There's a difference between being drawn to
a show because of who's in the cast and knowing that an actor is born to
play the lead in a TV show. Much of my
TV viewing as an adult has been based on the former; we all know there are
certain actors who will never let us down. But the latter is far rarer. Let's not kid ourselves, if you thought that
the dad from Malcolm in the Middle had the stuff to be the center of Breaking
Bad when you first saw the ads for it, you're lying to yourself. I don't
think anybody believed it until Bryan Cranston won his first Emmy.
One of the few times in my long career of
watching television when I saw the promos for a show and I just knew the lead
actor was perfectly cast was when I saw the first ads for Dexter on
Showtime. When I saw the premise and I saw Michael C. Hall was playing the
title role I said to myself: "This is a role Hall was born to play."
Consider who Dexter Morgan is: his day job
is working for the police department which means he gets paid to be regularly
confronted by blood and gore on a daily basis. He wears a very public face to
his co-workers and even his family and at the start of the series they all
completely accept him for who he is. But he has a dark secret that he dares not
share with the world, something so dark and deviant he can only express it in
ways that he knows in his soul are completely horrific, that if the world finds
out about them, he will be marked as a pariah or worse. And yet his first words in the Pilot are:
"It's going to happen again and again."
Aside from the fact that he's not a serial
killer this pretty much describes David Fisher when we first meet him in Six
Feet Under – and as we know throughout the first season David actually
thinks that his acts are as corrupt and monstrous as anything Dexter will do.
For the record we'll later see he doesn't judge killers any worse or better
than their victims. It's part of his job.
I've written in a previous article that I
never felt Six Feet Under got the respect that the holy Trinity of HBO
Dramas – The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood – have from critics
of the time. Which is rather strange because it did far better at the Emmys
that the latter two shows did. It won 9 Emmys and was nominated for a total of
fifty three, including Best Drama three times and multiple acting nominations for
nearly every actor in the cast. It won the Golden Globes for Best Drama in 2002
the SAG Award for Best Dramatic Ensemble in 2003 and the Peabody Award.
I've written part of the reason has to be
compared to everything other HBO drama and indeed almost every other drama that
was on their air during its five year run Six Feet Under was far closer
to a dramedy than anything else. For a show in which every episode opened with
the 'corpse of the week' this show by far took the most lighthearted approach
to character death than any other series on TV.
None of the conflicts on the show were at the level of what was going on
in Jersey, Baltimore or the camp in South Dakota. This was a series where none
of the characters could be classified as antiheroes or even difficult people.
It was the journey of a family and the funeral home they owned. Life and death
was part of the job but not in the way it was on all those other HBO dramas. It
was allowed to be fun in a way that no HBO drama was doing at the time and
honestly in a way very few afterwards have. The Fishers were far more fun to be
around then the Roys ever were and while Claire was an angsty teen with a drug
habit she was always more put together than any of the kids on Euphoria.
And
maybe it's a sign of how much better life generally is for the LGBTQ+ community
that we no longer see David Fisher as the kind of prototypical gay man he was
when we met him in 2001. Alan Ball made it very clear Six Feet Under was
an autobiographical show with elements of his own life present in many of the
Fisher family. And this was particularly true of David, a man who has spent his
entire adult life terrified of what will happen if the world finds out that
he's gay. To that end his professional front as the funeral hall director of
Fisher and Sons is very much one he can live with: he puts up a face of dignity
and decorum in front of everyone around him and never wants to show his real
face to anyone, especially not his family. When he introduces Keith to them in
the Pilot – after he gets him to track down Claire, whose out high on crystal
meth – he makes it very clear that he knows Keith from playing racquetball.
It's only later that episode we learn they're sleeping together and Keith has
been trying to convince David to come out of the closet for their entire
relationship.
None of this would have worked without the
brilliant performance of Michael C. Hall as David, a performance that has
understandably eclipsed by his work as Dexter Morgan, who is by far one of the
greatest characters in TV history. But I could make an argument that that
Hall's work as Fisher was almost iconoclastic in a way that the nearly twenty
years he's been associated with Dexter isn't quite.
By the time Six Feet Under was on
the air we were well into the age of the antihero. During its five year run the
Best Actor in a Drama category was filled with some of the greatest in TV
history, not just James Gandolfini but
Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer, Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey on The Shield and
Ian McShane for playing Al Swearengen. These four actors would dominate the
awards show circuit during this period with all deservedly winning Emmys and Golden Globes (McShane only
won the latter). By the time Hall started playing Dexter on Showtime audiences
were ready to root for a serial killer who thought his only merit was that he
killed other serial killers.
