Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For (28 page)

For Nate, who has always run from responsibility, his inheritance provides an opportunity to reconnect with David. In ‘The Foot’ (1:3), after deciding to reject an offer to join the Kroehner Corporation, Nate reminds David that Fisher and Sons is
more
than just a business.

He wants to reinstate the ‘human touch’ in their work, and, by extension, in family interactions. As he explains: ‘This is what I’m supposed to do, which is why I’ve spent so much time running away from it. My whole life, I’ve been a tourist. Now I have the chance to do some good, instead of sucking up air.’ While initially sceptical, David agrees to their partnership. Nate has sold it to him with the right terms: ‘You and me. Together.
Brothers
. Like we used to be.’

The Foundation of Intimacy is Truth

Lillian Rubin explains that intimacy requires the disclosing of emotions and problems (1985: 66). But intimacy develops through
more
than just talking about how you feel; as Rubin suggests, it

‘requires some greater shared expression of thought and feeling …

some willingness to allow another into our inner life, into the thoughts and feelings that live there’ (74). In the secretive
Six Feet
Under
universe, self-disclosure involves revealing painful truths. But these revelations are more than an exchange of information; they allow characters to move closer together.

Unable to be open about his homosexuality with his family, the Church (and even himself), David’s emotional isolation is mired in personal crisis. While a fuller discussion of David’s sexuality is beyond the scope of this chapter, his gradual ‘coming out’ in season one is relevant here as a marker of his journey towards openness with others.

David takes the first steps towards accepting his sexuality when he

‘comes out’ to Nate after accidentally running into Nate at a coffee shop, where David is enjoying Sunday brunch with Keith (‘An 155

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Open Book’, 1:5). David may start to be more open because of Keith but this is not easy for him. As soon as he ‘comes out’ to his brother, David scuttles back into the closet as he takes up the position as church deacon and loses Keith in the process. ‘Coming out’ to his brother while still living a closeted life results in David beginning to confide more and more in Nate. But this is a slow and often difficult process. Confessing to Nate that he failed the funeral director’s examination first time leads David to say: ‘I fuck up a lot more than you might think. I fuck up a lot.’ Yet David is not just talking about professional qualifications here; he is talking about living the gay youth he bypassed, complete with recreational drugs (‘Life’s Too Short’, 1:9) and about being arrested for soliciting a male prostitute in Las Vegas (‘The Trip’, 1:11). Interestingly, despite introducing Nate at the Independent Funeral Director’s Conference as his ‘brother and partner’, it is to Keith that he turns for help after his arrest. Yet, over the four seasons, David increasingly learns to trust his brother.

While David moves slowly towards bridging the gulf with his brother, Nate wants to overcome the abyss almost immediately.

Although he has intimacy issues with women, including his mother, and is to some extent a solitary figure (often seen running alone, or sitting alone on a beach), Nate’s desire for closeness with his siblings is always there. Nate repeatedly tells David that he loves him – a phrase rarely uttered between men on American television without being played for laughs. In the seventh episode, it is clear that Nate has finally begun to penetrate David’s emotional armour (‘Brotherhood’, 1:7). Halfway through season one, this episode is a pivotal one. After the burial of Gulf War veteran Victor Kovitch (Brian Kimmet), Nate and David are alone at the cemetery. In a scene that mirrors their angry encounter after their father’s funeral in the pilot, Nate again tries to reach out. Where David aggressively pushed Nate away beforehand he now accepts the offer of brotherly love, and they embrace warmly. Both agree that they want a closer relationship than Victor had with his brother, Paul (Wade Andrew Williams). Nate tells David exactly how he feels: ‘I love you David.

I always will. I could get hit by a bus on the way to the desert tonight. I just wanted to make sure you know that.’ Opening himself up further, David replies, ‘I love you too.’ He then compliments Nate on arranging the military funeral for Victor (it is what he wanted, after all) despite Paul’s objections. ‘You did the right thing 156

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today.’ David praises Nate not only for his business acumen but also for showing him the complete emotional dislocation at stake if they do not know each other well.

The Fisher brothers live and work in a feminising space that encourages these disclosures. Specifically, their work involves dealing with people in a time of emotional crisis and grief. And this feeling of extreme vulnerability is something that the brothers experience first-hand after the death of their father. Perhaps without it Nate and David would remain estranged. But, importantly, it reminds them that their time together is finite; that they must make each day of their lives matter. When a client asks Nate why people have to die, he thoughtfully explains that it is ‘to make life important’ (‘Knock, Knock’, 1:13). Nate and David’s emotional connection is intensified because they are reminded of this on a daily basis.

As Michael C. Hall suggests, David experienced a profound loss when Nate left home as a teenager. By the season one finale, David reveals how delighted he is that Nate is back. Unafraid of his feelings, David tells his brother honestly from his heart, ‘Thanks for staying in LA and helping me run the business. Things have been a lot more fun around here since you’ve been home’ (‘Knock, Knock’, 1:13). Aware by now that he has a potentially fatal brain malformation (AVM), Nate is overwhelmed. He cries and pulls his brother close.

As Rico enters the room, they separate and stand side by side –

brothers, business partners and friends.

Throughout season two, Nate and David’s closeness develops into the intimacy of the everyday. As David resumes his relationship with Keith, he finds it increasingly easy to discuss his personal life with Nate. He becomes noticeably more relaxed throughout season two, and in response to Ruth’s incessant questioning David admits: ‘Yes, we’re having healthy, affection-based sex on a regular basis. Sometimes twice a day’ (‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’, 2:8). In addition, in ‘Someone Else’s Eyes’ (2:9), he is unashamed by his red and inflamed mouth after being kissed by an unshaved Keith. The subsequent exchange between the brothers illustrates a new ease, with Nate joking that David is a ‘big whore’ with a rash as ‘red as a baboon’s ass’. Nate later rewards David’s disclosure by asking him to be his best man.

