Most people who've watched Six Feet Under say the show was sliding downhill ever since its first season. I watched every single episode, and I can't help but agree with that. Some shows are just so amazingly brilliant in their first season that they have nowhere to go but down. They may still be better than 90% of what's on television, but they nevertheless become a shadow of what they were.
But in my opinion, the last four episodes of this final season of Six Feet Under have been extraordinary. And all the more so because the show had slid so far to then climb back to the heights of its original season. Tonight's episode (and the third-to-last one a few weeks ago) really got to me in a way the show hadn't managed to do since its very first episode. Yes, Six Feet Under wasn't always brilliant, but overall it proved that American Beauty (#12 on my movie list) was no fluke for Alan Ball.
I've tried The Sopranos two or three times, and just plain don't like it. Entourage just doesn't make me laugh (I'll stick with Arrested Development, which has me rolling every episode). And I feel like I've missed the boat on Deadwood. So, with the passing of Six Feet Under (which, unlike Carnivale, was not killed before its time), I think I'm pretty well done with HBO.
R.I.P. Six Feet Under.
2 comments:
SPOILERS
The best part was the end. We got to see so many other people die over the course of the series, why not all those people too?
Hated Keith's though...that's how I can tell it was a good dramatic choice. I can still see it in my head.
I liked the fight against megacorporations (here, Kroner) being played out using funeral homes. I was rooting for their business ASWELL as their private lives. I think they wrote themselves into a corner because they abandoned this aspect of the show with a single phone call so I gave up on 6FU after season 2. If they ever returned to this theme please LMK.
I assume Clare grew up over the five years? I would have enjoyed seeing that, because she was very
self-centred in what I watched.
Sopranos suffered a similar fate: awesome first season (if you saw that you might enjoy it more?) then a total lack of direction. Let's hope it can redeem itself in the final mini-season (season 6).
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