Hall's work as David, like so many of the
characters on Six Feet Under, would become far scarcer and less
recognized by the Emmys during the next twenty years: basically good people who
are trying to make their way forward in a complicated world. (Peter Krause, who
memorably played Nate, has made a career in the twenty years since playing
essentially that sort of role in brilliant network series like Parenthood and
9-1-1 and has gotten a similar lack of recognition from the Emmys for
it.) David's greatest struggle throughout the series is with himself, trying to
accept that he is a gay man because he has been raised to think it is perverse
and disgusting. This is, sadly, a far more relatable struggle and consequently
less fun to appreciate that seeing all of the characters I mentioned above –
Dexter among them – killing people every week and getting away with it.
Yet I'd argue the arc he did in the first
season in particular is one of the most important ones in at least the first
decade of 21st TV. In an era where 'don't ask, don't tell' had been
put into law by a Democratic President
who famously had no use for marriage between one man and one woman
having the lead character on TV be a gay man was a big deal. And all the more
so because the type we were used too in the few examples we were getting in
popular culture: there was none of the over-the-top feminine campiness we got
with most gay characters or the blatant, angry type we were getting on Showtime
series like Queer As Folk. David Fisher had lived his entire life in the
closet and he was terrified of coming out, even if it turned out that the
people who loved him has always known.
One of the many, many great stories of the
first season of Six Feet Under was that David was the good son. He'd
stayed behind to work with his father rather than go to law school because his
big brother was the more free-spirited one and Claire was already the problem
child. It was clear during the Pilot how much David seethed and Nate's contempt
for what he did for a living and that spilled out during the funeral. One can
never forget David's reaction after Nate spewed how plastic and packaged the
funeral business is: "You didn't spend last night stuffing you're father's
ass with cotton soaked in formaldehyde so he wouldn't leak."
David is infuriated when the will is read
and Fisher and Sons has been left to him and Nate jointly. To him, this is the
ultimate sign that everything he put into the family business was never
appreciated by his father, perhaps Nathaniel never even trusted him to carry it
on. He mocks Nate's laissez-faire attitude to sell the business to Kroner, then
changing his mind. Much of the first season is about the two brothers
rebuilding their relationship – and in part that means David coming out,
subtly, to Nate first. Nate to be clear is so stunned he has to tell Brenda: Oh
my God, I think David is gay!" Brenda's reaction is different: "I
think David is lucky, did you get a look at that guy he was with
The thing is, for much of the first season
David is still struggling with the burden he's carried all his life. Sometimes
it's humorous: there's a female family friend who keeps trying to hook up with
him all through the season and he keeps putting her off. Sometimes he shows it
during the conversations with the corpses of the week. The most hysterical one
is when a famous porn star, who died when she knocked her electronics into a
bubble bath, says to him as he looks at her breasts: "So these tits do
nothing for you?" David is delicate even with the dead. "Well, I can
appreciate that they're beautiful in their own completely artificial way."
Of course this conversation comes back to something else:
"You think God cares that you're
gay?"
Then David becomes a little mean. "You
think God cares you f—ed thirty guys at once?
But the more serious story comes when Ruth
asks David to take her to the family church in place of her husband. Religion is an important part of David's
professional life but growing up in the era of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
talking about the evils of homosexuality in televised sermons having to attend
a church as a child has clearly played a huge role in making him ashamed of who
he is. Even after he's named a deacon the fact that he embraces the church's typical
conservative stance of homosexuality is to the straw that causes Keith to break
up with him during Season 1. David is
used to taking everything stoically but its clear having to carry this along
with all the other upheavals in the aftermath of his father's death does much
to crack his façade.
This all comes to a head during the final
two episodes of Season 1. A Private Live, the penultimate episode, is the
highest ranked by imdb.com by the fans of the entire first season and while
much of it no doubt has to do with the conflict between Brenda and Billy which
boils over into him attacking her and her finally committing him, much of it
has to do with the funeral.
The death of the week is one of the most
shocking. In the opening a pair of young gay men are attacked and Marc Foster,
Jr is killed. Clearly meant to parallel the murder of Matthew Shephard, this is
one of the most toxic funerals the home's dealt with: there's immense media
coverage and much of it has to do with the 'morality or immorality of the
situation'.
