Six Feet Under

He say you Brade Runner!

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When I was a teenager, I loved Blade Runner. I loved the atmosphere, the plot, the characters, the lines.

I am still very fond of the film, but after watching the Final Cut (which came out recently) yesterday, I am sorry to say that the original magic isn’t there any more. The film still looks absolutely gorgeous, even more so on the new DVD release, which almost makes you wonder what all the fuss about BluRay or HD-DVD is about if DVDs can look this stunning. The atmosphere is still there. But somehow I can no longer get into the faux-noirish plot and characters. Deckard is a dick, but not a very complex one; Rachael is, well, Sean Young, not the most exciting of actresses at the best of times; and most of the characters, including the replicants, remain one-dimensional. Much of what I originally found intriguing and evocative now strikes me as a tad too facile: “Ooh, we’re being vague here!”

Sushi, that’s what my wife used to call me. Cold fish.

This probably sounds worse than it ought to, because as I said, I used to love the film, so it came as a bit of a shock to find that my feelings had changed. Nevertheless – the film still looks amazing. Judging from the DVD quality, chances are it never looked better. And somehow the coherence of the visual design even makes the ’80s booboos work: Pris’ and Rachael’s hair, the shoulder pads, the neon. Although, after first seeing the film in the late ’80s or early ’90s, the intro sequence with its caption “Los Angeles, 2019” made me think that we’re probably still not much closer to flying cars than we were back then. Well, we’ll see in twelve years or so…

What was fun, though: spotting the actors from series I’ve been watching since. I’d never realised that I’d first seen Brenda’s mom wearing some artificial snake scales, a transparent raincoat and very little else. (Helloooo, Mrs. Chenowith!) And for some odd reason, I’ve only seen William Sanderson in parts where his first name consisted of double initials: E.B. Farnum, J.F. Sebastian. (Perhaps he should next try his hand at P.T. Barnum.) Finally, even though I know that Gaff is played by Edward James Olmos, but apart from the pock marks I simply don’t see it – Gaff looks and sounds so much creepier than Admiral Adama. If President Roslin ever gets hold of a Blade Runner video (probably with the corners cut off), she’ll get quite a shock…

The Blue Bird of Sheer Fucking Misery

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It’s Nate’s party, and he’ll scream if he wants to – and kill blue birds if they fly into his kitchen and threaten to poop all over the armatures. Symbolic? Especially considering that it follows this exchange between Maggie and Nate:

– I know that if you think life’s a vending machine where you put in virtue and you get out happiness, then you’re probably going to be disappointed.
– Is that what I sound like?
– A little.

 It’s just a bird, silly!

For those of you who are well and truly confused now, I’m talking about the episode of Six Feet Under we just watched over breakfast. (Stilton and Züpfe – the breakfast of champions!) We’re four episodes into season 5 now, and all is not well… well, almost anywhere. Nate’s afraid he can’t love Brenda or, indeed, anyone except himself, and he goes about proving that pretty convincingly at times. Billy’s pretty much batshit, having gone off his meds, so that even self-absorbed Claire notices. Ruth and George aren’t getting anywhere fast, either, in spite of more ECT treatments. At least Rico got his rocks off (second episode in a row! must be his lucky month…) and nothing went too drastically wrong with Keith and David, the latter narrowly avoiding some quick, unplanned sex with a hairdresser.

And reading through the previous paragraph, this sounds like absolute soap opera. But it isn’t, not really – because you buy the characters. They feel real, and so does their pain. But this episode was nasty in how it almost made me believe that it’s hopeful, with the Death of the Week being a 96-year old woman, and her equally ancient friend doing her convincing “It’s okay, she’s lived a long, full life” speech. But trust me, that was as hopeful as it got today.

And there is something very ominous about how the episode didn’t fade to white, as all the others do, but to black.

What women don’t need…

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… well, there’s lots of answers to that (dare I say “More shoes”?), but yesterday’s episode of Six Feet Under (“Take my hand”) gave us one clear answer: mentally unstable boyfriends/husbands. Okay, Claire obviously is oblivious to Billy’s manic behaviour, seeing how she’s lost on Planet Claire and likely to remain there for a while. Ruth, however, couldn’t be more aware of George’s mental and emotional problems if she tried.

