Didge – The View From Down Under

*Please note, this post contains spoilers from the last series of Six Feet Under.*

Tonight the second last episode ever of Six Feet Under will screen in Australia. It has been almost a year since the program finished in America. I think I’m probably one of the only Australians who hasn’t imported the DVD or downloaded the episodes. (I’m still on dial-up, so downloading was out of the question). I’ve just quietly waited for Channel Nine to screen the episodes, which recently have been moved from a 10:30ish slot to midnight. How ironic, Six Feet Under buried in the graveyard shift.

Last week’s episode, All Alone, focused more or less entirely on Nate’s death. Losing one of the characters was almost like losing a good friend. The emotion felt real and raw. It was easily one of the most devastating episodes of a television program I have experienced. Indeed, the only other piece of scripted television that I can remember that had a simular effect on me was the “That’s My Dog” episode of SFU.

I cried through most of the episode, then continued with sporadic sobs for the next hour. There are at least two reasons for this: the death of a main character in a show you adore is always an emotional event, and the show’s imminent demise seemed just a bit more real. I’ve been following this show ardently since it began. The characters are so well drawn that long ago they became real people for me, living, breathing, bleeding people. And of course, also susceptible to death.

Death is such a minor part of most television programs. Sure main characters have died in emotional finales, and bad guys are always getting killed on action series, and there’s always a corpse or two on the copious detective shows on the box. But death is always perfunctory on those programs, there’s never any depth, or dwelling on sadness, the emptiness it leaves in the people who remain. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see a program deals with death on a regular basis, every week in fact.

Another reason why the episode was so powerful was that it made you question your own mortality, as well as the people around you that you love. But amid all of this depression the show hasn’t lost any of its dark wit. (Through my sobs escaped several deep laughs at Brenda’s line: “What is this? Some Quaker thing? You fuck someone’s husband to death and then bring them a quiche?”

It will be sad to say goodbye to my favourite television program, but as was the motto for the final series, Everything, Everyone, Everywhere, Ends.

And then we can relive the whole thing on DVD.