Six Feet Under - The Complete First Season (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a watershed series in American television. HBO, which has created some of the best written and realisticly in-your-face programming in the history of television (the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Oz) has re-written what is possible on the small screen with Six Feet Under.
The first season of the series deals with issues such as death, drug use, homosexuality, family alienation, mental illness, divorce, bankrupcy, co-dependency and incest. The amazing part is that it NEVER comes across like a soap opera or ABC Afterschool Special. It is very real, and moving.
Alan Ball, the extraordinary writer of the film "American Beauty" writes and directs this tour de force in television excellence. While this show is not for everyone, if you enjoyed Ball's previous work, you no doubt will love this show as much as the critics and millions of fans have. I think the Sopranos and Six Feet Under are reason enough to get HBO.
Ball creates multi-layered, complex characters for this ensemble cast, and allows them to develop throughout the season. What you see up front is not always what you get in the end.
For the price, I would have liked some extra features, like behind the scenes or a "making of" featurette, or interviews with the stars. Many of those are already available on HBO's website, I don't think it would have killed them to include a little extra for the {price}. However, that being said, you are paying {much} for 13 HOURS of entertainment. That is fairly in line with the 2 hour movie average price on DVD. And this is INFINITELY better than 99.999% of the movies that have come out in the last 10 years.
Buy it, enjoy it, and wait patiently for the next season...coming soon.

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From Alan Ball, the Oscar(r) winning writer of "American Beauty", comes a series that digs where others fear to tread. When a bus kills Nathaniel Fisher, owner of the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles, the tragedy casts a pall on the homecoming of his prodigal son Nate. Together with with mother Ruth, brother David and sister Claire, they must address the family business, and the many more personal matters that arise when your life is Six Feet Under.

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Six Feet Under - The Complete Fifth Season (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)WARNING: If you haven't watched Season 5 yet, be VERY CAREFUL - some of your fellow Amazonians have peppered their reviews with spoilers, such as the (otherwise excellent) review by Lawrance M. Bernabo. I will avoid spoilers here.
The 5th and final season of 6FU lets us spend 12 more hours with our friends Nate, David, Ruth, Claire, Brenda, and Keith. Season 5 includes more of the great drama, great acting, and dark, off-beat humor that 6FU fans love so much.
Season 5 begins where Season 4 left off: Nate and Brenda have decided to get married and have a baby. As any 6FU fan could guess, neither of these events will go smoothly, nor will the decision to marry make their relationship suddenly problem-free.
Keith and David want children and are exploring adoption as well as hiring a surrogate. One way or another, they will become successful in this endeavor, but will find that a child does not solve all their problems, but rather poses new challenges to each of them and their relationship with each other (just as in real life).
Toward the end of Season 4, Claire was starting to realize but not really accept that she might never be a great artist, and we saw her go down a spiral into depression and excessive drug use. In Season 5, she starts to get a grip. Having dropped out of art school, she gets a common office job through a temp agency, where she is totally out of her element - her coworkers vote Republican, use Splenda in their Mochaccinos, and hang out at chain restaurants like Chilis and Olive Garden. This storyline results in interesting experiences and personal growth for Claire, and maybe a new relationship with someone she never would have expected to fall in love with.
Ruth's storylines mainly involve George. You'll recall from Seasons 3 & 4, these two lovebirds rushed into marriage after a very brief but intense infatuation. Then Ruth soon found out all kinds of nasty surprises about George - his many ex-wives, his lousy relationship with his children, and most of all, his extreme mental health problems which put a huge strain on his and Ruth's fledgling marriage. In Season 5, Ruth and George go through more changes and eventually resolve the question of whether they will stay together.
Something BIG happens in the 8th or 9th episode, which sets up storylines and conflicts for the last 3 episodes. If you care about these characters, it will affect you.
The final episode resolves each main character's central issue or conflict. There is a final gathering at the dinner table and a memorial of sorts, and then the episode leaves you with a very bittersweet feeling as we say goodbye to each of our friends forever.
I do not believe Season 5 is the best season of this excellent show. I'm not sure that the writing is as consistently excellent as in past seasons. A few of the characters' plot arcs from previous seasons are recycled in Season 5. For example, how many times do we have to watch Billy go off his meds and become annoying and dangerous to the people who love him? Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away here - you'll see it coming a mile away. Other multi-episode story arcs bring old demons back to haunt Nate and David, when we'd thought they had dealt with and resolved these issues in previous seasons.
But these are relatively minor quibbles. Mostly, Season 5 is very, very good, and a fine finish to an outstanding series. After the last episode, you'll feel sad that this show is over, and you'll miss these characters.
Finally, I think the price is way too high for a mere 12 episodes. HBO is very greedy for charging so much. Other networks typically charge 40-50 bucks for a season with almost twice as many episodes. At the high prices HBO charges for shows like 6FU and Sopranos, many viewers will opt to rent from Netflix rather than buy, and greedy HBO ends up being worse off in the end.


