It was announced today that the fifth season of “Six Feet Under,” which is scheduled to go into production this week, will be the last.
Kind of shocking, since the show only started in 2001. But then again, ‘Six Feet’ took a dramatic step backward in terms of quality in its most recent season, with nonsensical, contrived plotlines, and characters behaving in ways totally untrue to themselves. It got a bit better as the season went on, but then concluded with the same stupid plot twist –a man confesses, out of nowhere, to a murder and then, out of nowhere, shoots himself- that I’ve seen dozens of times on hack network dramas created by David E. Kelley and his ilk.
No matter what other reasons there were for the decision, I nevertheless applaud creator Alan Ball for deciding to pull the plug when he realized that the show was running out of steam creatively.
And speaking of dead characters coming back to life as ghosts- this Jimmy Smits-returning-to-“NYPD Blue” thing could be REALLY good, or be REALLY laughable. I can see no in-between.
Posted by Stephen Silver at November 9, 2004 12:49 AM