Six Feet Under

“Everyone's Waiting”, Season 5 Episode 12

Apologies for the extra-long post, but this was an extra-long episode: a 72-minute runtime!

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Lemonspawn on Discord

What do I know about this series going into it?

I’d heard of it during its first run. If I recall, there were two major death-themed dark comedies running at the same time. One of the two was about a dead girl recruited by Death to serve as one of the reapers of souls¹. I don’t know what the other one is about, and I don’t know which of the two is Six Feet Under.

While looking up which episode was the finale, I caught a glimpse of the name “Brenda”.

Previously On

A woman in a car tells “Rico” that their lives should be theirs, not other people’s. Somebody is murdering children. The pizza is burning. A redhead demands her keys from a guy who took them; when he refuses, she steals them, drives away, and hits a deer. Her car overturns. A woman hates her father, played by James Cromwell. Ruth² tells a woman her water’s breaking, and the latter gives birth.

Recap

The opening credits are a jaunty tune over images of dead people, hearses, crows, tombstones, etc. Kathy Bates guest-stars. Scott Buck worked on this, which is not a good sign.

After the credits: Brenda gives birth. But the baby isn’t crying; her airways need to be opened.

A title card appears: “Willa Fisher Chenowith, 2005-”. She’s not dead yet, but she’s extremely premature and it’s touch-and-go. From the hospital, Brenda calls the redhead whose car overturned and sobs into the answering machine: I can’t take another child dying.

Well, that closes the coffin on this being a comedy.

Redhead listens to that message, then to the next message, from “Ted”, who calls her Claire. “I’m sorry I took the keys,” says Ted, “but I don’t want you to end up in a wheelchair.” The next message is also from Ted: Sorry about the previous message. I turned into my father. Claire laughs, forgives him, and calls him back.

Elsewhere, two men, who call each other Keith and David, are arguing; their kids are lying awake in bed in the other room and can hear every word. David (played by Michael Hall) thinks Keith doesn’t love him anymore because he’s sick and weak - some kind of mental illness - and just wants an excuse to dump him, and never wanted those kids anyway. (The kids who, as stated, can hear every word.) To prove David wrong, Keith embraces him, and David breaks down: when will I find a medication that works?

Interesting. Is David the murderer from the Previously?

Back in the hospital, a doctor gives Brenda the rundown on Willa’s status; she’s in an incubator, they’re checking for cranial bleeding, etc. A woman by Brenda’s side (Ruth, perhaps?) reassures her: Willa will come home. But Brenda is less certain.

The redhead is in bed with, I assume, Ted. She expresses disbelief that she’s sleeping with a right-wing Christian, who is even playing, God forbid, a disc of Christian music! She admits to him that she had an abortion once, expecting it’ll drive him away - but this doesn’t bother him³. The conversation eventually turns lighter and she takes naked photos of him.

As Brenda watches her baby in the incubator, a nurse called “Nate” approaches. He too looks like Michael Hall, so maybe I was wrong about who plays David earlier⁴. He cruelly tells Brenda, “Too bad you don’t believe in anything, or you could pray.” A shift in the camera angle reveals there’s actually nobody in the corridor with her - so he must be a dead friend or family member.

Back to David and Keith, where David is packing up a suitcase and leaving. The kids are sure that he and Keith are splitting up permanently and don’t believe he will ever come back. But he’s got a cover story:

“And I always wait until I’m packed and one foot out the door before telling you I’m going on a trip.”

They’re not fooled for an instant.

At her home, Ruth is taking care of a girl who I think is Brenda’s daughter. Another woman arrives to pick up and bring her home. Brenda is coming back from the hospital, but the baby will still have to stay there a couple of weeks.

It’s odd. So far this feels like just a normal episode of television. There’s nothing finale-like. I don’t see how they can wrap up the storyline about David’s medication without a massive timeskip, nor do I see how Brenda’s storyline can be wrapped up (unless the baby dies - which I really hope it doesn’t - and that won’t feel like closure either). This is the fifth season, so even if the showrunners didn’t know it would be the last they should be preparing some kind of closure.

