Frank TJ Mackey

Almost forgot that a good show is still in first-run episodes. Sunday night is the Six Feet Under season finale followed by the series premiere of The Wire, which is being discussed here - Static.

Six Feet is at 9 p.m. (8 central)
Wire is 10 p.m. (9 central)


**Sopranos third season finale (repeat) airs prior to above mentioned shows.

Patman

What a season ending cliffhanger!

People do the strangest things when faced with their own mortality, or a loved one is facing it.

I won't synopsize it for a few more hours, unless someone else does. But a very strong episode once again.

JTH182

The biggest cliffhanger IMO was I mean, the show can't go on without Nate, so it's obvious what's going to happen to him. That is unless they throw a curve and have I wonder where next season will pick up?

GoldenJCJ

Great episode!

I'm sure Brenda will be back, She's probably just going off to find herself.

Quite a coincidence that Aaron (the Death of the Week) died just seconds after Anaki...ur... Nate showed up

Can someone fill me in on the significance of the bus at the end. I'm sure it has something to do with Nathaniel Sr. because he was hit by what appears to be the same bus, but I'm not sure what it was supposed to mean to Nate.

David's impression of Nikkolai near the end was pretty funny.

nny

I've heard getting on a bus as a metaphor for dying before, but I don't know why. I remember on some forum, I saw a guy say that the end of Ghost World was a metaphor for suicide. It's funny that I never thought of it that way since when the old guy got on the bus, I thought it symbolized him dying.

JonTurner

Oh my God yes!! It practically had me I think Claire did an impression too, but I was laughing so hard I might've missed it.

Very good episode, but not one of the season's best IMHO (of course that was the next to last one).

As for the Season 3 Sopranos finale before it though, WOW! (I hadn't seen it before) I thought Season 3 was the weakest of the 3, though still the best show on TV at the time it aired (6FU is now ) but that's probably the best Sopranos episode yet! Everybody's varying feelings about , plus the brilliantly-handled military school subplot, plus the whole Super Bowl betting extravaganza going on in the middle of everything (I've always felt we didn't get to see their actual business workings enough) - just, man oh man... then with the singing at the ended, and Meadow getting plastered (long time coming to have this happen again - she's obviously gonna have to deal with this in S4)... God that show is good!

Didn't see The Wire (though I plan to monday night), but based on the comment above, it doesn't sound to promising... anyone else?

Apocrypha

SFU you rock my world!!!

DumDum

Anyone know if the new episodes of SFU premiere at the same time as the Sopranos?

JonTurner

I haven't heard the date yet (but we do know that Sopranos is September), so I'm guessing that, unfortunately they don't.

Frank TJ Mackey

I thought the season finale was great until the last few minutes. The thing with Nate is a no-brainer (NPI) because we all Six Feet will really go under without him.

I also think the show would suck without Brenda. Nobody plays a warped and troubled intellectual like Rachel Griffiths. She'll just get a big pay raise since she won the Emmy.

What I think will happen is the Frederico/David co-partner thing will be clash of the titans. Nate will be recovering and not involved in that aspect.

Daytripper

I'm glad Ruth finally got the attention and "validation" she needed at the end of the show. Albeit a sad one. I do believe this was the first time Claire showed any affection towards her mom (hugging/contact that is). Not counting the time she was on acid. Wait, do you think she was still high from the pot? Anyway, very touching scene. I love this show.

Patman

6FU is one of those shows that can have you crying one second and then laughing a minute later: As Nate breaks down and cries in his mother's arms, we then get David and Claire on pot doing their impressions of Nikkolai. Tragic and funny stuff. It was almost too much to take, such is theater of life.

Spoilers ahoy:

The opening death is of Adam, the guy that Nate has been seeing everyday since last episode/month. Nate had to encourage this guy to die, though it was very painful for Nate emotionally (Peter Krauss did a bang-up job in this episode). Adam is to be cremated, and the cremation process gets delayed a day. Nate comes back the next day and gets the whole lowdown on the cremation process - a bit on the grisly side, and even mentions the Georgia Non-cremation scandal we had this past year where some guy was just piling up the bodies, though the loved ones thought they would be cremated. There's a certain level of cremation that needs to be done, else people think it's just soot, but the cremation operator told Nate about how one father freaked out when he found a tooth from the cremation of his baby child (babies do have teeth in their jaws). The entire process hit Nate pretty hard has he is facing his own mortality.

Nate accompanies Ruth to Lisa's place to see his daughter in person for the first time. Nate is trying to touch all the bases before his condition gets worse. Lisa is okay with Nate showing up. Ruth looks to be in her element as a child caretaker.

Nate has to tell Ruth that he's got AVM (during a car ride that has Nate feeling bad), and Ruth is just flat out pissed that she's the absolute last person in the family to find out. Nate's surgeon is one squirmy doctor, putting his advanced condition on Nate's shoulders for not hearing what he "might have" told him (to be fair, I think Nate was having one of his fantasies during his initial doctor's visit). Nate shares some tender times with David, Claire, and even makes peace with Brenda, though he gets in one final push-off when he doesn't want her at the hospital during his surgery.

So Rico is in as a partner, though the 2 Fisher boys still have majority stake (Rico at 25%, and each of the boys at 37.5%). At least the business can go on. Larry Drake plays the part of the inspector to a "T", noticing every little thing.

