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Six Feet Under: The Complete Second Season [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


Our Price: £25.44 (subject to change)

Still great
Review date: 2008-03-20 Rating: 10 out of 10

I have watched the show for three years, beginning with the first season in 2003 and purchasing the DVD set of each following season upon their release. For the last three years, SFU has been a fail-proof anti-depressant for me. Although some see it as deeply depressing, and I agree with them, that very depressing quality has a homour that always shines through.
More than that, it let me see that certain profound yet non-religious spirituality is possible in American pop culture and Americans themselves (one of the misconceptions non-Americans, like me, have about American culture is that, amid the ascendency of fundamentalist Christianity, it is essentially shallow and materialistic, or that it may be characterized as having what Shakespeare called "irreligious piety"?).

I can go on and on about how much I learned from SFU, how great consolation I got from it. So, as a big fan of the show, I see every season as a gem on its own. However, if I am forced to pick my favorite season, I'd pick season 2. It is more relaxed and yet, strangely again, more intense than the first season. Relaxed because I now know what to expect for the Fisher family and their funeral home, and intense because, as one of the axes of the plot-the relationship between Nate and Brenda-unfolds, I see a painful yet true description of why it is so hard for two people to stay together. Also, compared to following three seasons, it contains more of its trade-mark dark humour.

In the Special Feature of the final season, creator Alan Ball tells us that Peter Krause's performance of Nate breathed an "amazing everyman quality" into the character, and while portraying this "everyman," that Nate was the one character with a stronger spiritual, (or mystical), bent. This makes perfect sense. Looking back, in the first episode of the Season 2, we see Nate jotting down what his father says in his dream, which turns out to be from Bhagavad Gita. The episode ends beautifully with Nate reading his notes to Brenda, which read: "All that lives lives forever. Only the shell, the perishable, passes away. The spirit is without end, eternal, deathless." Here is one of the earliest moments when the contrast between the mentalities of Brenda and Nate is made, a contrast which will be more dramatically depicted in the latter episodes of the final season.

I spent a small fortune on the DVD sets of SFU. But it was money well spent, since every episode is infinitely re-watchable and leads us to think about issues that are important.

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Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Peter Krause
Michael C. Hall

Creators:
Peter Krause (Primary Contributor)
Michael C. Hall (Primary Contributor)
Frances Conroy (Performer)

Recording label: HBO Home Video
Manufacturer: HBO Home Video
EAN: 0026359889226
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 5
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC,
Release date: 2004-07-06
Universal product code (UPC): 026359889226
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 780 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001-06-03
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Spanish (Original Language)
Language: French (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: French (Dubbed)
Language: Spanish (Dubbed)

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