I’m finding the George storyline in season 5 quite heartbreaking. After his brief sojourn in hospital, complete with ECT treatment, he’s been trying so hard – but it’s obviously an uphill battle. And while Ruth seems intent on being passive-aggressive (something that all of the Fishers are surprisingly good at), it’s understandable that she’s feeling trapped and depressed. I don’t think I could handle rotting food squirrelled in my partner’s clothes any better.

Happy TV family watching happy TV movies

David and Keith seem to be doing best of all of the series’ relationships. In their case, I’m more worried about the surrogate mother they’ve just had an interview with: that woman sounds like she’s likely to saw off her husband’s head and then make cookies, all the while talking to decapitated hubby. There’s something very, very creepy about her cheerfulness. But then, we’ve already had spousocide in Six Feet Under (frying pan to the head – season 2, perchance?) – and in any case, if anyone’s likely to off their beloved partner, it might just be Billy “Let me carve my name on your ass” Chenowith.

And he’s still a dozen times more likeable than Mother Chenowith. Even Grendel would give her a wide berth, I’d wager.

Today is a good day to watch others die (or is it?)

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Yup, Sunday. It’s Six Feet Under day.

Today’s episode – the first one in season 5 – feels like it continues straight from the end of season 4, emotionally, even if enough time must have passed for George to have undergone ECT treatment and Rico to have started dating again. (He doesn’t seem to be very good at it…) There’s the same mix of tentative hope and deep sadness, the former perhaps most in David and Keith’s decision to try for surrogacy, the latter especially in the aftermath of George’s illness and Ruth’s fears of what her life will be like, tied to a sick person. Her hold on her life has always been precarious, but now she seems to lose against her fears.

David and Keith

What else is there? Billy’s rapidly becoming much more likeable than bitchy Claire (although she didn’t necessarily deserve the hard slap her mother gave her for something very minor). The Death of the Week(tm) was one of the uglier ones in the series, uglier even than the Elevator of Doom at the end of season 4. (Definitely the kind of thing that could put anyone off psychotherapy…) And Rachel Griffiths once again shows what a great actress she is.

Brenda and Nate

On a slightly different note: we watched Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly yesterday. Can’t say I like it as much as Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a much lighter, fluffier piece, and it forgoes the pathos of the later movie. But, like Once Upon a Time…, it’s got a great final showdown – and the music, like many of Morricone’s works, is iconic. It even survives being played by a ukulele orchestra. Don’t believe me? See for yourselves:

Untitled

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Good bye, Six Feet Under season 4. It’s been a wild ride, and it’s been emotional. What with graphic suicides, kidnappings by lunatics, illegal burials in the desert, and men getting squished in half by elevators.

I’d forgotten how much the last episode of season 4 sets up things for season 5. In between the second and the third season, there was such a strong break, and the same can be said to a lesser extent for the end of season 3. “Untitled”, however, the fourth season finale sets up most if not all of the pieces for the next season.

And it delivers the strange but compelling mix of tragedy, black humour and hope like no other series ever has. Yes, there’s some of the darkest material we’ve seen in the series so far, but there’s always rays of sunshine somewhere in between the clouds. Otherwise it would be unbearable at times.

Father and son

I’m both looking forward to and dreading season 5 now, because I know that it’ll affect me just as much as the first time I watched it. And chances are my reaction to the last episode will be pretty much the same. I hope my love is ready for the spectacle of her guy being a weepy heap for an entire Sunday…

Season 4, I liked you. Perhaps you’re the weakest, most meandering of all five seasons, but being the weakest of such a strong bunch is nothing to be ashamed of. Season 5 – looking forward to seeing you!

Art School Confidential

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I usually don’t mind characters that do unlikeable things. One of the reasons why I like Six Feet Under as much is because it doesn’t ingratiate itself to the audience. The protagonists’ flaws are part of what makes the series what it is.

Nevertheless, with all the things that happen in the last two seasons of the series, I must say that I came to find Claire’s character arc fairly grating at times. The art school self-centredness and pretentiousness is obviously shown in a critical light, but even with that distancing mechanism I feel so often that someone should shake Claire, or failing that, someone should slap her. Interestingly enough, though, she’s now become so irritating that I even feel a bit of sympathy for Russell, her git of an ex. And that’s saying something. And ironically, only as Claire becomes the art school bitch of the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5 do I find her art visually interesting. Hmm.