Brenda starts going to Sex Addicts Anonymous, and meets up with the Grant Show character from earlier in the season. He's quite the slut, but he and Brenda have a talk about what it all means, and Brenda's trying to get better, trying to make sense of love, being open to it, rather than using promiscuous sex as a way to isolate herself even while being in a relationship at the same time. After her visit with Nate, she packs up the car and leaves her dwelling.

Ruth quits the flower shop. Nikkolai is pretty much relieved after tiring of Ruth constantly showing him new photos of Nate's child. Nikkolai will try to pay back Ruth, albeit a very little bit each week, for which this week's payment was only $62, a slow week.

Claire has a meltdown in front of a person interviewing her for Easy Valley Art college. I think this is the first time we've seen Claire honestly react to the whole year of events since her father died. Parker, Claire's friend, got busted when her SAT Surrogate test taker turned herself in and screwed over 300 people (how one person can take 300 SAT test is beyond logic), and Parker is also getting sent to East Valley Art college. Claire laughed her ass off about this development.

David is dealing with Keith who packed up Taylor to her grandparents since he got suspended by the police force, and is looking for a new job. David and Keith are so far apart that David doesn't feel that he can even tell Keith about Nate's upcoming surgery. Finally, after a big physical fight, and some tremendous (from the looks of it) make-up sex, perhaps things will get better between them.

Ruth put her foot down and wanted David to be there for Claire at graduation, while Ruth stays with Nate at the hospitial. She was rather emphatic about it as well. But after smoking the pot, both David and Claire decide to go straight to the hospital. Once there, Ruth hugs Claire (one of the few times that's happened), though is a bit more formal with David.

The last scenes are of a newly shaved Nate on the operating table counting backwards to induce sleep during the operation. The next thing you see is Nate jogging, and a big bus rolls on by, stops, and Nate walks up to its doors. Fade to credits.

Whether or not Nate gets on the bus is up to his will to live and his surgeon's skills. The bus is being used as a metaphor to leaving for the next station in existence if Nate gets on the bus.

Draven

Actually, I'm think she was at the LAC Arts college interview. She thinks she screwed it up (I think she'll get in) so she is going to East Valley as her "safety" school, as in she'll get in just by signing up. How funny was her dream sequence. When she opened the doors I thought "huh, looks like the school from Flashdance." Hee hee

Patman

Please post your thoughts on "The Wire" in this thread.

Thanks for the correction on the colleges.

AgtFox

Sopranos starts in September, Six Feet Under is most likely next March.

HBO does cycles. They have a new season for their series, then it ends and then another series begins. Sex and the City is in July and then the Sopranos will most likely start after that, then Oz's final season, then Six Feet Under.

Geofferson

The SFU finale almost had me in tears. Such a wonderful episode. Last night's lineup was probably the best 3 hours of TV I've ever seen. Sopranos season 3 finale was fantastic, and the premiere of The Wire shows some promise.

dglaser6

Anyone have a guess as to where Brenda might be going? Moving in with folks? Sex addict camp?

Jadzia

My one complaint about this episode is I felt a bit cheated over some of the things they skipped over in regards to Nate's baby. For example, I wanted to see David & Claire's reaction to the news that Nate has a baby. Wouldn't they have also felt hurt he did not tell them. I also wanted to what happened when Ruth told Nate she knew about the baby and had seen Lisa. I wished they had not skipped over this.

I also found it odd that Claire and David were wondering "what had happened" between Nate & Brenda. While they certainly do not have the full story, wouldn't they have assumed it had something to do with Nate having a baby with another woman?

GoldenJCJ

Hmmm, I've never heard that before. I guess it's a good thing Nate didn't get on then.

I thought it had something to do with Nate Sr. getting killed by a bus.

Jeremy517

Just when I thought I'd be going into withdrawels over no more SFU for a year, I see that they're airing season one starting next week. I started with season two and thought I'd have to wait for the DVDs to see season one.

marty888

Same here - great news!

mikej

I'm not sure if this means anything, but I watched the finale again last night and the bus that pulls up to Nate is the same bus that hits his father's car in the first episode. Both say Downtown on the front and and have the same markings and colors. Again, I'm not sure if this means anything, just something I noticed.

Mike

rfduncan

YEAH IT DOES! Nate has seen this bus in dreams and visions many, many times over the past two seasons. Starting next week is the time to re-watch from the beginning and see how many clues to Nate getting to this point were revealed and either missed or forgotten among everything else going on.

RevLiver

Also, several times when Nate's father has appeared to him, he's talked to him as if they are waiting for him in the afterlife and that it's only a matter of time. I definitely saw the bus as a metaphor for Nate's impending reunion with his father.

That said, I hope they don't kill off Nate. It is HBO though, so it's entirely possible. He could still appear in episodes, just like his father and other assorted dead people do. It would certainly change the family dynamics, adding something else for them to grieve about, though it would probably be too over the top for one family to endure this. Not sure how they could work Brenda into the series if Nate died, but I certainly think she'll be back. No way they lose their award-winning actress.

Daytripper

I said the same thing the moment she opened the doors
to walk in the room, showing the teachers/staff at the other
end of the room. WAY before they showed her feet walking
with those leg warmers. The giveaway