Death is awkward. Usually, TV shows treat it like a procedural puzzle or a melodramatic cliffhanger, but when six feet under series 1 premiered on HBO in 2001, it did something radically different. It made death mundane. It made it a family business.
You probably remember that iconic green hearse. Or maybe you remember the jarring, white-out openings where a complete stranger dies in some freak accident—a falling block of ice, a runaway bus, a pool drowning—before the jaunty, eerie Thomas Newman theme music kicks in. It was a vibe. Still is. Honestly, watching it back now in the mid-2020s, the pilot episode directed by Alan Ball feels less like a period piece and more like a visceral wake-up call about how little we’ve actually progressed in our "death-positive" conversations.
The show starts with a literal bang. Nathaniel Fisher Sr., the patriarch of Fisher & Sons Funeral Home, gets T-boned by a bus while driving his brand-new hearse. He was just lighting a cigarette. Boom. Dead. This leaves his family—Ruth, Nate, David, and Claire—to navigate a world where they are literally surrounded by the dead but have no clue how to talk to each other.
The Pilot That Changed Everything for HBO
Most pilots are clunky. They over-explain. But the first episode of six feet under series 1 dropped us right into the middle of the Fisher family’s repressed, California-gothic nightmare.
Nate Fisher, played by Peter Krause, is the prodigal son returning from Seattle. He’s the guy who ran away from the "death house" only to be pulled back in by the ultimate irony. Then you’ve got David (Michael C. Hall, way before he was a serial killer on Dexter), the closeted, tightly-wound brother who actually stayed behind to run the business. Their dynamic is the engine of the first season. It’s messy. It’s full of resentment. It’s basically every family dinner you’ve ever wanted to walk out on, just with more formaldehyde.
Alan Ball, who had just come off the success of American Beauty, took that same suburban angst and dunked it in a vat of grief. He didn't want a show about "the afterlife." He wanted a show about the people left behind. The first season is largely about the transition of power and the breaking of masks. Ruth Fisher’s primal scream in the first episode when she learns of her husband's death isn't "pretty" acting. It’s harrowing. Frances Conroy plays Ruth with this fragile, flickering intensity that makes you feel like she’s always one second away from a total nervous breakdown.
Why the "Death of the Week" Structure Worked
The show used a formula that could have been cheesy but ended up being profound. Every episode of six feet under series 1 begins with a death.
Sometimes it’s tragic. Sometimes it’s darkly hilarious. In "The Foot," a disgruntled baker gets chopped up by a dough mixer. In "Familia," a gang member is gunned down. These deaths serve as mirrors. The Fishers aren't just burying bodies; they are burying their own secrets. When a "New Life" pyramid scheme leader dies, it forces the family to look at their own fraudulent behaviors.
It’s a brilliant narrative device because it grounds the high-concept drama in a weirdly relatable reality. We all die. The Fishers just happen to see the invoice for it.
Breaking Down the Key Characters in Season 1
Let’s talk about Claire. Lauren Ambrose’s portrayal of the youngest Fisher is perhaps the most accurate depiction of a "weird" high schooler ever put to film. She’s smoking crystal meth (just once, and it goes terribly) and driving a hearse to school. She’s the observer.
Then there’s Brenda Chenowith. Rachel Griffiths brought a sharp, intellectual, and deeply damaged energy to the show. Her introduction—meeting Nate at the airport and having a quickie in a broom closet—set the tone for their chaotic relationship. Brenda wasn't just a "love interest." She was a catalyst. Her family, the Chenowiths, were the perfect foil to the Fishers. If the Fishers were repressed and religious, the Chenowiths were over-analyzed, academic, and arguably more insane.
- Nate: The reluctant heir.
- David: The dutiful son hiding his sexuality from his mother and his church.
- Ruth: The widow rediscovering her sexuality and her voice.
- Federico: The "artist" with the restorative wax who wants a seat at the table.
David’s arc in the first season is particularly heavy. This was 2001. Seeing a gay man on television who wasn't a caricature—who was conservative, religious, and struggling with the mechanics of his family business—was huge. His relationship with Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick), a Black police officer, provided one of the most stable (yet complex) foundations of the series.