 It’s art, innit?

Yesterday, we watched Garden State, which I hadn’t seen before. Since the film was quite the indie darling at the time, and everyone and their grandmother raved about it, I won’t say too much. I liked it, and I think I’ll like it even more on a second viewing. What struck me was how similar the plot was to Elizabethtown (which came later), but whereas I only somewhat liked Elizabethtown when I saw it at the cinema but afterwards came to feel more and more that it was phoney as hell, Garden State manages to pull off the quirkiness much better – mainly because it’s not infatuated with it, as so many ‘quirky’ indie flicks are. At its heart it’s about real people with real feelings, whereas Cameron Crowe’s variation on the theme was about ‘characters’.

P.S.: I’d be scared by my father too if he looked just like Bilbo Baggins…

Scary Ian Holm

A season too far…

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We watched another two episodes of the second season of Life on Mars yesterday, and while they were more enjoyable than a couple of the ones earlier this season, they still felt like variations on a theme – and minor variations at that. The impression I got was that they had material for a total of eight or nine episodes, at most. Instead they decided to stretch it to two seasons and 14 episodes altogether, and as a result much of the impact was lost. This could have been a little gem of a series, and instead it turned out to be an okay execution of a clever premise, extended past its sell-by date.

You doity rat (redux)

Quite a few series are milked, the episodes becoming tired, stale rehashes of earlier material. Even fans say that The Simpsons have been going on for too long (although they also argue that the last season has been a marked improvement). Same seems to go for Spooks (another BBC series by Kudos, the producers of Life on Mars), Buffy (I’ve seen few defenses of season 7), The X-Files or most of the Star Trek series.

And then you get series that are killed untimely. Firefly and Deadwood come to mind, but I’m sure there are other examples as well. (Futurama, perhaps, ending with one of the best episodes of the entire series, but it’s being revived right now, so I’ll wait and see.) Series that, quite simply put, had much more to say. Series that quite often also expected something from the viewer, that made demands – for instance, that you tuned in every week. You can’t really tell a good, sustained story if viewers may look in once a month, at best.

Death by trampoline?

To be honest, I can only think of a handful of series that managed to end when they should have. Six Feet Under is a candidate. M*A*S*H, perhaps, although the jury’s out on whether the series maintained its quality, got better, or simply got smug and self-righteous. Most people loved “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”, but there are some who hated it with a vengeance for being Alan Alda’s soapbox.

I guess that, given the choice, most fans would prefer more material of their favourite series even at the price of diminishing quality. But it is frustrating to see them putting out yet another cop series or medical soap but at the same time not allowing more complex, more ambitious – and, admittedly, less audience-friendly – material the breathing space it needs.

Lost, but not forgotten

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Since my love went on holiday today, we caught up on the series we’re watching yesterday, starting with Six Feet Under. One of the things I appreciate about the series is that neither the writers nor the actors feel that a story is only good if the characters are likeable. They have the courage to make the protagonists truly flawed – not the sort of flaw that you’re secretly supposed to like. (Did anyone mention Gene Hunt?)

Is that you, Butch and Sundance?

Nate, especially, has become a lot less instantly likeable. In the first season, he was the closest to an audience stand-in. He was, or seemed to be, the most normal member of the Fisher family. By season 4, he’s become self-righteous and self-pitying, but he’s still the character. He wasn’t rewritten or changed, he simply grew. And that’s one of the reasons why the series feels so real to me, in spite of a couple of melodramatic twists and turns: the characters aren’t static. Life has an impact on them, gradually shaping them, moving them in interesting directions. There are few series that manage to pull this off as well. No, scratch that – I don’t know any series that do it this well.

Lost, the second item on yesterday’s TV menu, doesn’t really do subtle character development (although it may be there, sometimes, in a handful of the characters). What it does, though, is this: the characters who die are given great send-offs. I remember finding Boone really boring… and then they went and made him interesting, and then they killed him off! It was pretty much the same with Shannon, arguably the most annoying character in the series, but then they made me think, “Hang on, perhaps she’s not that bad after all!” And then, BLAM! Cue one paranoid, pissed off Latina with a handgun, and bye-bye, Shannon!

