Six Feet Over

Big Jim writes:

Not really a spoiler, but as I thought along the show wasn’t really about Nate. It was about Claire.

No, Nate was the central character, the show clearly follows his arc, his life, his mistakes and his death - he merely passes the torch to Clair in the last episode - even as Claire leaves, he's the last thing she sees of her old life through the looking glass.

In one sense, the show was about the 20th century version of the classical family and how it is trying to survive in the modern world. The death of its patriarch at the beginning starts a process by which the family teeters out of control and towards self-annihilation. It is only through the sacrifice of its prodigal son that all the members go through their own personal and familial trials to come out the other side whole and as a new family for the 21st century.

But the show was also about life and its preciousness. Set in a town which worships youth and immortality, it attempted to show on a weekly basis the phoniness of our illusions regarding life and the traps we put ourselves in because we are too caught up in our past and our own neuroses. Everyone who watched the finale no doubt was disturbed by how it challenges their own views of mortality. In fact, a common thread I read in the posts this morning is that they had a sleepless night and the show evidently disturbed them.

Anyway, check out the obitx posted at HBO - they add more detail on the lives of the characters...

Claire Simone Fisher
1983 - 2085

Born March 13, 1983. Died February 11, 2085 in Manhattan. Claire grew up in Los Angeles and studied art at LAC-Arts College. She worked as an advertising and fashion photographer and photojournalist for nearly fifty years, creating several memorable covers for Washington Post magazine, W, and The Face. Claire often exhibited her work in New York and London art galleries and in a time when nearly everyone else in her field had turned to digital scanning and computer-driven imaging, she continued to use a silver-based photographic process. Claire began teaching photography as a faculty member at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2018, earning tenure in 2028. She's pre-deceased by her beloved husband Ted Fairwell.