It's been almost exactly twenty years since SIX FEET UNDER first debuted on HBO. (It debuted on Sunday, June 3, 2001 at 10pm EST, not that I'm keeping track or anything.) And while the show had many strengths, including maybe the greatest finale of any television show ever, its most lasting impact on television may lie in the way it wrote dead people.
On SIX FEET UNDER, someone dies at the beginning every episode. (It's a show about a funeral home, by the way.) In the first episode the victim is the patriarch of the family, Nathaniel Fisher, Sr., killed in a car accident on the way to pick up son Nate at LAX.
And yet his is not a BIG CHILL Kevin Costner situation. The character of Nathaniel shows up for years as a sort of independent daydream of his family members, sometimes mocking them, sometimes encouraging them, sometimes just doing his own thing. For instance:
Oftentimes the deceased of the week also end up interacting with the main characters in some way. The blurring between life and death, reality and fantasy became the show's signature.
I'm sure other shows before SIX FEET UNDER also had characters talking to the dead occasionally. But since UNDER it's pretty much become the standard. And for good reason--having the dead reappear creates the possibility of deeply satisfying endings for different characters and relationships. In the fourth episode of season two POSE has a wake scene that goes something like 40 minutes, and consists almost entirely of different characters getting to have a last conversation with the deceased. And it's wonderful; the character in question is allowed a freedom and a happiness that we never saw her have in life. Every scene sparkles.
The Ghost Goodbye: it's high quality wish fulfillment material. We so rarely get those kinds of final goodbyes and resolutions in our lives.
But in episode 105 of POSE, "Mother's Day", in which Blanca's mom dies, the show goes a different way. Blanca's mother is not a character we have ever met or heard about. It's part of the premise of the show really that everyone in the community has been orphaned by their families, who drove them away.
And so the heart of the episode lies in the conflict between Blanca's desire to be there and the animosity she faces from her family in doing so. It's a well observed story that goes deep in its exploration of different points of view within Blanca's family.
At the wake, writer/show creator Steven Canals makes the decision not to give Blanca the SIX FEET UNDER treatment. Instead, when she goes to the casket, she kneels and we simply hear what she's thinking. She tells her mom about her own family, the kids she's raising. She hopes her mother is proud of her now, and talks about their relationship. She forgives her mom for not being perfect. And other than a momentary cutaway the camera stays entirely on Blanca's face.
Visually this is the least dramatic version of a casket scene. And yet I found it riveting, I think because it paints the moment in the way that you and I actually experience it, and pretty much nobody on television does. There it's either SIX FEET UNDER fireside fantasy chats; a quick moment spent at the casket followed by something else (oftentimes business about how the dead person doesn't look right); or there's no casket moment at all. Which is nuts when you think about it. There's no more concrete encounter with death (and shared by pretty much everyone) than that visit to the casket.
I’m all for the more fantastic wake scenes. I highly recommend POSE 204, written by Ryan Murphy and Janet Mock. The ending alone, which I don't want to spoil: Wow.
But I think for me the lesson watching 105 is how much power there can also be in offering a scene in just the way that we actually experience it. As boring as it may seem on paper, you don’t always need to add a bow or a layer of paint. The audience's ability to identify with a moment can grant it so much power all by itself.
The moment also reminds me of how essential it is to always be thinking about whose scene is this. We might be interested in who Blanca's mother was, and in seeing them interact--which is why elsewhere the episode delivers a few brief memories from Blanca. But the focus of this moment is Blanca's journey. After decades of being shunned, this is her moment to speak. And so we don't need to hear from her mother. In fact to do so might be to further undermine her.