Meanwhile, a man and a woman and their kids are sitting around a table talking about some massive amount of money that’s coming to him. I recognize the woman from the Previously, which would make her husband Rico. I can’t really follow their conversation, though. Just the statements “Nate left his part to Brenda” and “David’s going kind of nuts”.

Ruth gets a phone call from James Cromwell, whom she calls “George”. She laments how alone she feels since “Brenda’s mother took Maya”. George reassures her: “You’re not alone, you have me.” But she doesn’t just have George; David has just walked into her kitchen.

“I can’t be at home,” he says.

“Where will you go?” she asks.

“Here.”

I briefly wonder what her relationship is to him, but she immediately makes it clear: “I’ll make you some cereal. Would you like it in your yellow bowl?” So she’s an empty-nest mother, desperate to have a little kid around now that she’s not caring for Maya.

Claire comes home with the phone ringing: it’s a guy named “Dennis” from “New Image”, some kind of photography gallery in NYC. He’s inviting her to send in an application for a job as a photographer’s assistant. Weird: who recommended her to them, that they’re calling her out of nowhere but know nothing about her? I barely have time to wonder this before Claire voices the same question to Ruth and David in the kitchen. My guess: despite his protests never to show them to anyone, Ted sent the gallery the naked pictures she took of him.

Rico and his partner are walking around with an estate agent, looking to purchase the funeral home. They discuss problems with the plumbing and their plans to renovate.

Back at the hospital, the doctor tells Brenda that Willa has improved considerably. They’ll remove the feeding tube and if no further problems develop she can go home the next day. But she can’t focus on what he’s saying, with Imaginary Nate showing up (sometimes replacing the doctor in the hallway) and saying that the only reason nothing is wrong with the baby is that the problems will wait to show up until she’s grown attached to her. Clearly schizophrenia runs in this family…

George comes home to Ruth and, like two others before him, scolds her for leaving the back door wide open. But she half wants to be murdered by a random stranger: “Each day I feel worse” since Nate died, she says. “They’ve taken Maya and I will never see her or her sister [Willa] again, if her sister even survives.” She has trouble appreciating that she still has a lot of family that loves her and cares about her. “Let me take care of you,” says George.

Hang on, though, I must’ve gotten something wrong here. If Nate was Brenda’s husband - not some other relative, like a brother - then Brenda must be Ruth’s daughter-in-law, not her daughter. So Brenda and Ruth dislike each other (as in-laws often do), and without Nate around nobody can force Brenda to allow Ruth into her grandchildren’s lives.

Rico tells David and Brenda that he wants to buy the mortuary. David is loath to sell the family business, but when he sees that Brenda doesn’t really care about it - and since he knows he doesn’t want to run it himself - he decides, who cares? Go for it.

Rico: “So let’s put it on the market?” Wait. Rico isn’t trying to buy it, he’s trying to convince them to sell it. The property is worth $2 million, the estate agent had told him.

David brings the news to Ruth: for that kind of money, why not sell it? Claire comes in and calls Ruth “mom” - so I learn how she fits into this family - but Ruth isn’t listening. She’s gotten distracted by something wedged between the sofa and the wall, and tries to retrieve it in a panic.

You could just ask her?

It’s a monkey, Maya’s favorite stuffed animal. Ruth sobs over it and says she needs to wash it.

Okay, so that’s where the closure of the series is going to come from: the selling - and closing - of the family’s mortuary, combined with Ruth learning (or not learning) to move on with all her children moving out.

Keith and David are wandering around a natural history museum. With the money from selling the mortuary, they say, we could buy a house. “Are you ready to come back home soon?” Keith asks. “Maybe,” answers David - which is odd. Has anything actually changed for him?

Turns out the kids, Anthony and Durell, are at the museum too.

“Didn’t you say you were at a funeral directors’ conference?” “Oh, right. It’s, uh, in the back room of this museum.”