The Surrealism and the "Talking Dead"
One thing people forget about six feet under series 1 is how much it played with magical realism.
The characters often have full-blown conversations with the corpses on the embalming table. These aren't ghosts. The show is very clear about that. They are projections of the characters' internal monologues. Nate talks to his dead father because he needs a sparring partner for his guilt. David talks to the dead because he’s looking for the approval he never got when his dad was alive.
It’s a clever way to avoid boring "as-you-know-Bob" dialogue. Instead of a character thinking to themselves, they argue with a dead guy. It’s funny, it’s jarring, and it’s deeply human. It reminds us that we never really stop talking to the people we lose. We just start doing it in our heads.
Critical Reception and Cultural Impact
When it launched, the show was a juggernaut. It scooped up Emmy nominations and Golden Globes like it was nothing. But beyond the awards, it changed the "prestige TV" landscape.
Before Six Feet Under, HBO was known for The Sopranos and Sex and the City. One was about violence; the other was about status and sex. Six Feet Under was about the one thing no one wanted to talk about: the end. It proved that you could build a hit show around the most "depressing" topic imaginable as long as the characters felt like real people you knew.
Looking back, the first season is remarkably polished. While the later seasons (especially the fourth) would occasionally drift into soap opera territory, the first thirteen episodes are tight. They deal with the probate of the will, the threat of the "Kroehner Service Corporation" (the big corporate funeral giant trying to buy them out), and the slow-burn realization that none of them really knew Nathaniel Sr. at all.
The Kroehner Threat: Small Business vs. Corporate Greed
A major subplot of the first season involves Kroehner, a massive conglomerate represented by the oily Matthew Gilardi. This was a very real anxiety in the early 2000s—the "Wal-Mart-ification" of everything, including death.
The struggle of Fisher & Sons to remain independent wasn't just about money. It was about the dignity of the "mom and pop" funeral home. It’s a classic David vs. Goliath story, but in this case, David is a guy with a mortuary science degree and a lot of emotional baggage. This arc forced the brothers to work together, even when they wanted to kill each other.
Why You Should Rewatch (or Start) Season 1 Now
The world is a lot noisier now. We’re constantly bombarded with tragedy in a 24-hour news cycle, but we’re arguably more detached from the actual process of death than we were twenty years ago. six feet under series 1 forces you to slow down. It forces you to look at the body.
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The fashion is dated (so many cargo pants), and the technology is ancient (hello, Nokia bricks), but the emotional core is timeless. The show doesn't give you easy answers. It doesn't tell you that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes, people just die because they were distracted by a cigarette. And that’s terrifying. But the show suggests that the terror is what makes the living part actually count for something.
If you’re coming to this for the first time, pay attention to the lighting. The way the basement of the funeral home is lit—cool, blue, clinical—versus the warmth (and sometimes suffocating yellow) of the living quarters upstairs. The house itself is a character. It’s a place where life and death literally live on top of each other.
Practical Takeaways for Your Watchlist
If you're diving into the show, keep these things in mind to get the most out of the experience:
- Watch the background details: The "commercials" for funeral products (like the "Lustra-Blue" embalming fluid) are satirical masterpieces that skew the commercialization of grief.
- Focus on the score: Thomas Newman’s work here is legendary. It balances the macabre with the whimsical in a way few others can.
- Notice the silence: Modern shows are afraid of quiet. Six Feet Under uses it to show the weight of what’s unsaid between family members.
- Track the "guest" deaths: Often, the person who dies at the start of the episode has a thematic link to the Fisher family’s conflict that week. It’s not accidental.
The first season isn't just a setup for the rest of the show. It’s a self-contained exploration of a family in the wake of a blast. It’s about the "year of magical thinking" that happens when the pillar of your world vanishes.
Next Steps for the Viewer: Start with the pilot and pay close attention to the fake advertisements for funeral products; they disappear after the first few episodes but set a unique satirical tone for the series. If you've already seen it, re-watch the episode "Footsteps" to see how the show handles the concept of "moving on" compared to modern dramas. Check out the official HBO archives for behind-the-scenes interviews with Alan Ball to understand how his personal experiences with loss shaped the script.