DEEP 'SIX': I've now watched the season premiere of "Six Feet Under" twice, and I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what the hell happened. But then, maybe that's the point. (Once again, spoilers starting now:)
For "Six Feet Under" to kill off its protagonist, Nate Fisher, would've taken major cajones (its creator's name, after all, is Alan Ball), and since the show has made use of apparition characters since its first episode, such a decision seemed not quite so far-fetched. Kill Nate off they did, only to bring him back after 15 minutes, after a sequence so bizarrely profound that it somehow didn't come across as a copout.
That opening sequence will one day to be remembered in HBO lore along with Ralphie's Severed Head, The "Oz" blowjob bite, and the restaurant curse-a-thon that closed the most recent season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." We see Nate on the operating table (the conclusion of last season's brain surgery), then he drifts through various possible futures for himself, whether dead, alive and brain-damaged, alive and married to Brenda, or alive and married to Lisa. The last of those turned out to be true (at least as far as we know), though Nate experiences deja vu from the opening scene throughout the rest of the episode, leading us to question is-he-alive-after-all?
I could be nice and compare the episode's opening to "Mulholland Drive," or I could be nasty and liken it to "Vanilla Sky." But I liked it, so I suppose the former is more apropos. It did set up all sorts of possibilities for the new season, which I will be eagerly awaiting.