When death is your
business, what is
your life? For Nate, David, Ruth and Claire, the world outside the
Fisher & Sons Funeral Home continues to be at least as
challenging-and far less predictable-as the one inside.
CRITIQUE
This season focuses
much more on the characters and their relationships than the past
two seasons. The main focus is on Nate Fisher (Peter Krause) as
early on in the season he recovers from brain surgery and raises
his daughter Maya with his new wife Lisa (Lili Taylor). Not long
after trying to cope with and accepting his new life and
responsibility to his family something terrible happens that
changes the Fisher family forever. The first half of the season is
where the show is somewhat slow in terms of pace, but
the second half gets things going and really churns out the human drama of the
family tragedy. The season finale "I'm Sorry, I'm Lost" is very
good and while it doesn't end with a cliffhanger like Season 2 the
last several minutes
are quite powerful.
Something happened
to me during that time that really got me involved with the story
and I couldn't stop watching. In fact, I taped the whole season
without watching it so that I could later watch it with my mother
who at the time was sick with leukemia, but she passed away in
April 2003 and I didn't see it for a while. Then one night that
summer I put in the tapes and just watched one episode after
another, getting to bed at four of five a.m. in the morning. I
think because of my own emotional state I really got into what was
going on during the second half, it somehow spoke to me and I was
really involved.
The other stories
continue, of course, such as the straining relationship of David
(Michael C. Hall) and Keith (Matthew St. Patrick) puts them at
odds a lot and forces them to attend relationship counseling. As
for Claire (Lauren Ambrose), she adjusts to her new life that
includes art school and a new boyfriend named Russell (Ben
Foster). Meanwhile, Ruth (Frances Conroy) becomes romantically
involved with George (James Cromwell), and the two decide get
married. Things look good for Federico (Freddy Rodriguez) who just
made partner with the Fishers, but trouble at home causes him to
look for love elsewhere, which is when he meets a stripper.
Brenda's storyline is introduced a few episodes into the season,
and tries to make amends with Nate for the pain she's caused him.
Naturally there's much more going on in this season as this is
just a basic outline.
Disc One:
301 - Perfect Circles
302 - You Never Know
Disc Two:
303 - Another Voice
304 - Nobody Sleeps
305 - The Trap
Disc Three:
306 - Making Love Work
307 - Timing and Space
308 - Tears, Bones and Desire
Disc Four:
309 - The Opening
310 - Everybody Leaves
311 - Death Works Overtime
HBO presents Six Feet
Under in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Colors are bright and
well-saturated, although the show's color palette is not all too
vivid. Image quality is quite nice, sharpness and detail look
good, and the print is mostly clean. Some images are a bit soft,
but generally the lighting looks pretty good. Grain is minimal,
and there are no issues with compression artifacts and edge
enhancement. Overall, I find the presentation looks pretty good.
Optional subtitles are English, French and Spanish.
THE AUDIO
HBO presents Six Feet
Under in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Dialogue
is clear and easy to understand. There are no disruptions or
noises in the presentation. Surround sound is evident a few
times in the score and during the natural sounds. Overall, it's
a nice audio presentation. Also available are French and Spanish 2.0 stereo
dub tracks.
THE EXTRAS
Audio Commentary
on episodes 3, 4, 5, 11 and 13. A lot of time on these tracks
is spent analyzing what's going on on the screen and talking about
the characters and so on. In a away these tracks are good but
really only decent. I didn't really get a lot of interesting
information out of these tracks, which is also partially due to
the fact that they're kind of dry with only one person speaking.
Living on the
Ledge (13:53) takes a look at the promo shoot for the third
season. Creator Alan Ball and producer Alan Poul describe what the
promo is supposed to signify about the characters and their
current emotional state and situations. Some of the actors are
interviewed during the filming of the promo. This featurette is
dubbed "A Bird's-Eye View of the Third Season" but it's not that
at all. I was disappointed with this featurette because it was all
talk about something I have just seen.
Deleted Scenes
(3:30) are available for episodes 4, 10 and 11. There are only
three scenes here, but I'm sure more of them exist somewhere. At
any rate, these scenes are decent and nice to have.
Episodes previews
and recaps are available for each episode. Also helpful for
new viewers is a brief recap of the first two seasons. The menus
are presented nicely in widescreen and are also scored.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Six Feet Under
offers great human drama above all else, but it's also good at
showing lighthearted moments with the characters. Season 3
continues the excellence of writing, acting, directing and
producing the show. I highly recommend this five-disc set even
though the extras this time around are not as wholly interesting
as those of the previous sets.
In a surprising move
HBO is releasing Season 4 on DVD in late August this year. Also,
don't forget Season 5 premieres June 5th on HBO.