David has never felt more discomfort about
his identity and this is very clear when Rico, who as we've seen in Season 1
has an almost casual homophobia, comments:
Ok Cinderella. We're gonna have to work
overtime to get you ready for the ball, because men don't make passes at girls
with big gashes.
David has mostly sat in silence. This time
he actually says: "How would you deal with it if you worked for a fag?
Because I am one."
Rico is shocked and doesn't immediately
respond. Its rarely talked about directly in the aftermath but his homophobia
doesn't disappear. Later in the series he will find his brother-in-law having
sex with another man and punch his brother-in-law in the face first.
He has several conversations with 'Marc'
and Marc spends a lot of time telling David that he deserved what he got. This
is was people like him deserve. The confrontation explodes at the funeral where
a group of gay protestors and fundamentalist come and Keith is there to try and
keep trouble apart.
This leads to David finally having a
confrontation with a Fundamentalist.
Fundamentalist: God killed Marc Foster, and
I'm here to celebrate.
David punches him in the face.
God just shoved your stomach into your
lungs, and I'm here to celebrate!
At the end of the episode David finally
manages to say something he's wanted to tell Ruth all his life. But the thing
is Ruth has probably suspected for just as law. Earlier in the episode she has
an awkward conversation with a gay florist about when he first knew.
Ruth is upset because she can't understand
why David never felt secure enough to confide in her such a secret. This could
sound selfish in the wrong hands but Ball has gone out of his way to make it
clear Ruth has been finding her own way forward as a widow and has been
learning that everyone in her family has spent their lives keeping secrets from
her. The Fishers have clearly spent their lives not talking.
And sadly at the end of the episode David
feels no better for confiding. Marc is still attacking him telling the worst.
In a moment that has to rank as one of the great scenes in the entire series
the episode ends with David kneeling and saying: "Please God, take this
pain away."
This is an extraordinary moment for Hall
and incredibly the season finale tops it.
During the season at David's church one of
the major characters is the new priest Father Jack. David has spent much of
their time together assuming Jack is gay and is shocked he isn't. However when
it becomes public knowledge that Father Jack has presided over a lesbian
marriage the deacons start a fight over whether to keep him. David is forced to
make the tie-breaking vote.
So at the end of it he goes before the
pulpit and tells the congregation – and in a sense, God - his true sexual identity, that he's not
ashamed of it and if God is everything they say, he loves him too. Hall does so
without lecturing or preaching, he just calmly and silently says this to those
assembled. And it's not a denunciation of the church or the worshippers: Hall
never raises his voice during his speech. Yet in the subtle, soft-spoken way
Alan Ball and his writers did it's nearly as revolutionary as Tony Soprano
killing Fabian Petrullo or Jack Bauer's first interrogation at CTU (which was
going to happen a few months after this episode aired).
There's no anger in David's stand the same
way we saw in the previous episode but there's also no shame. Inevitably he's
asked to step down as a deacon and Father Jack is still fired. But David is
fine with that in a way he wouldn't have been at the start of the season. It
doesn't matter if the rest of the world doesn't accept his being gay ; he now
does.
And notably he doesn't leave the church
going forward. He'll leave that one obviously but he'll still spend much of the
series religious, eventually joining the Gay Man's Chorus at the church he and
Keith live close too. We know that he will be close to Father Jack for the rest
of the series and even beyond that and from this point forward he's more
accepting of some of Nate's more Eastern religious beliefs then he was before.
Its completely understandable, by the way,
that Hall only received a single Emmy nomination for his work on the series.
(He was nominated in 2002, critically during a period The Sopranos was
on one of its extended hiatuses and ineligible for Emmys that year.) This was a
cutthroat field with all of the great actors I mentioned and that's without
including Martin Sheen who was nominated just as often for The West Wing. I'm
kind of amazed Peter Krause managed to get three nominations during this same
five year period. Hall's performance was a master class but it was almost
always one of restraint where he rarely got the chance for the kind of
emotional highpoints we get from the kind of performances that typical earn
nominations or awards. In that sense Dexter Morgan gave him far more
opportunities to hit those kind of high notes.
But don't kid yourself. Hall's work as
David Fisher was in its own way as groundbreaking for gay and lesbian roles in
dramatic series as Will and Grace and Ellen were for comedy. And we'd start seeing it in the most
unexpected way just a few months after Season 2 of Six Feet Under.
In the next article I get to The Wire and
what its like to be gifted, black – and openly gay.
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