neurological dryer lint

watching six feet under has nudged - not quite vaulted or even shoved hard - but inched my entrenched worldview in a different direction. say what you will about television - the imagination of our generation isn't kerouac or ernest hemingway, it's guys like SFU's creator, alan ball, that are telling these stories. SFU is a five-year-long story that, were it not dozens of DVD's long, i could re-watch again and again, like rereading a tolkein novel, because there's so much to absorb.

i just got through the last disc of the last season. and there is a clear overall theme to the show but it's fairly easy to miss. watch a handful of episodes, from different seasons, and you will see the powerful emotion - and the silent, tired, boredom that is its counterpart - explode off of the actors as they fight through loss and disappointment and hurt, as they try to find happiness and meaning...

but only watch a few, and you'll see but a hint of the series' message: all life ends eventually, and almost always unpredictably. so live.

if you see the whole series, end to end, the way that theme is illustrated will absolutely knock you over. in that sense the finale was flawless, moving, powerful, a perfect conclusion. you don't often see how ever character in a story ends up, see them all face death in their own time, and see the people around them, the way the experience of loss changes them.

while the whole series was a brilliant portrayal of different dysfunctional relationships, the one flaw was the tendency to bring everything back to sex - something i'm sure that HBO's management had a hand in. the creators always tried to illustrate the baser instincts of human behavior, and for the most part they nailed anger, sadness, hope, spirituality, etc... but with love it ended up looking like sex was the eventuality for every relationship, be it friend, partner, spouse, etc... you rarely saw sacrificial love. if nate fisher had tried to give of himself instead of always taking from everyone he loved, he may have ended up differently, found some happiness.

SFU's characters were wonderful, and it was so easy for me to connect with them:

nate = super selfish, confused, desperate for life to work out according to his plans

david = never able to be comfortable with himself, ashamed by his own desires

keith = trying to break out of the mold created for him by his past

claire = constantly struggling to be hip enough and different enough and relevant enough, to find an identity

i've really enjoyed the storytelling in the sopranos, the west wing, house, etc. but none of them changed the way i think like six feet. if you have a few months to dig through it all, it's worth the time.