Sunday nights are my “Jen and 6 Feet Under<\/em> date nights”. Jen and I were roommates for many years<\/a> – and we were addicted to 6 Feet Under<\/em>, and we associate watching the show with one another, even though we now live apart. Also, I don’t have HBO. So every Sunday night, I go over to her place, we drink wine, eat carrots and hummus, and watch the show in UTTER SILENCE, until the credits begin to roll, and then we start to talk about it FEVERISHLY.<\/p>\n As I’ve said before<\/a>, I think there’s something a little bit off about this season. It feels different. Maybe it’s that it has more of a soap opera-ish vibe, but I even think that the production values are different. It’s lost that stark in-the-presence-of-death color palate, and is much more … er … Dynasty<\/i>.<\/p>\n I’ll keep watching. There are still moments of acting so beautiful that it takes my breath away.<\/p>\n The show is still capable of surprising me.<\/p>\n Examples:<\/p>\n — When Ruth and George (WHAT A NUT-CASE) go on the hike, and end up stopping by Ruth’s sister’s house – played by the incomparable Patricia Clarkson. What was beautiful was – Ruth has gone through this weird transformation following marrying that lying son-of-a-bitch geologist. She is submissive, unhappy … I can’t get a line on what she’s feeling anymore, what she’s going through. The second she saw her sister (and her best friend, marvelously played by Kathy Bates) – they hugged, and Ruth spontaneously started to weep. I have sisters myself. I SO relate to that moment. You think you’re fine, you go along, you’re handling yourself out in the cold harsh world, you’re having relationships with men that feel intimate, that are intimate – but none of that can hold a candle to the intimacy with family. She just started openly weeping as she hugged her sister. I found that so WONDERFUL, the kind of unspoken moment of truth that is rarely shown in television, and I thought: “Ohhh, okay, so that’s where Ruth is at right now.” <\/p>\n — The fight between Vanessa, her sister, and that hose-monster Infinity was … fantastic. Frightening. Real. I thought: Holy crap. They are going to go GO for it. It was raw, it was messy, there was a hand-held camera. The fact that it was 2 sisters <\/i>beating the crap out of another woman made it even more dangerous – violent. No holding back. It annoys me when fights between women are called “cat fights”. As though there’s something adorable about women being pissed off. Maybe if they called it a LIONESS fight I wouldn’t be annoyed.<\/p>\n — And yet I feel very sorry for Rico, even though: what the hell was he doing messing around with that ho anyway? By the way, that actress is great. What a completely real character she has created. Waking up, lighting up a joint, completely un-warm, and completely manipulative. Rico is in WAY over his head. He’s not built for infidelity. He can’t do it and get away with it.<\/p>\n — When he slept over in the room with the cadavers, I thought: Damn. That is one bleak scene, man.<\/p>\n — Speaking of those randomly wonderful scenes that 6 Feet Under<\/i> still has: the scene when Ruth finds out Rico has been thrown out and they have this little 2-person scene together. First: hats off to the writers. It was a perfectly constructed exchange. It went up, down, sideways, forwards … but it felt completely natural at the same time. That was my favorite scene last night.<\/p>\n — I hate George. What is up with that guy? Chopping down that tree?<\/p>\n — In terms of Claire’s most recent plotline: my main fear is that the writers of 6 Feet Under<\/i> have somehow gotten hold of my private journals and have used what they found therein.<\/p>\n — I loved when Edie said, “First off, could you please turn off that vagina music?”<\/p>\n — I didn’t like the Edie character at first but she has completely grown on me. I like how she treats Claire. She treats her with respect. So often, Claire’s friends and boyfriends treat her like a doormat, like she’s stupid, easily fooled … Edie seems to be straight-up honest. And also seems to ‘get’ Claire. I care about the Claire character. I relate to her. (They stole my journals) I don’t like to see her treated like she’s an idiot.<\/p>\n — WHY is Claire friends with that other bitch? The one who sashays around in the slip and is unbelievably obnoxious? I know girls like that, and I hate her. Whoever that actress is, she has completely succeeded in making me despise her. I yearn to see her trip, and fall, and be chastened somehow. In public. Wipe that smirk off her face.<\/p>\n — Jen and I both screamed – out loud – when Joe (Mr. Wounded-Soul French Horn player) walked in on Nate and Brenda.<\/p>\n — I do not think Brenda loves Joe. I think she is a completely messed-up and neurotic individual (I say that knowing that I am one myself, takes one to know one) – and she saw a chance at having a “normal” life and a “normal” relationship with this guy. She is trying to be something else, she is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It won’t work. And no matter how obnoxiously self-righteous Nate gets, he is also <\/i>a messed-up and neurotic individual – and the 2 of them were like 2 peas in a pod. Love takes many many different forms. I relate to the Brenda character. I look around me at how other people do it, how the magazines tell us to have relationships, how my friends do it … and I think: Damn, I just … don’t … fit IN with that… I’ll never be able to do it!! Well, who says I have to? Who the hell has proscribed all this stuff? Years of precedence, you might say? Centuries of moral development? WHATEVER. It’s not for me. And it’s not for Brenda and Nate either. They’re drawn to each other, like magnets … they recognize that different-ness in one another … and … maybe it’s not “love” – at least not in the way the world might recognize it. But – who the hell cares what the world thinks?<\/p>\n I remember the look on his face in the episode before last when Lisa came to him at the very end of the show and said, “It’s different this time with Brenda. You love her. It’s real.”<\/p>\n He got this look on his face as though a continent had shifted inside of him. He said, “I’ve got a really bad feeling all of a sudden.”<\/p>\n Ah yes. I know that sensation. To me – the realization of love is usually unpleasant. Like: uh-oh … oh shit … too late to turn back now …<\/p>\n I don’t care what Nate says, Mr. “I just want to have fun now, and go to Travel Town with my daughter, and continuously not buy a stroller because I actually want to feel the fruit of my loins in my arms at all times, so she never has a moment of separation anxiety or pain or sadness and goes on being the unrealistic little Buddha-baby that she is … But hey, man, I just want to fuck Brenda and have fun … That’s what I’m about now ” …: I feel that he loves Brenda.<\/p>\n — I adored the gospel singing at the funeral. The joy in LIVING, not the sadness in death. Those people were celebrating a life, not mourning. <\/p>\n Oh, and I haven’t even MENTIONED David’s journey.<\/p>\n It’s feeling a little bit soap opera-ish to me. I believe in his freak-outs. I personally think he’s the best actor on the show. Why isn’t anyone else but Claire really rallying around to support David? What is the PROBLEM with this family? David is obviously messed up!!<\/p>\n I loved the conversation she had with David, confessing that she had a “humiliating homosexual experience”. It’s the tone of his responses, his entire vibe, the way he LISTENS – that convinces me he’s the best one on the show. His acting is invisible – it’s all in how he listens.<\/p>\n Oh, and I completely did not believe that Keith would sleep with Celeste. Did not believe it at all. It was a plot device. To get him fired. To mess up his life. I HATE it when you feel the clunky hand of the playwright in the plot. You shouldn’t feel them moving the characters around like chess pieces. I did not believe at all that Keith would succumb. No. Bzzzt. Sorry. You lose.<\/p>\n And lastly: a message to the writers of 6 Feet Under<\/i>: PLEASE RETURN MY PRIVATE JOURNALS. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunday nights are my “Jen and 6 Feet Under date nights”. Jen and I were roommates for many years – and we were addicted to 6 Feet Under, and we associate watching the show with one another, even though we … Continue reading