1x06 The Room

[7.5/10] Well, they beat Tommy Wiseau to the punch by a couple of years on the title, so that’s an accomplishment out of the gate! But seriously, this was good! It’s the first time in the short history of Six Feet Under that I’ve liked every single storyline at play. We had interesting contrasting themes about whether you can truly know someone else, even a family member, versus it being okay for people to have parts of their lives that are private, reflected in each of Nathaniel’s sons. And we also had compelling tales about how hard it is to move on when someone who truly does and did know you moves on, even as life changes dramatically.

Oh, and then we have Brenda’s brother, Billy, photographing himself feeling up an underage girl for some reason. Uh...ok. My best guess is that he wants to use the photo to try to blow up Brenda and Nate’s relationship, either just because he doesn’t want to have to share his loved one with anybody or because he has legitimate Folgers Coffee-style issues. Either way, it’s really weird, and I feel bad for Claire having to deal with yet another love-her leave-her asshole guy.

But it’s worth it because I like the Brenda/Claire pairing better than any other pairing we’ve gotten with these characters so far. (Well, maybe Ruth and Claire.) It’s a good beat for Claire to be starstruck when she realizes that Brenda’s the subject of the book she was briefly obsessed with and for Brenda to be so over it after people glamorize a traumatic period of her life. But I also like Brenda being big sisterly to Claire, looking out for her and warning her about Billy, and more generally being a better role model and guide than her literary equivalent. I hope the show sticks with it.

Nate’s certainly more interesting apart from Brenda. I like the way a chance encounter with a former client who traded oil changes for funeral services sends Nate on an unwitting scavenger hunt for his father. He finds his dad’s pot dealer and even a secret room behind a restaurant with playing cards and a couch and lipstick on a glass. Along the way, he hears from the people who provided his dad these things that secretly, Nathaniel was proud of his son for running away.

It’s a trip and seizes on one of those universal truths that it’s rare to fully know a person. We all contain multitudes, and even for people whom we care about, there are parts of their lives or thoughts we’re just not privy to. Nate dealign with that -- processing the fact that it’s too late for him to truly know his father and all that’s left is to pick up the pieces; puzzle over his dad’s secret escapades, approval, and motives; and try to move on -- is the most compelling he’s been as a character so far.

David’s story is a little more understated, but in a good way. He doesn’t mind that their dad had a private life they didn’t know about because he, more than any of the Fishers, understands having things he can’t share but which still need to be expressed somewhere.

Tracy continues her courtship spree and won’t take no for an answer, but I like that it has two effects. The first is that it humanizes Tracy a little bit. We get that she’s recovering from a divorce and suffering from a lack of human contact and capable of being hurt. She’s been such a cartoon character so far that adding a human dimension to her like really improves the character. At the same time, she convinces David that he might need some of that same human contact, and has a one-night stand with a guy he picks up at a gay bar. But he’s clearly uncomfortable about the whole thing, before and after, and seems to even yearn for/feel guilty over Keith when he spots a squad car driving by. It’s yet another complicated emotion within the show’s most complicated character, and I dig it.

(As an aside, it’s a bit of a trip watching David’s scene at his “date’s” apartment, since there’s a weirdly similar scene with Michael C. Hall in Dexter .)

I also dig Ruth’s storyline here. She is grappling with the “relics” of her old life like a saucepan or jar of baby food that each stir memories. She’s hesitant with suitors like Ed Begley Jr. or her flower deliveryman who are each trying to reconnect with her after Nathaniel’s passing. She’s trapped in a lot of ways, between a life she wants to honor that she and her husband built together over the course of decades, and between a new life she wants to live (and wanted to live before Nathaniel died) but feels guilty over. In the end, she seizes that new life and rekindles things with Begley Jr., but it’s not entirely clear whether it’s because she’s allowing herself to move on and be happy and have the things she wants, or if it’s just because she misses her husband and wants the same sort of human contact that Tracy and David were after.

The mourner of the week certainly wants some of that contact, in the more traditional sense, as he refuses to let go of his dead wife’s hand. Cobb is great, as he’s been in other roles, at playing a cantankerous old man. He’s got the irascibility down pat, but also the cynicism. You can viscerally feel the way this man has lost the most important person in the world to him and isn’t okay with it. That speaks to Nate’s predicament when he talks about the level of intimacy and shared vulnerability it takes to truly know someone, and to Ruth’s situation when he talks about building a life with someone for fifty-six years and not knowing how to live with them gone. (And, in fact, he doesn't, at least not for very long.)

That goes to the most touching moment in the episode, when Nate returns some risque pictures to his mom that his father had kept. Ruth tells her son the story of how they came about, of a young couple spending their last night together before Nathaniel went off to war, about how they were supposed to be a good luck charm, about how they were basically different people then and how so much as changed. It’s a great performance from Frances Conroy and earns the honesty and complexity at the root of it, vindicating the episode’s themes on multiple dimensions.

Overall, this is Six Feet Under’s best outing yet, with interesting themes, good stories, for everyone, and save for a bizarre Billy subplot, insightful and endearing moments for everyone in the cast.