For those of you who watch this show and haven’t seen the 75 minute finale, you may want to keep on surfin’. I’m going to spoil the whole thing for you if you read this.
Six Feet Under has always been odd, offbeat and very compelling to me. I think HBO fucked it up by having years in between seasons and it lost its following. I think that’s why Alan Ball decided to end it.
And end it, he did. OMG. I’ve never seen anything like it. The episode (first 60 minutes) was fairly normal, no surprises, things wrapping up as you would expect. But then. THEN there’s the last 15 minutes. I’d read a review about the last episode and the reviewer described the last 15 minutes as a “dazzling look into the future”, so I expected a flash forward kind of thing.
However, I did NOT expect to be sobbing so hard that I couldn’t breathe. Nick was too. Yes, it was a flash forward, but it was all the way to the end. Claire was driving away in her Prius, heading to New York to start her photography career and you see everyone’s future. Damn, I’m starting to cry just thinking about it now!
You see everyone’s life as it unfolds, all the way to the end. It was spectacular. It was horrifyingly real. (As I try not to start sobbing again.)
We know that every living thing dies. It’s not a new fact. But when it’s so clearly illustrated for you in that way that Alan Ball has of making it entrancing and real and poignant… Well, all I can say is that I think you’ll sob, too.
The ending is not a bummer, it’s just REAL. I cried (am crying) about it because it will happen this way to each and every one of us. We will age, we will die.
It’s odd that a random TV show can have such a jarring effect on one’s perspective. I guess that’s why Alan Ball is often called a genius.
What I do know is that this life is finite. I believe there are always more lives to live, but this one will end. It’s up to each of us to do the very best we can to live this life to its fullest. Carpe diem.