Better Late Than Never

(I'm trying to write this post as general as I can to preserve some of the unique surprises present in the finale, but there are minor spoilerish elements anyway. It's simply too difficult to avoid...)

It's been over a week now since HBO and Alan Ball buried the Fisher clan on the Six Feet Under series finale.

And man it was awesome.

At least it was in the eyes of this loyal fan. Over the past five seasons I've had some (minor) quibbles but I've always felt that Six Feet Under consistently delivered some of the best television I've been lucky enough to see. The acting, writing and filmmaking was far superior to the vast majority of what the networks, and most of cable, have ever produced. I'm not sure the show was ultimately a classic for the ages in the way The Sopranos clearly is, but it certainly raised the bar in its own way.

For one thing, the show celebrated the contradictory nature of human beings with an almost fetishistic relentlessness. Some viewers found that maddening. There were many complaints about the characters' "inconsistent" behavior over the seasons (one late breaking criticism even came from the show's star), but how many real people have you known who behave in a "consistent" way? These characters were written and performed as real, flawed, people. They may not have always been easy to embrace but, to the show's great credit, they were also never beyond redemption (even in death). Which brings us too...

This ridiculous notion that the show had become "too dark," "too morbid," "too bleak" etc. etc. Those complaints did a great disservice to the complexity of work the cast and crew delivered for 63 (only 63!) episodes. (Not to mention they fail to acknowledge the rich humor present in nearly every episode.)

I always found the show to be life affirming. It was a passionate reminder of how precious life is, how important family is and how people, and relationships, are far more complicated than we can ever really understand. I think the finale underlined all of that and more. (For a more detailed take from a passionate fan check out this Salon article. There were also great post-mortems in both the New York and LA Times).

Obviously I'm attached, but I was still shocked at how moved I was by the final three episodes. It may sound ridiculous but I'll say it anyway: I didn't really watch them, I felt them.

I've seen some online complaints that the finale was too soft, that it didn't stick to the show's core "shit happens" philosophy. I can buy the argument in respect to many of the characters' ultimate fates (everyone lived so long...) but not for the episode itself. After five seasons of drama it only makes sense to leave the characters in a place of peace. And I don't interpret that as a suggestion that they all lived happily ever after. There are clearly hard times still to come, but right there in that moment there was resolution.

And I can't imagine a better place to leave the characters I've come to love, in all their perfect imperfections.