Yesterday we watched Eko’s Last Stand. Now, Eko… Him I liked more or less from the very beginning. He was an intriguing character, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has charisma. Eko’s spiritual side was a great foil to the increasingly fanatical Locke in season 2. His backstory made for a nice change from most of the more ‘whitebread’ character bios. But yesterday we watched him being picked up by Smoky, slammed against trees and then tossed to the ground like a broken toy. And what do we get in the way of new characters? Nikki and Paulo, the Slumber Twins. Almost makes you wish that the two of them meet a sticky end very, very soon…

The last in the trio of TV series we watched yesterday was Deadwood. I’ve written about the characters before, apart from which I’m way too tired to make this entry much longer. Let me just say, though, that I love the series’ casting. And I get a certain sly, postmodern kick out of Milch’s casting of Garret Dillahunt, first as Jack McCall in season 1 (he’s the one who shot Wild Bill Hickock), and then as Francis Wolcott, geologist, sexual deviant and the person who buys Wild Bill’s very last letter. I imagine their casting calls come on a Moebius strip.

Jack McCall…

… and Francis Walcott - twin brothers separated at birth?

Surreal Snakes and heroic metafiction

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– What’s going to happen to us?
– There, there. We always end up in a universe where we exist. Remember Copenhagen?

Remember the self-aware, postmodern hospital soap opera that Nate watches in the first episode of season 3 of Six Feet Under? Well, if that network – COMA TV? – had a 24-type series, chances are it’d be pretty much like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the PS2 game I’m currently playing.

 Quite honestly, I’m not certain whether MGS2 is a badly scripted, badly acted mess of a soap opera as done by Tony Scott, or whether it’s a clever parody of existentialist hi-tech conspiracy thrillers (ah, that old chestnut!). Whichever it is, the game is a weirdly compelling guilty pleasure. But yes, the writing makes Final Fantasy X seem a masterpiece of subtlety.

In part, the game is obviously tongue-in-cheek; the absurd conversations with Otacon when you save the game, or scenes like the one where you have to sneak across a walkway underneath a guard answering the call of nature make that clear. But what about the bathos of Otacon’s relevations concerning his quasi-incestuous relationship with his stepmother? And what about Peter Stillman (Paul Auster fans note the name!), the anti-demolitions expert who faked having a fake leg for years in order to gain sympathy? While the latter reads like bizarre black comedy, the game plays it absolutely straight-faced.

I can’t say I ‘get’ MGS2, nor can I gauge its tone most of the time, but I definitely want to know how it ends – even if people have it that it’s the sort of ending that makes you want to throw your Playstation out the window. But, dagnabit, did they have to make the cutscenes that long? I feel like I should take a day or two off in anticipation of an ending cinematic that’s bound to be (or at least feel) as long as Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

Sunday morning stiff

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To say that I like Six Feet Under would be an understatement. It is perhaps the best TV series I’ve seen. Its writing, acting, filming are among the best in the medium. But beyond its obvious craftsmanship, it has touched something inside me. It has made me think more about life and death, about family and relationships, than anything else.

And yet, I would be lying if I said that it was above criticism. As is any narrative that is, at least in part, made up in installments rather than planned from the beginning, it is uneven. There are storylines and characters that work less well, that sacrifice some complexity for overly facile satire or (less often) for melodrama. They still pull it off most of the time, but those bits stand out as not quite up to the usual standard.

We’re currently watching season 4 – our Sunday morning ritual consists of breakfast and an episode of Six Feet Under. Today we say the episode “The Dare”, and especially since I’m seeing it all for the second time, I feel that the storyline meanders somewhat. Claire’s art school hijinks aren’t that interesting, and I could do without Keith’s bodyguard duty anecdotes. Even those plotlines could work better if there was some more stringency (seasons 2,3 and 5 have this much more) and if it felt that the season is going somewhere, which it will, even if it doesn’t feel like it now. Nevertheless, even in these doldrums there are gems: Joe’s reaction to Brenda’s delicate confession, the way Claire handles her proposal to Edie so matter-of-factly, the return of Kathy Bates’ wonderful, wonderful Bettina.

And the late Lisa Fisher (Lili Taylor) dressed up as a human-sized Petunia, throwing things at Nate: “It’s pain. Get used to it.” Hurls another onion at Nate’s noggin. Bless her.

(Unfortunately I couldn’t find a picture or video of Lisa the Amazing Petunia. Sorry.)