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One of TV's most acclaimed drama series, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning Six Feet Under, concludes its groundbreaking, five season run. Each of the main characters will come to embrace the cycle of life - birth, death, and re-birth - in ways that are both unique and interconnected. Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends. DVD Features:Audio CommentaryEpisodic PreviewsEpisodic RecapsFeaturetteAudio Commentary:Six audio commentaries with the cast, crew, and creatorFeaturette:Six Feet Under: 2001-2005, two 30-minute retrospectives Life and Loss: The Impact of Six Feet Under, a featurette

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Six Feet Under - The Complete Fourth Season (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)For some strange reason unbeknownst to me, many people seem to find this season "too depressing," "slow," "boring," etc, etc. I'm in complete disagreement with this.
In my opinion, while the season is a bit darker than the last three, it perfects the morbid, slightly-depressed and slightly-humourous tone the series always had. A little less humor, yes. A little more drama, you bet. But why is that such a bad thing when the drama is so good?
Personal highlights: When David finds unrelenting terror in "That's My Dog," Claire and her high antics with her artsy friends in "Terror Starts at Home," and the sinister atmosphere in most of the season finale "Untitled."
Highly recommended.

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There's a new pecking order at the Fisher & Diaz funeral home, but Nate, Ruth, David and Claire still try to make every day above ground a good one. Death and dysfunction are par for the course in The Complete Fourth Season of Six Feet Under. DVD Features:Audio Commentary:7 Audio commentaries w/ Alan Ball, writers and directors on episodes 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12Episodic Previews:Episodic Previews and Recaps, Season 1-3 Recap Featurette:Cut By Cut: Editing Six Feet Under--a featurette on how an episode is put together in the editing room

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Six Feet Under - The Complete Second Season (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you haven't seen Season One, stop reading this right now and go watch it. You're in for a real treat, as 6FU is one of the most well-written TV dramas ever.
If you watched Season Two when it originally aired and are considering purchasing this set, you should know that the DVD extras are not plentiful. Several of the 13 episodes have optional commentaries you can listen to while you're watching the episode; I find this is a big investment of time for a small payoff, but that's just me. Plus, the last disc contains a short documentary "anatomy of a stiff," which is worth watching once, but not really that compelling. Another factor that might affect your purchase decision is that the episodes themselves are rich and stand up to repeated viewings, unlike most of the tripe on television. Plus, watching the episodes on DVD - on YOUR schedule - makes for a much better experience than waiting a week or more between episodes as they are aired on HBO.
If you've seen Season One but not Season Two yet, the best indicator of whether you'll like Two is how much you liked One. Yes, it's true, fans disagree over which of the first two seasons was better. But the overwhelming majority that liked One a lot also liked Two a lot.
I think both of the first two seasons were EXCELLENT, but a bit different. Almost every episode of the first season was very good or excellent. The second season had the same average quality as the first season, but more variability - that is, a few episodes or storylines were a bit weaker than what we typically saw in Season One, but other episodes and storylines were even better than those in Season One. The last two episodes of Season Two rank among the best television I've ever seen.
I will try to set up the events of Season Two without giving anything away. At the end of Season One, Nate was coming to grips with a newly diagnosed brain condition that could cause seizures, or even a stroke and death. Nate and Brenda had declared their love for each other, despite a fairly complicated and sometimes rocky relationship. David was single and struggling in his love life, and coming to terms with being "out." He and Keith were still friends, and it was clear that they still had feelings for each other. These storylines are developed further in Season Two, with many interesting twists and turns along the way. Of course, there are also storylines involving Ruth and Claire. Ruth's growth in Season Two is nonlinear - she seems to make progress in one episode, but then reverts back to her depressed, repressed, controlling self in the next. Claire has interesting relationships with different people, each of which shapes her in some way, good or bad, and she gets a bit of direction in her life toward the end of Season Two.
One of the things that makes 6FU so great is that it's so real. The characters are 3-dimensional, flawed, and (mostly) likeable. Whenever I watch the show after not having seen it for a month or more, it's like getting together again with old friends. I also respect the show for taking seriously the issues of religion and minority sexual orientation (Amazon.com has previously censored me for using the word that begins with "h"). Half of the main characters are religious, and their views are treated very respectfully. One or two of the main characters are g__ (again trying to avoid the censor) and they are portrayed as real people, with the same joys and sorrows and problems as straight folks.
Bottom line: If you haven't seen 6FU season two yet, you are in for a real treat. Be patient through the first two episodes, though, as their slightly lower quality is not representative of the rest of this outstanding season.

