Knotty take on ties that bind

MEANING is everything on “Six Degrees,” which is to say, somewhat sloppily, that everything has meaning -- black-and-white pictures of nuns, empty liquor bottles and, no joke, face-up pennies found on the street. Subtext is all; resistance is futile.

Executive produced by J.J. Abrams (“Lost”) among others, “Six Degrees” appeared briefly in the fall, airing six episodes in the post-”Grey’s Anatomy” Thursday slot before being pulled because of flagging ratings. After a four-month hiatus, the show’s seventh episode airs Friday (9 p.m., ABC). It’s a turning point for the series, which has heretofore marveled at -- and at times intellectually eroticized -- the small ways people’s lives intersect.

In this episode, after a few fits and starts, the show’s core of six primary characters finally cleaves into neat halves, with a romantic intrigue on each side. Photographer Steven (Campbell Scott) revived his career on the back of thoughtfully exploitative photos of Laura (Hope Davis), who happens to be friends with his representative Whitney (Bridget Moynahan, who is stiff but compelling). Public defender Carlos (Jay Hernandez) is a compulsive helper -- he almost stalks a onetime client, Mae (Erika Christensen), who he thinks is cute. It turns out Damien (Dorian Missick), a chauffeur who helped Carlos get into a club one night, is also looking for her, on behalf of some shady characters.

Of course these people would find one another. And when they do meet, they would naturally speak at length about, well, everything, even though they’ve just met. Lack of familiarity is no obstacle to bloviating. And even kids, who should get an age exemption, have to suffer under the weight of heavy analogizing. “I got you something,” Steven morosely tells his son, handing him a Magic 8-Ball. “Don’t get behind it.” (Later, he quotes Ezra Pound to make himself feel better about taking a job.)

True to its name, “Six Degrees” traffics heavily in fate. Why fate rarely seems to rear its meddling head in the Midwest is a TV mystery that remains unsolved. Instead, it’s zipping around New York City, and its renowned modes of transportation (subway, town car, street cleaner) that seem to hold the best chance of a promising, meaning-worthy encounter.

Though it carries the heavy scent of nostalgia, “Six Degrees” isn’t nostalgic for a time, and despite its incessant voice-over chatting about New York City’s mystique (and interstitial footage of hackneyed New York street scenes not seen since the heyday of “NYPD Blue”), it isn’t nostalgic for a place. Nope, “Six Degrees” is nostalgic for something even more elusive: hope.

Every interaction involves broken people connecting with other broken people in hopes that they might become less so. And though there are two types of people on the show -- those who keep secrets and those they victimize -- both are undone by their commitment to hope.

It takes a brutal, blunt metaphor to awaken them from their delusions. In the series’ fourth episode, a serial attacker was loose on the streets of New York, taking aim at seemingly random citizens. It turns out, though, that the man, dubbed “The Puncher” by the tabloids, had a mission (everyone had slept with his wife) and that everyone he targeted was deserving of his knuckled wrath. After getting hit, Whitney’s perfectly caddish (and chronically unfaithful) fiance, says it best: “I deserve this.” And there you go.

Such stabs at depth are literal bordering on ludicrous, and they’re the stock in trade of “Six Degrees.” Mae, who’s on the run, carries a locked box that contains -- wait for it -- some secret things, clues to her past life. How many episodes will pass before she finally opens it and maybe discovers there’s nothing inside?