Six Feet Under: Complete Series (Repackage)

for the greatest television show of all time?I'm going to stress to you right off the bat that for those of us who followed this show as it aired... we would have bought this set at five times the price. As I write I also find myself envying those of you who will get to experience all of it for the first time. Enough waxing nostalgic though. Let me just say get past the price (which is honestly a very good deal if you work it out), that's the last time I'll mention that.Six Feet Under is about a family that owns a funeral home. Like all great things you can sum it up in a sentence, but the substance of it doesn't come across in less than... well in this case... about 62 hours. In the show we follow Nate, who fears death and hates funeral homes. David, who starts off as a self-hating gay man who may just want to stop being a funeral director. Claire, our rebellious young woman finishing high school. Ruth, the mother of the bunch... a highly neurotic and fickle woman... and everyone who comes in contact with the family during the course of their business.I will say that though the show can hook you from the close of the first episode, the characters don't really feel completely fleshed out until about the fourth or fifth episode. Then again there are some shows that NEVER flesh out any characters.You can trace the entire voyage of the show to Nate. It is about his fear of death, and the death business. It's about how he matures over the course of about six years... to me, all else is secondary. David's struggle with who he is, Claire trying to find herself, and Ruth attempting to find her place in the world now that her children are all grown up... all of those stories are brilliant as well, but they still mostly center on Nate.This truly is the best show that has ever aired. The weakest season of it (four) is still better than everything else out there. You WILL be hooked from the first episode... and unlike so many other recent series finale's... you will not be left hanging, nor will you be disappointed.I've not yet come across one human being who is not moved to tears at least a few times a season... and not yet met a person who hasn't sobbed at the end.Television can be art, it can move you, it can challenge you and shake you up. It can change your life. The proof is in this package. Get it.

It seemed sad but fitting when HBO's "Six Feet Under" came to an end in 2005 after five seasons, because it was, after all, a series that forced the viewer to confront the reality that everything ends. Thus it is ironic that, this being the early twenty-first century, television series, good and bad, never die but enter an eternal afterlife of reruns in syndication and on video. If they are especially fortunate they are rewarded with the treatment "Six Feet Under" gets here.Viewers who are aghast at the bowdlerized, commercial-infested version running at present on the Bravo network can take luxurious refuge in this deluxe reissue of the entire five seasons, sixty-three complete and uncut episodes, in one, surprisingly heavy (like a body, one imagines) package. They can settle down and enjoy the sharply drawn characters, the infallibly tuned dialogue and mordant humor of life at the Fisher family's funeral home. Looking at the series again one appreciates anew the uniformly brilliant acting, the attention to detail and the carefully composed visuals that make watching this series unlike any previous television experience. I do not think it is overstating the case to say that Alan Ball in this series created a world of Shakespearean scope, where the dead walk, speak, interact with, quarrel with and ultimately enlighten and comfort the still living.The willingness to find laughter in subjects that are normally treated, if acknowledged at all, with a kind of reverent dread may offend some, notably those of the same mentality that have prohibited photographing coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq; all others will see Ball's vision for what is, an affirmation of life and joy in the face of all possible heartache and discouragement.Seeing the episodes themselves is so satisfying that the extra features, dare one say it, seem barely necessary. Still it is good to hear Ball, the cast, and the writers speak about the show in interviews and voice-over commentary. For all fans of top notch television and drama in general, this box set is an essential item.