Six Feet Under - The Complete Fifth Season

Product Description

Six Feet Under: The Complete Fifth Season (DVD)

One of TV's most acclaimed drama series, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning Six Feet Under, concludes its groundbreaking, five season run. Each of the main characters will come to embrace the cycle of life - birth, death, and re-birth - in ways that are both unique and interconnected. Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

Amazon.com So much anticipation pools up around the concluding episode of this concluding season that you might be tempted to head straight for said finale, titled "Everyone's Waiting" (and it's so rich you'll find yourself drawn to repeated viewings). But if you can avoid that impulse, it's worth following the full build-up of one crisis after another to get the real payoff. On an episode-by-episode basis, Six Feet Under's fifth season has a decidedly uneven quality, shifting in tone far more drastically, say, than the intensely dark season 4. Character traits that have already been developed at length begin to seem annoyingly repetitious--Nate's (Peter Krause) self-centered frustration and furious lashings out, Billy's (Jeremy Sisto) resurgent psychosis--like leitmotifs run amuck. But this season also benefits from the knowledge we've developed, over the years, of the Fisher family and their loved ones, so that what they end up facing has a real emotional wallop, sometimes jump-starting the drama just where it seems to be in danger of churning itself into circles. It's hardly a spoiler to mention that 6fu's final season, though bookended by the promise of new beginnings (a wedding in episode 1 to a departure for new prospects in the 12th episode), centers around loss and a pivotal death. The scripts contain more than an occasional sense of inconsequential filler, while some of the recurring thematics seem forced (we see David continue to cope with the scars from his abduction in the previous episode via over-obvious imagery of facing his "inner demons"). Other issues receive especially compelling treatment, above all Brenda's (Rachel Griffiths) desire to have a child and David and Keith's (Mathew St. Patrick) choice to adopt. But the real strength of this season lies in several gripping performances. Ruth (Frances Conroy) touches off a complex series of reactions, simultaneously sympathetic and judgmental, transcending the tendency to appear as a neu