Six Feet Under, one of the finest ensemble dramas in TV history, was obligated to provide a fitting resolution to the series–one that stayed true to the tone and character of the show itself. While many beloved TV series fail to deliver this,  SFU’s finale is so exquisite that it completely changed the game for what a series finale could ever hope to achieve. The success of the finale was contingent upon the sheer brilliance of the writing, acting, cinematography, and directing the series’ fans had come to admire. But the true core of this success was due to how the show concluded its unique approach to its subject matter. Therefore, “Everyone’s Waiting,” the series finale of Six Feet Under, stands among TV history’s most perfect episodes.

SFU most prominently features the dysfunctional Fisher family home in Los Angeles. Their business is death; the basement has been converted into a mortuary. Here, bodies are cleaned, repaired, embalmed, and presented–all where they live. Further, the first floor has a viewing parlor. Fittingly, each episode of Six Feet Under begins with a death: some are humorous; some are expected; some are downright tragic. The Fishers’ clients struggle to make meaning out of their loved ones’ finalities. Meanwhile, the Fishers are the ones shown actually learning those meanings.

Part of the reason why the finale works so well is because we see the characters escape patterns of self destruction that had been eloquently described decades before its airing. Firstly, through the Freudian concept of death drive, the Fishers appear to want to find their own finalities within what they learn. But, ironically, the Fishers fail to understand the central theme of the show: death is the only source of finality in life. In turn, Freudian scholar Jacques Lacan might say that they use these lessons as an objet petit a in order to attempt to get to finality, the unattainable Other. However, in SFU, finality isn’t even technically attainable since one can’t necessarily “experience” death itself–at least not with one’s current consciousness. Arguably, they mistakenly interpret finality as meaning.

To clarify, I interpret “meaning” as entirely different from finality. In the sense of the death drive, every character in the series flirts with destructive, ruinous behavior, sometimes even with the intent of approaching the finality of death. But by the finale, each character has learned that meaning is a series of signposts within one’s life that most often leads to paths nowhere near finality. This is what the finale was so successful at portraying–along the metaphor of the highway in the show’s final minutes, each character begins to seek personal meaning, not the red herring of finality.

For SFU, meaning and finality are two doors, side by side. The show’s primary source of tension is that the characters attempt to break down the door of finality, mistaking it for meaning. What makes the finale so satisfying is that Claire, the youngest of the Fisher children, has finally discovered that the door of meaning has always been unlocked. She decides to venture east towards New York City, on a path of growth and accomplishment. It’s a decision that signals a shift for all of the primary characters away from the fruitless search for finality and towards a search for meaning. It marks how the family members begin to repair themselves and their ties to one another.

The show’s final sequence demonstrates this. Just before Claire begins to drive away from the Fisher home, she slides a burned CD (a gift from her boyfriend whom she leaves in Los Angeles) into the car’s stereo. As she pulls out of the driveway, Sia’s epic and heart-wrenching “Breathe Me” begins. It underpins a series of flash-forwards that reveal each character’s death in ways that mimic the deaths of previous episodes–some are humorous; some are expected; some are tragic. These brief, hazy scenes are spliced in with Claire’s journey east in her car on Interstate 10 through the Sonoran Desert. Each shot of the car is deliberately distorted in some way through visual perspective, various lenses, and other technical camera work. This reinforces (and foreshadows) that, though the family matures, they will still see significant confusion and hardship. Finally, before the final shot of Claire driving off into the distance, we see her death at age 101. She is in bed, blind from cataracts and surrounded by the photos (largely of her family members) which presumably made her successful. The photos are also a metaphor for what I have been arguing all along: she has lived her life through meaning, not finality. Thus, what Six Feet Under delivers with its finale “Everyone’s Waiting” is an answer to the philosophical question it posed throughout the series. Its ability to depict this with visual poetry makes this one perfect episode.

Jonathan Sanford recently graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with an M.A. English. He has a Master of Letters from Drew University and a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His work has previously been published with Drunk Monkeys and in the literary journal Jonathan from Sibling Rivalry Press. He lives in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan with my dogs Lily and Thor.