There’s a gathering at Brenda and Maya’s house. Detective Lupo - whose name in this universe is Billy - says something mocking about “Chenowith family drama”.

Ruth and Brenda hover over the baby, but Nate is hovering behind Brenda constantly leaving awful comments to undermine her confidence. But she gnores him.

Okay, I think I can finally construct a family tree. The Chenowiths, Ruth and George, own a funeral home. They have the following children:

• Nate (deceased), married to Brenda. Billy is her brother, and dislikes the Chenowiths.

• Claire, dating Ted.

• David, married to Keith, raising Keith’s two sons (from a previous marriage?), Anthony and Durell.

• Possibly Rico but I’m not sure yet.

But that means I was completely wrong about something earlier. Brenda and David aren’t blood relatives, so their common schizophrenia can’t run in the family.

A random other guy at the gathering, Olivier, turns out to be the one who recommended Claire to the photography people in New York. And the woman who picked up Maya earlier is Brenda’s mother; she hates Ruth with a passion, buying Maya an okapi doll, and secretly tosses the monkey aside when Ruth isn’t looking.

That night, David has a hallucination of his father berating him. His father isn’t James Cromwell, so the family tree must still be a bit wrong; perhaps James Cromwell is Ruth’s father. David’s father berates him for being gay, then sends a demon to attack him. David turns the tables on the demon and is about to stab him when he discovers the demon is Nate. He wakes up: it’s just a dream, but still hallucinates Nate smiling at him in the bedroom.

The next morning, Claire and Ruth discuss where they will live after the property is sold. Claire: “I’ll move in with Ted.” Ruth: “I’ll move in with George.” Something is off about the way she describes it. Maybe George is Ruth’s brother.

But then Claire gets a phone call: she got the job! She’ll have to move to New York.

Did he not check the area code when he called her?

David consults with Rico, who is in the middle of preparing a body for burial. I’ve changed my mind, says David, I don’t want to sell the business. This pisses off Rico no end. He’s not a brother, it turns out, but he does somehow own a 25% stake in the family business, and there’s nothing he can do with it. Anybody who has enough money to buy it off of him would prefer to do something else with that money⁵.

Ruth is preparing to move in with George, when George mentions offhandedly that his daughter Maggie left a month ago and he has no idea where she is. This causes Ruth to reconsider: “You’ve got walls around your heart... but this doesn’t mean I won’t go out with you.”

So George isn’t related to them at all? Where did I get the idea that he was? I check my notes: a woman yelled at him in the Previously, and I must’ve somehow thought that was Ruth. It must have been Maggie.

Nate wakes up Brenda in the middle of the night: “She can’t breathe!” Brenda rushes to check on Willa, who is perfectly fine. “Why can’t you love her?” she asks Nate in desperation.

Keith has an idea for David: I have some money saved up. We can buy Rico’s stake ourselves. David: “But that’s your money.” Keith: “No, it’s our money.” Then instead of selling the home, we’ll live in it ourselves. David: “You don’t think it’s depressing?” Keith: No, we can make it something spectacular.

Ruth calls Maggie, who is about to go into a doctor’s office. She asks: was Nate happy, the night he died? Yes. Were you? Yes. So Nate died while cheating on Brenda with Maggie?

Keith and David ask Brenda about her stake in the business, presumably inherited from Nate. Can we slowly buy you out over time? She agrees: “Of course you can. We’re family.” So they’ll buy Rico’s portion outright, while Brenda will give them her portion, which they’ll pay off in installments.

Brenda brings Ruth pictures of Willa, and there’s a rapprochement. Let me help you, Ruth says, because I know you’re going to need it.

At his house, a thrilled Rico pours champagne for him and his wife.

Claire encounters Ruth crying over the fact that all her children are leaving her. She decides: You know what, I won’t go to New York, if it’ll hurt my mother so much.

But Ruth refuses the offer. I stayed home, gave up my life, to take care of a sick woman (presumably her mother), she says, and I won’t let you make the same mistake. Instead I’ll move in with Sarah, whoever that is, who isn’t even home right now but if when she comes back she doesn’t like it too fucking bad. Ruth and Claire sob on each other’s shoulders; it’s a little bit too melodramatic.

