The Take
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Six Feet Under pretty much always comes up in discussions of the best TV shows of all time, but also somehow doesn't seem to have been able to stake its spot in the larger cultural memory in the same way as hits of the same era like The Sopranos or The Wire. So, today we're taking a deeper look at this
insightful, darkly hilarious show and what made it work so well, but also why some of those same traits that made it a critical darling and fan favorite might have been the reason it was almost left behind. and why it's now, nearly 20 years after that perfect finale, starting to find a whole new audience.
This is The Total Take, where we break down the most analyzable films and TV shows of all time through visual storytelling, writing, world, symbolism, and impact. Here's our total take [music] on Six Feet Under. Our first category is the writing, the originality, inventiveness, and insight
within the script. [music] What is the piece's true takeaway? Six Feet Under writing manages to exist in two worlds at once. Combining its dark humor with a deeply felt level of emotional earnestness. Set in a family-run funeral home in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the show follows three siblings and their
mother as they attempt to deal with the grief of losing patriarch Nathaniel [music] Senior, who dies in the very first episode. The already dysfunctional family is thrown into a new level of chaos and spends the rest of the series attempting to heal from this trauma and the many other obstacles of personality
and circumstance that come their way. >> I keep thinking it's going to get easier, but it just doesn't.
No, it doesn't. It just gets more familiar. >> Mortality isn't just a major [music] theme of 6 feet under. It's the framing the show is built around. Each episode opens with a death running the gamut from the humorous to the horrifying that sets up the theme for the episode. For example, a joyous drunk woman popping
out of a limo's moon roof only to slam into the bucket of an electrician's truck opening an episode where we see the characters face negative consequences of their own brushes with indulgence and intoxicants. Or a woman living alone choking to death with no one to help or find her. setting up an
episode in which all of the characters must grapple with their own difficult or even completely lacking personal connections. [music] The openings shock us with the reminder that death could come for us at any moment, shining a new light on all of the other dramas of our lives and of the characters on screen. Many
people spend most of their life trying to avoid thinking or talking about death [music] in the same way they try to avoid many of life's most difficult conversations. And so, Six Feet Under aims to confront us with all of this directly, sometimes making that dialogue with death more literal, which we'll
unpack in a bit. This willingness to be so upfront and sincere about its emotions and themes set 6 Feet Under apart from its cohort of golden age of television shows. Whereas many prestige shows of the era often featured characters who were a bit removed or harder to read, usually hiding their
true emotions under layers of armor, the emotions of the characters on Six Feet Under are always right under the surface, bubbling up to the top on a regular basis. This could lead to some rather saccharine moments that could feel out of step with the quiet, brooding, and opaque emotions preferred during the era.
