One wedding and two funerals
The third brilliant season of "Six Feet Under" comes to a messy close, resisting easy narrative "closure," as all the characters must face the weight of the decisions they've made.
By Heather Havrilesky
June 2, 2003 | The problem with being the best show on television is that, after shocking audiences at how good you can be, everyone expects too much of you. They expect complete satisfaction and closure. Not only are the characters required to act in complicated, nuanced and unforeseen ways, but it all has to make perfect sense to everyone. While most TV manages this feat through empty plot twists followed by tidy resolutions, "Six Feet Under" would never stoop to easy answers -- which is exactly why this season's finale was bound to disappoint many of its fans.
But let's start with the most foolish criticism of all, which is that "Six Feet Under" is a soap opera. Even critics who love the show throw in the disclaimer -- "Of course it's just a soap opera" -- in order to protect themselves from criticism for enjoying a drama that dares to take on unapologetically high stakes that don't relate to the criminal justice system. But let's just review the obvious for the sake of getting our curmudgeonly grudges out of the way at the outset: Just because "Six Feet Under" doesn't hide its concern with the turmoils of everyday life behind autopsies and melodramatic courtroom scenes doesn't mean that it's a soap opera. To state the obvious, most soaps are about as nuanced as a 5-year-old's puppet show, in which each character relentlessly brays about his or her concerns: "Angela, you're up to something, and I know it!" "Don't leave me, Josh! I don't love Victor, I love you!" The quality of "Six Feet Under" hinges on its ability to reveal layer after layer of each character's inner strengths and limitations. Far from the flat, hysterical caricatures of daytime TV, Alan Ball's characters are so three-dimensional as to be almost unrecognizable from show to show.
All of which puts Ball and the show's writers in the impossible position of delivering complexity in a package that audiences expect to wrap up neatly by the end of the season. The fact that each character's behavior is formed from the same bewildering soup of emotional needs, dysfunctional tics, soulful revelations and cognitive bad habits that we face in our own lives doesn't prevent critics and viewers from reeling over the zigs and zags the show presents each step of the way. Why is Ruth in love with that creepy junior mortician? What is Claire doing with an obviously gay man? Why won't Lisa and Nate just end it, since they're so clearly wrong for each other? These are exactly the kinds of questions we ask of each other regularly, yet somehow the realism of being stuck or of grappling with decisions that transcend the usual Judeo-Christian puzzle -- "Will he do the right thing, or give in to the dark side?" -- becomes unwelcome on television.
Some of us, at least, would rather see predictable character arcs and decisions we universally agree with: Those in love stay in love, those not in love leave, those with problems spiral downward quickly but are on the road to recovery by the end of the episode. The beauty of the third season of "Six Feet Under" is that each character's arc has been defined not by inorganic plot twists or empty devices, but by a more personal, internal map of their weaknesses and challenges.
The trajectory of family matriarch Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy) this season was perhaps the most unfathomable and, not surprisingly, she was also the character who made the most personal progress toward maturity and a more fully realized existence. Her initial encounters with the confrontational, self-serving Bettina (Kathy Bates) challenged years of rigidity and knee-jerk self-sacrifice. But her self-discovery wouldn't be complete if it only involved a confrontation of the shadow. Enter Arthur (Rainn Wilson), who presented Ruth with a mirror image of herself. Instead of being repelled by Arthur's severely controlled, impeccable existence, Ruth embraces it, thereby offering unconditional love to her own weaknesses. Ultimately, though, Arthur prefers the safety of his room to the messiness of human relations, so Ruth has to turn her back on him. Through her experiences, though, she emerges armed with the self-love to abandon herself to George (James Cromwell), a man who's not her exact opposite or her mirror image, but who's simply different and, for once, may actually be worthy of her.
Meanwhile, Claire (Lauren Ambrose) stumbles on Russell (Ben Foster), a man who's worth her time (finally!) at the beginning of the season, but both are seduced by the raw thrills of the egomaniacal artist's existence, as embodied in their art professor, Olivier (Peter Macdissi). Olivier lives by his own compass, turning his back on every social convention and moral guidepost along the way, a choice that's often breathtaking but inevitably sinks into absurdly selfish, hedonistic behavior that requires a steady flow of arrogance and grandiosity to keep it afloat. Russell proves himself too impressionable and self-pitying to resist Olivier's charms, and it's this weakness -- not his infidelity -- that leads Claire to reject him. That, and, uh, the fact that he's most likely gay.
But which is it? Is Russell gay, or is he just a self-centered jerk wheeling down the same dark, delusional corridor that made Olivier one of the most vividly pitiable characters to grace the small screen? We'll never know. All that really matters is that Claire emerges from a haze of self-interest to discover that while art may imitate life, a lot of life can speed by while you're preoccupied with such melodramatic imitations.
Next page: OK, so I actually had moments when I hoped Nate had killed Lisa. That was weak of me, I know