Nate goes to David first when he wants to disclose his possible death from arterial venous malformation. As ‘Out, Out, Brief Candle’

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(2:2) concludes, the brothers sit silently together. We cannot hear what Nate is saying but we
know
what is being said. We also know, as Nate begins to cry and David comforts him, that this disclosure is both proof of their intimacy and another source for its growth.

Although close to his brother throughout his health crisis, Nate remains emotionally estranged from the women in his life, Brenda and his mother, telling them of his condition only when he has no other choice. Nate finally decides to have surgery when a scan reveals the AVM is bleeding into a critical part of his brain (‘The Last Time’, 2:13). Helping Nate prepare his funeral, David confesses that this is

‘very difficult’ for him. While he insists that Nate is not going to die, Nate says, ‘I have to get ready for it. And I think you should too.’

Nate reveals just how scared he is when he tells David, ‘I wish you could come with me.’ There is an ambiguity in Nate’s request that is both heartbreaking and resilient. And David’s embrace answers Nate’s request. That Nate and David cannot imagine life without each other reveals how far they have come in healing their emotional rift.

Someone Else’s Eyes

Season three opens with a walk through a number of possible outcomes for Nate after his surgery (‘Perfect Circles’, 3:1). One of the first alternative realities finds him confined to a wheelchair after a stroke. David is teaching him to speak. While Nate struggles to repeat the words held up by David on flashcards, David’s love and affection for Nate is self-evident as he patiently cares for his disabled brother. While Nate has quite literally shut down, David is the caretaker. The scenario illuminates the significant emotional shift that will take place across season three: Nate now needs David to be emotionally available.

In an almost complete reversal, the younger Fisher boy becomes more open and willing to be intimate than his older sibling. No longer conditioned by his closeted homosexuality, David is openly able to discuss his feelings. His decision to attend couples counselling with Keith indicates how far he is willing to go to promote intimacy with his partner. Where Nate once wondered if David felt
anything
, we now learn that David feels many things, including being ‘judged, 158

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criticised and inadequate’ (‘Perfect Circles’, 3:1). Although he and Keith continue to spar, David refuses to be a doormat (behaviour learnt from his mother). When Nate expresses concern about his relationship with Keith, David presents seeing the counsellor (Ayre Gross) as a positive development: ‘We’re just seeking the advice of a trained professional to help us to establish appropriate boundaries and write the rules of our relationship together.’ Thus, when David and Keith split again, it is not David’s failure to be open about his homosexuality that contributes to the breakdown. It is Keith’s failure to reciprocate David’s openness. As he tells Keith, ‘I want you on my side. I need you on my side, and it’s the one thing I never, ever have’ (‘Twilight’, 3:12).

In contrast, Nate
tries
and
fails
to make love work, by committing to his role as husband and father to Lisa and Maya. The demands of marriage and intimacy with Lisa become too much for him, and he shuts down, becoming capable of communicating his fears, frustrations and disappointments only in his dreams (‘The Trap’, 3:5; ‘Making Love Work’, 3:6; ‘Timing and Space’, 3:7).

Unable to love Lisa, he withdraws emotionally from her and later turns to Brenda and his old ‘bad’ habits – smoking (including dope), drinking and sex with strangers. With Lisa missing, Nate’s closed-down-ness is contrasted with David’s openness (‘Death Works Overtime’, 3:11). The brothers are seated alone in Nate’s room above the garage. Nate declares that he cannot talk about Lisa any more, and asks his brother how things are with Keith. As David proceeds to open up at length, listing personal grievances and relationship flaws, Nate disengages. Staring into the middle distance, he does not hear a word. Unlike the pattern for disclosure throughout season one, here it is Nate, not David, whose inner life has become hidden and closed off.

When Nate calls David in the middle of the night to inform him that he has filed a missing persons report and is ‘really starting to freak out’, David comes over immediately (‘Death Works Overtime’, 3:11). Later Nate asks him to watch Maya while he gets some air, pacing and smoking outside. Frustrated with the situation, Nate starts violently thrashing a tree with a rake, until the garden implement shatters. It is David who wakes him from this trance, and it is David rather than Nate who increasingly becomes competent at providing support in a crisis. David, steadily becoming skilled at 159

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the feminine work of care, is literally left holding the baby as Nate disintegrates – both physically and emotionally. Confirming
Six Feet
Under
’s challenge to a patriarchal family structure, David is now positioned as the head of the Fisher family; as Ruth marries another man, and Claire deals with the aftermath of her abortion, it is queer David who keeps the family business intact and provides (emotional) strength for all.

Throughout season one, Nate was the open brother, encouraging David to see that he did not have to suffer alone. Now, Nate is closing down – his emotional life in crisis. And he is not sure how to deal with his helplessness. When the police locate Lisa’s abandoned car, he goes to a nearby motel, alone. He isolates himself from his family and friends; he continues to shut down (‘Death Works Overtime’, 3:11). But a knock at the door begins to slowly bridge this distance, revealing David with Claire, who is sharing his grief. Nate lets them in; he hugs them tightly and cries. There is some ambiguity, however, about what Nate is feeling, intensified by the violent beating he provokes in ‘I’m Sorry, I’m Lost’ (3:13). Perhaps he cannot feel
anything
, and wants this to manifest itself, as punishment, on his body. With Lisa’s death, it is certain that the Fishers face another test of their intimacy. Equipped with the tools of brotherly love, David might be the one to open Nate up again as season four unfolds.

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