On ‘Six Feet Under,’ Love Has More Life Than Reality Shows

Fresh carnage from the human mating game is splattered across the broadcast network television schedule. The names of the shows, such as “Blind Date,” “Shipmates” and “Extreme Dating” may change, but the premise of the staged, unscripted syndicated shows does not: Wannabe actors and actresses try to vogue for the camera while finding a telegenic soul mate.

But over on pay cable, one of HBO’s original dramas is exposing contemporary sexual politics through actors who play characters muddling through intimacy. It’s a sober approach that may have less instant gratification than, say, Fox’s “Bachelorettes in Alaska,” but the strategy has earned “Six Feet Under” 23 Emmy nominations, six million viewers (huge by subscription TV standards) and rave reviews.

“We watch fairly normal neurotics deal with extraordinary situations, made more extraordinary by the fact that there’s also a dead guy in the room,” said funeral home director and author Thomas Lynch, who watches the original drama each Sunday night without fail. “We run around looking for meaning, but we should just be looking at our human condition, as we live, as we breathe, as we die. I don’t see it as depressive.”

Executives at HBO said they were drawn to the show, created by Alan Ball (a veteran sitcom writer who won an Oscar for his “American Beauty” screenplay), because its underlying theme of death made all of the relationships seem more urgent and vital. Characters could never stray too far from honesty, even pessimism, with the prospect of another funeral to arrange that week, said Carolyn Strauss, senior vice president of original programming at the network.

On “Six Feet Under” adult children reevaluate their newly widowed mother’s place in the dating world even as they do the same. Couples are constantly fumbling with honesty, even as they try to be true to themselves.

Take the dinner scene from last season when Brenda, played by Australian actress Rachel Griffiths, arranges a dinner with a man she hasn’t seen in years--the man to whom she lost her virginity. He is now married to a successful author, while Brenda is engaged to Nate, the funeral director. The dinner goes surprisingly well, and both couples seem to find each other down-to-earth and funny.

Later that night, alone in Brenda’s bungalow, Nate stares glassy-eyed at the front door.

“We’ve got to find friends we don’t hate,” he says.

With one phrase, he discards the annoying and unsatisfying happy-ending mantra that permeates TV land.

“In another story line, truth-telling and morality are foisted on Nate’s sister, Claire, who is played by Lauren Ambrose. Claire shows incredible faith in her boyfriend Gabe, a surly neglected teenager, played by Eric Balfour. One night he simply loses his temper and shoots a man at a traffic light. It wasn’t premeditated murder. In fact, the teenager was so shocked by his own actions that he sped away. But for Claire, it marks a turning point. She realizes that although Gabe wants to be a better person, he is not capable of making good decisions. She comes home, sits on a sofa in the funeral parlor and tearfully tells the police what happened.

“The depression and denial that a lot of persons find themselves in is very subtle,” said Peter Krause, who plays Nate. “You don’t realize it, until you start looking at yourself. There are a lot of Nates out there, bumbling around trying to help other people. Brenda and Nate are confronting themselves more than they’re dealing with one another.”

“Six Feet Under” continues to rotate the Rubik’s Cube of relationships, looking at the complications inherent in straight and gay romances. Nate’s younger brother and fellow funeral director, David, played by Michael C. Hall, is involved with a police officer named Keith, played by Mathew St. Patrick. The two men kiss often on screen, but they also fight and get on each other’s nerves. Either Keith or David often wants to discuss the status of their relationship while the other just wants to decompress from a hectic day.

“What I like about the portrayal of David and Keith is that it’s shown with just as much intensity and as much scrutiny as Nate and Brenda’s relationship,” said Scott Seomin, entertainment/media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “It’s as full of joy and full of angst as the heterosexual relationships. Also, it gets equal air time. This is not a subplot in either air time or depth.”

The popularity of the darkly funny “Six Feet Under” doesn’t try to satisfy the disaffected angst that is propelling other pieces of culture to the forefront, works like Jonathan Franzen’s well-received novel “The Corrections.” Instead, Ball is cynical and hopeful at the same time, with characters desperate to connect but exhausted by the process.

“With the economy the way it is, and people thinking about things more realistically, it’s a great fit for where we are,” said Rob Bennett, a 33-year-old vice president of marketing for a software company in Seattle.

“The show is very realistic, and it isn’t the typical family drama where they work through their problems by the end of the episode. The characters aren’t role models. They’re as screwed up as everyone is. That has a lot of appeal.”

It’s an approach that lies in stark contrast to the characters on broadcast dating shows, giddy actors and actresses whose “real” reactions are heavily edited. There are probably viewers who get their fixes during the week on broadcast TV and then escape into the dark humor of “Six Feet Under” each Sunday night. But they are surely gleaning different things from the programs.

Howard Markman, coauthor of “Fighting for Your Marriage” (2001) and a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, thinks viewers might be tuning in to “Six Feet Under” to learn. Adults in their 20s and 30s have higher expectations about relationships than ever before, he said, and the characters on “Six Feet Under” are very upfront about that.

“We want it all, but we lack basic relationship education,” he said. “People are very hungry for tools for information.”