nuanced performance) blurts out to her sons that she’d been having an affair with a hairdresser and is much disturbed about it. Teenage daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) succeeds in getting away from the banality of the all-too-familiar disturbed American teen, making the girl fresh and interesting. (In a nice touch of casting, mother and daughter with pale faces, almost no makeup and long wiry red-hair, appear very much members of the same family.)
The plot takes many a turn and twist involving one member or another of the family. One of the most interesting and surprising is how the character of David – a tightly-controlled, repressed homosexual, ashamed and embarrassed of his feelings – develops. He has been having a discreet affair with a virtual prince of a fellow, Keith (Michael St. Pierre), a black homosexual cop. Both men are Catholic, both attend Mass regularly. David, recently taken to attending a church in West Hollywood, home to many homosexuals, when asked to be a deacon at his family church, agrees, while feeling a little uncomfortable.
David and Keith split as a couple – David indulging in the darker, more adventurous side of his nature. What is truly unusual – and even remarkable – is how the homosexual issue is treated in the final episode of the series. The death in the opening sequence is the brutal beating to death of a youth by two louts calling him a “faggot” (reminiscent of the Mathew Shepherd death last year). The family comes to the Fisher home for the burial, the father still having trouble accepting his son’s sexual orientation.
The boy’s features have been seriously disfigured, but David takes on the task of reconstruction so there may be an open-coffin service. Freddy, the Puerto Rican, who usually prepares the bodies on these occasions, offers to do the work, but David insists. As he works over the body, the murdered youth appears and talks with him – this has been a constant device in most of the sequences and works most effectively.
At David’s church, there is trouble with some of the board that wants nothing to do with the recent death, and is angry with the priest for having recently performed a marriage ceremony of two lesbians. David comes out at the meeting – the most bigoted member of the board calls for his resignation.
At the Sunday service, David reads and comments on a special service. He sees the murdered boy watching him, who calmly tells him, “David, no matter what you say or do, you, like Keith, like me, will all go to burn in Hell.” Nearly the last time we see David and Keith, they are having coffee, and David seems to indicate he may try to straighten out his life. Keith assures him of genuine friendship. As Keith leaves the coffee shop, David sees the murdered boy through the window, the scars gone, his face clear and bright, quietly smiling at him.
What is amazing is how tactfully and understandingly the whole issue of homosexuality is handled, yet never shying away from the bottom line of the beliefs of the Catholic Church on the subject. Hell is treated as a very real place where people do burn for eternity. And Nate in the same sequence has to answer the question of a desperately mourning young woman: “Why do people have to die?” His answer may not be the most profound, but it is felt: “It … makes life more important?”
These two HBO series, alike only in the high-level quality of writing, directing and acting, give you hope for the future of American television and films. Following these two series is like what it must have been for 19th century French readers waiting eagerly each week for a new chapter of Balzac’s “Human Comedy.”