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When death is your business, what is your life? For Nate, David, Ruth and Claire, the world outside the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home continues to be at least as challenging-and far less predictable-as the one inside.DVD Features:Audio Commentary:Commentaries with Alan Ball, writers and directors on Episodes 1,7,10,12,13Episodic PreviewsEpisodic Recaps:Season 1 RecapFeaturette

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Six Feet Under - The Complete First Two Seasons (2-Pack) (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)The first two seasons of "Six Feet Under" are quirky, unusual, and different - it's not every day that you find a TV show that deals head on with death yet still somehow maintains a playful sense of humor.
As satisfying and rewarding as a good play, film or novel, this series is nonetheless definitely not for the timid. This disturbing, provocative show often makes its viewers uncomfortable - this is a show that asks its viewers to think and respond, not just sit and be passively entertained.
"Six Feet Under" is an excellent show in the same league (in terms of the quality of its writing and the acting of its ensemble cast) as "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "The West Wing" and "Deadwood."

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The opening two seasons of Alan Ball's series concerning the surviving members of Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles, and the personal matters that arise when your life is Six Feet Under.

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Six Feet Under - The Complete First Four Seasons (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a great show, and well worth owning in my opinion. The question is, why does it cost $360 to buy all four seasons together when you can buy them each separately from Amazon for a total of about $275???

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Six Feet Under - The Complete Third Season (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)After hearing about and reading a lot of the hype surrounding this show, I thought it noteworthy to check out. Unfortunately for me, I have no cable television with which to view HBO. Therefore, I was stuck waiting until this show came out on DVD. When season one finally did come out on DVD, I rushed out and rented disc one. After only watching the first couple episodes, I was completely hooked, and decided to buy the DVD set. Since then, Six Feet Under has become my favorite shows.
Season three is definitely a pivotal season. Alan Ball does less of the writing, and this is easily noted within many episodes. Much of the quirkiness of the Fischer family seems lost, or at least altered. There seems to be far more drama with less of the fun comic relief that was always present in the first two seasons. The ebbing ups and downs seem to pique much more drastically, making season three quite a roller coaster ride of emotions, reaching it's crescendo with a dramatic cliffhanger finale that leaves you anxious to see what happens in season four.
Each and every character undergoes growth and maturity throughout the season, as in previous seasons. Claire is busy adjusting to art school, while David is trying desperately to patch up his relationship with Keith. Nate approaches life with a newfound appreciation after his brain surgery, and Brenda doesn't seem to be a part of his new plans. Ruth longingly seeks companionship after breaking things off with Nicolai, and finds it in some rather odd places. Federico is trying to find his place in the business as a new partner, while also trying to deal with troubles of his own at home. Brenda, after a brief excursion, attempts to find her way in the world without Nate. Each and every character and sub-plot is a completely unique and enticing character study of it's own, and the incredible acting from everyone involved makes each and every character totally believable.
Regardless of a few minor quibbles with this season, I still maintain that this is on of the best television shows I've ever seen. Never before have I viewed a television series that so accurately portrays the sheer rawness of human sentiment, spanning the gamut of emotional intensity with such fervor and wit. Even though this isn't my favorite season of the series, it still makes for far better viewing than the vast majority of shows that plague our television sets these days.
This single show is almost enough to make me want to fork out the money to get cable, but thanks to the DVD releases, that isn't necessary. I'm only sad this show is going to end after a mere five seasons. Overall, a very highly recommended series.

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(HBO Dramatic Series) Life. Death. Guilt. Afterlife. For the Fishers, the more things stay the same, the more they change. Get ready to break new emotional ground with Six Feet Under: The Complete Third Season. DVD Features:Audio Commentary:5 Audio commentaries w/ Alan Ball, writers and directors on episodes 3, 4, 5, 11 and 13 Interviews:"A Birdseye View of the Third Season" : An in-depth interview with show creator Alan Ball including the original HBO trailer

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