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Six Feet Under
Dec. 8th, 2004 08:00 pmOkay, time to sing the praises of my favorite television show, Six Feet Under. For those who don't watch much television (dad), let me tell you a bit about it. The show is about the Fisher family, and in the first episode, the father, Nathaniel Fisher, is killed. Nathaniel fisher is an undertaker, and upon his death his two sons take over his practice. The great thing about Six Feet Under is that, unlike all the crime shows that are popular right now, nobody ever tries to solve any of the deaths. People die at the beginning of every episode, but there's no hunt for the killer, or time spent in "high-tech" labs that feature blue lighting and machines that go "bing." And although there's some closure at the end of each episode, there's still continuity and character growth across episodes. Lastly, the grief process is an inherent part of Six Feet Under, and it's interesting to see how the Fisher family deals with this thing that it sees and deals with every day.
I remember back when Six Feet Under first started--I was mildly interested in it because I knew the theme music was composed by my favorite film composer, Thomas Newman. He's the same guy who wrote the music for movies like The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty. It wasn't enough interest to get me to watch the show, though, until a housemate of mine got me started on it again.
For the most part, television is full of crap--this reality TV show, that reality TV show, this unreal soap opera of a drama, that unreal sitcom. Blah. The best stories are the ones that we can draw meaning from, ones that aren't just giant time-suckers or ripoffs of shows that were suddenly successful.
[Ir]regardless of the medium, I don't have time for empty stories, and really, I don't think anyone does. Life's too short. Did people invent so many time-saving devices just to waste that time in front of a glowing box or reading ridiculous, theoretically entertaining garbage from some dark corner of the internet?
There's a line from a Modest Mouse song that I can't get out of my head these days:
You wasted life/why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?
Heh. Time to climb off this soapbox for a while.
I remember back when Six Feet Under first started--I was mildly interested in it because I knew the theme music was composed by my favorite film composer, Thomas Newman. He's the same guy who wrote the music for movies like The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty. It wasn't enough interest to get me to watch the show, though, until a housemate of mine got me started on it again.
For the most part, television is full of crap--this reality TV show, that reality TV show, this unreal soap opera of a drama, that unreal sitcom. Blah. The best stories are the ones that we can draw meaning from, ones that aren't just giant time-suckers or ripoffs of shows that were suddenly successful.
[Ir]regardless of the medium, I don't have time for empty stories, and really, I don't think anyone does. Life's too short. Did people invent so many time-saving devices just to waste that time in front of a glowing box or reading ridiculous, theoretically entertaining garbage from some dark corner of the internet?
There's a line from a Modest Mouse song that I can't get out of my head these days:
You wasted life/why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?
Heh. Time to climb off this soapbox for a while.
