Six Feet Under

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

After patriarch Nathaniel Fisher dies in a collision while driving the funeral home’s new hearse, his eldest son Nate has flown home from Seattle for the holidays. The funeral business passes to Nate and David, the son who had already committed himself to the family trade. David is capable and controlled, but closeted and grieving; Nate is restless and sceptical of the business. Their reluctant partnership turns bereavement into a daily job: preparing bodies, meeting families and deciding what sort of funeral service to provide. Their mother Ruth, who had been having an affair, must rebuild a life beyond her marriage, while youngest child Claire pushes against a future chosen for her. The dead recur in brief visions and memories, making private thoughts visible without confirming a single supernatural explanation.

Death is the series’ recurring doorway into the Fishers’ lives, rather than a mystery the family solves. A client’s history or the circumstances of a death can expose the living characters’ assumptions, then echo through their work and relationships. The mortuary’s rituals sit beside domestic arguments, sexual decisions and the practical strains of running a small business. Early on, a large funeral conglomerate tries to absorb Fisher & Sons; the brothers’ responses reveal both their different temperaments and their attachment to what their father left them. Nate and David clash over responsibility, yet a threat to the independent home pushes them toward cooperation. Federico Diaz, the family’s embalmer, becomes essential to the business, and later joins Nate and David as a partner, changing the sign to Fisher & Diaz.

Nate’s return also starts his connection with Brenda Chenowith, whom he meets at the airport before learning of his father’s death. Their attraction gives way to a difficult commitment, complicated by Brenda’s volatile younger brother Billy and by the psychological scrutiny Brenda has endured from their psychiatrist parents. Nate’s health is unsettled after a car accident leads to the discovery of an arteriovenous malformation in his brain. He survives surgery, but the diagnosis remains a pressure on his choices. His former Seattle girlfriend Lisa later moves to Los Angeles and tells him she is pregnant. Maya is born, and Nate signs away his legal rights at Lisa’s request, leaving Ruth to build a bond with her granddaughter. Nate’s relationships with Brenda and Lisa do not resolve into a simple choice between them; the obligations and losses accumulate across seasons.

Nate later marries Lisa and raises Maya with her, but Lisa’s disappearance on a trip becomes a long-running wound. When her family presses for answers, Nate conceals that he buried her in the desert and gave them another person’s cremated remains, trying to honor Lisa’s wish to return to the earth while avoiding the truth. He eventually learns that Lisa had been involved with her brother-in-law Hoyt, who kills himself after Nate confronts him. The series does not establish whether Hoyt killed Lisa, so her death remains unresolved. The confrontation comes before Nate’s marriage to Brenda, while Lisa’s family threatens his place in Maya’s life.

David’s central conflict shifts from hiding his sexuality to building a life in which it is not a source of shame. He and Keith, a police officer, break up and reunite as they negotiate trust, family responsibilities and the different ways they approach commitment. David’s attempt to help a stranded motorist while transporting a body leads to an extended assault and abduction by Jake, who robs and terrorizes him before leaving him alive. The attack follows David into later episodes as panic, nightmares and visions of his tormentor. Keith tries to support him, but the trauma strains their household and parenting plans. They pursue parenthood, first through a surrogate and then adoption, and become parents to brothers Anthony and Durrell. David’s recovery is neither immediate nor detached from family life; fear affects his ability to care for others as well as himself.

Other Fisher family members change in uneven, concrete ways. Claire moves from high school into art school, where teachers and fellow students test her sense of talent and independence; relationships with Billy and then lawyer Ted sit alongside her attempts to make work of her own. Ruth tries intimacy and work outside the role of wife and mother, from a flower shop job to relationships with Nikolai and later George, but finds that reinvention does not erase old habits. These strands intersect with funerals and business decisions, so a character’s growth is repeatedly measured against the work of caring for the dead and the living. The show’s humor can be blunt, but it comes from these people’s defenses and mistakes rather than from treating grief as trivial.

In the final season, Nate’s AVM causes a brain hemorrhage after his relationship with Brenda has deteriorated and he has become involved with Maggie, George’s daughter. He initially survives surgery, then dies after a shared dream with David about surfing with their father. Brenda gives birth prematurely to Willa, who survives, while Ruth and the others struggle with Nate’s death and the arrangements for Maya. Claire accepts a New York opportunity even after the promised job disappears, and leaves Los Angeles. The finale then jumps forward through the family’s later lives: David and Keith marry and raise their sons; Ruth builds a dog-care business; Brenda raises her daughters; and the series shows the eventual deaths of Ruth, Keith, David, Rico, Brenda and, last, Claire at an advanced age. The montage closes the family chronology while leaving Claire’s departure as its immediate present-tense ending.