I don’t entirely understand why Ruth feels so alone. She and Brenda just came to an understanding⁶; I know Claire is leaving, but David and his kids are still around. She’s still got two children and four grandchildren who live in the area. Is that not enough family?

In the middle of the night. Brenda wakes up and hears coughing. It’s not an infant coughing, so she checks in on Maya⁷, who is fine, then she checks in on Willa⁸. There she finds Nate and his father Nathaniel holding the baby. “I love her so much and always will,” Nate says. She is relieved that he has changed his mind. But whence this sudden cure for schizophrenia?

Ah. It’s not a sudden cure. Brenda wakes up in her own bed; the whole thing was a dream. Her subconscious was merely hoping her schizophrenia is gone.

Claire says goodbye to Ted. He gives her a CD containing his “deeply unhip mix”, which she has to promise not to listen to until she starts driving away. For her part, she begs him to do her a favor: If the corporate warmongers decide we have to invade Iran and reinstate the draft, promise me you’ll flee to Canada. He, sensibly, tells her that that’s not going to happen, but she’s deathly serious⁹.

As Claire is packing, however, she gets a call from New Image: They’ve been bought out by a company in Chicago and their New York office is closing. It’s not clear to me that this doesn’t mean the job offer is still open, just in a different city - but it is clear to Claire, so maybe I missed something.

That’s when she's is visited by her own Nate (what is this?). But her Nate is a lot more supportive and helpful, and recommends that she go to New York anyway, not tell anyone the job fell through, and make her own way.

The mortuary has been completely redecorated; it’s now Keith and David’s house, and they’re having one last family dinner before Claire leaves in the morning. They discuss their memories of Nate, some good, some bad. One time he took ecstasy by accident and kept groping Brenda’s breasts throughout the meal, for example. And then there was another incident…

“But the story about groping my breasts while high on ecstasy was fine.”

They toast Nate.

Nate wakes Claire up the next morning and quotes the episode title: Everybody’s Waiting.

Wait, wasn’t the family name Chenowith?

Claire embraces Ruth and David and Keith and the boys one by one in a tearful goodbye. As she drives off, she sees Nate running after her in the rearview mirror. She breaks down sobbing.

The denouement is a montage of Claire driving across the country, intercut with future scenes of what will happen to the family¹⁰. David teaches Durrell how to embalm; Willa celebrates her first birthday; David and Keith get married (so they apparently weren’t married yet) with Claire as their wedding photographer; Ruth dies peacefully in bed surrounded by her family at the age of 79; Keith, working for a Brinks-like company, gets shot during a robbery and dies in 2029; Claire and Ted get married; David dies in 2044 while watching one of the kids (played by Keith’s actor) play football at a family picnic; Hector Federico Diaz - that explains who “Rico” is - dies in 2049 while on a cruise; Brenda dies in 2051.

It’s taken her over fifty years to drive to New York.

Claire herself dies in 2085; one of the half-naked pictures of Ted is on her wall.

Lingering questions

• Did David ever get suitable treatment for his schizophrenia? What about Brenda?

• Did the US end up invading Iran and drafting Ted?

Ratings

I evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. This will likely differ greatly from how the episode works in its proper context. And it should go without saying that the following does not apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.

The rating system is from 0 to 10, where 5 is considered average for television. These are intended to be measurements, not judgements; a low rating may reflect low quality, but it may also reflect a deliberate choice. For example, a strong character piece may have no plot, or a finale may intentionally provide no closure - neither of which makes an episode bad.

Story: 6/10. They managed to fit a lot into the episode, though it did have an extended runtime to work with. Each family member had their own separate plotline, which informed and influenced the others without quite merging. Each plotline was coherent and advanced through multiple stages.

