Endings and Beginnings

So last night, one of my favorite shows, Six Feet Under ended. It was after five seasons and it was arguably time for it to be over. Six Feet Under was first and foremost an HBO show, which meant they could do what they wanted storywise, languagewise and visually. And they did. They did things such as employing the dead people who passed through the funeral home, Fisher and Sons (though for three of the seasons, Fisher and Diaz, though it went back to 'Sons' in the end) to speak to the characters and become their inner monologues, opening every episode with a death and the fade to white instead of the ever-popular fade to black.I didn't always love what everyone did on the show; they all were very human and made plenty of mistakes. But who wants to watch people be perfect?

That was not why I loved the show. I did love the quirkiness of it and the dream sequences, occasional musical numbers and presence of the many ghosts. But for some reason, I always felt close to the show. Close enough to spend my last semester in college writing an episode of it. For that project, I pored over my tapes of the show and took laborious notes about how long scenes were and how many a character had in an episode. For me though, this was hardly work. I enjoyed this project. I would do it again, if I could.

Somewhere around the time I was doing this project, something odd happened. The Fishers became my family. Nathaniel, Ruth, Nate, David and Claire moved into my room and stayed with me. Even Brenda, Rico, Lisa, Keith, Russell and Olivier were present. It became obvious to me that this was the case when I got an A on my project and was told by a lontime tv writer that my script was "solid." This also manifested itself in my other writings.

In one of my storylines, a young man died but it was only after I was familiar with SFU that this young man hung around with his friends who were mourning their loss. He visited them, became their conscience and I don't believe I would ever have had this idea otherwise.

The espisode itself was both ending and beginning and since that is the way life is, it was fitting and beautifully executed. I will miss the Fishers, Chenowiths and Diazes visiting me for 13 Sunday evenings out of the year. Luckily, I still have my tapes.