I do have a bit of a problem with the conclusions, which were more hinted to than provided. David’s mental issues aren’t addressed; he just comes back home, and no mention of medication or therapy is made again; Brenda’s mental issues are resolved by, essentially, dreaming that they’re resolved; we are invited to assume that everything worked out for Claire in New York but are given no information as to how. It’s well plotted, but it kind of cops out at the end.

Writing: 8/10. Schizophrenia isn’t exactly rare on television, but I’ve never seen it executed this effectively. Hearing and seeing your tormentor and being able do nothing about it must be excruciating, and the scenes with Brenda communicate that to the audience astonishingly well. I kept wanting to shout at Brenda: “Just punch him the face! Don’t let him talk to you like that!” And then I have to remind myself that she can’t. You can’t kick him out of the house or get a restraining order because he lives inside her head. There’s no escape for her, and there never will be.

They overdid it with Claire’s sobbing scenes, I think, but the rest of the episode was very well done too. Keith and David’s fights; their relationships with their kids; Ruth dealing with her empty nest. It was very well written.

Production: 10/10. This score is mostly on the strength of the acting, which was stellar. The editing was very effective in the schizophrenia scenes too.

Characterization: 3/10. It’s rare for me to comment on stellar acting while also criticizing the characters’ depth. But I got very little sense of anybody’s personality in this episode. Keith is a supportive husband. Ruth is an empty-nest mother dealing with grief over the loss of a child. Claire is a fountain of melodramatic tears. These very simple descriptions cover everything I know about them, with no real sense that there’s more to these people.

I got a peek into Brenda’s psyche - desperate to have something go right in a life marked by one loss after another - but hers is the only one, and the writers cheated a bit to obtain it by giving me direct access to her inner monologue.

Accessibility: 3/10. I kept having to guess, and reguess, and reguess how everybody was related to one another, and I don’t know if I got it right at the end. Who exactly is George to Ruth? Why are David and Keith taking care of Keith’s biological kids, whom David wants but Keith doesn’t? What is the family’s surname? How did Rico end up owning part of the business? There’s clearly a lot of backstory here that I’m missing.

Closure: 5/10. While the finale did show us what happened to everybody in the end - literally - it sort of skipped some of the endings that mattered. We know that David and Keith raise their kids, but we don’t know how his mental issues get resolved. We know that Brenda and Maya and Willa all turn out alright, but we don’t really know what made her Inner Nate suddenly change his mind (or even whether his doing so was just her wishful thinking). We know that Claire photographs the wedding, but we’re invited to assume that she did so by landing on her feet and getting a photography-related job in New York rather than still doing that as a hobby¹¹. We see everybody grow happy, and old, and die, but more could have been done to show us how they got from A to B.

Do I want to watch the series now?

The writing and acting are certainly good enough to recommend it, but I think I’ll pass on this one. I just didn’t really get invested in their lives, and the setting (a family that runs a mortuary?) didn’t grab me.

Is there a series finale you’d like me to try? Join our Discord or leave a comment below.

1. Writing this footnote two days later: I think the other is called Dead Like Me.

2. Name given in captions.

3. The premarital sex might have been a clue that he’s not the most devout.

4. Through the end of the episode I still won’t be sure. Either my prosopagnosia is acting up or Michael Hall played both characters. If he did, he did a fantastic job, because they feel and look like two genuinely different people despite both looking like Michael Hall.

5. This is not really how economics works.

6. Writing this footnote three days later: It’s possible that in the original script the scene with Brenda and the photographs came after this one. If so, I can see why they moved it, but the change does undermine this scene a bit.

7. For a certain definition of “checks in on”. She just glances at her from the doorway and moves on. I’m a father, and believe me, you walk straight into that room and stare until you’re sure you see the blanket rising and falling.

8. Who puts an infant, especially a premature infant with health problems, in the farther bedroom?

9. She doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about David dying in Iran, though.

10. I don’t recognize the song that plays over this montage, but I wonder how happy the artist is that it features on Ted’s “deeply unhip mix”.

11. To be honest, I’m not sure why the episode bothered to include the scene of her job falling through. Did it make any real difference in the end?