In 1949, Arthur Miller wrote, "In this age few tragedies are written." If that was true then, it's probably truer now. But tomorrow anybody with a Netflix account or a local video store will have the opportunity to watch the closing act of what is perhaps the best American tragedy since Miller's The Death of a Salesman. Whether seeing it for the first time or revisiting it, chances are you'll find the fifth and final season of Six Feet Under to be unforgettable. Much has been said and written about how different this series is from all others, from anything Western pop-culture has embraced. Six Feet Under is not classifiable as a sitcom or a drama, but a tragedy, which is a type of drama, of course, but to show a drama is to say it is within the same broad modern T.V. genre as The Sopranos, E.R., Felicity, and Law & Order. It is not.

What pushes this show into the area of tragedy is the portrayal of the failure and destruction of its main character, Nate Fisher, as both a hero and a human being.

Nate doesn't dominate the series the way that Tony Soprano dominates The Sopranos -- Six Feet Under follows the lives of all the Fishers very closely -- but his quest for a balance between growth and inner peace is a solid throughline from season to season. From his arrival in Los Angeles in the first episode, Nate was looking for away to be a strong, giving person who was also his own man. Before the death of his father, we're told, Nathan lived a more-or-less carefree life without much of a true purpose; he was able to drop his job at the organic grocery store and the rest of his life in Seattle at the drop of his hat, and aside from Lisa, a fuck buddy who eventually mothered his daughter Maya and married him (and died), he doesn't really seem to miss anything about it. From the time Nate takes over half of Fisher & Sons to the end of his life, though, he's torn between responsibility (others) and free-roaming happiness (himself). The business, David and the rest of the family, and Brenda demand dedication from Nate. They demand that his life be about something other than himself. His every decision is suddenly between what would feel good for himself and what would be good for others. Initially, he meets this new challenge with much success; he takes on the extra responsibilities and seems to find some pleasure in it (despite considerable feelings of frustration along the way). His diagnosis of arteriovenous malformation, which we're told has a remote chance of suddenly taking his life, provides him with a sense of mortality and ushers him into a marriage with Lisa and full-fledged fatherhood. Here, Nate is as committed to anything as we've ever known him to be. And he's also dependable. Being with Lisa is a pain in his ass. Still, he remains devoted to her until her death, and he does his best to be a good father to Maya until the day of his collapse.

In short, Nate spends his life (what we see of it, anyway) growing and fighting, reaching for a compromise, and has made amazing headway. He and Brenda are strong parents to Maya and alright mates to one another. Toward the end they fight a lot, but it's a trying time. Brenda's recently had a miscarriage when Nate haphazardly announces her new pregnancy before she's comfortable sharing the news. Tension abounds, sure. Things are tumultuous, yes. But Brenda and Nate have, both as individuals and as a couple, been through worse before.

Nate, though, is slipping. He feels a calling for more. Personal satisfaction is out there, he thinks, and maybe it means abandoning everything that ties him down. Ever the searcher, he explores Maggie, explores Quakerism, and then explores Maggie some more. Physically. Still, though, most viewers felt certain that Nate would get back to his wife, their unborn child, and Maya. Most of us were certain, even as he professed to Maggie how happy sex with her had made him, that Nate would understand, and then we would, that he could eventually find happiness and stability through family life. That's when he had a seizure. The episode ended with the sound of bells tolling and we all remembered the foreboding bird that had crashed Nate's 40^th birthday party a few episodes before. The debate over whether this act of selfishness was the last act of Nate's life began and lasted until the following Sunday.

It turned out that it wasn't. The producers of the show kept Nate alive long enough to break Brenda's heart. After Brenda, who sees Nate's AVM seizure as a reminder of how fragile her life with Nate is, assures him that they can get past the Maggie-transgression (she's almost already forgiven him), Nate tells her it's over. When he gets out of the hospital, presumably in the next 24 hours, he will pursue his life without her. He's given up. He says that he's tired of fighting and one wonders whether he means he's tired of arguing with Brenda or he's tired of wrestling with himself. Then, later that night, he dies.

This final exchange with Brenda is what makes the series a tragedy. Nate loses the battle with balance. He cannot please others and himself. He can only please himself. This hunger for personal satisfaction, which we all have on one level or another (and god bless it), is his tragic flaw, which, in the end, overtakes him. Whether he's at fault for wanting this so badly -- for shattering Brenda and then dying on her -- or it's just his nature is open for discussion, but what's clear is that he's lost in every sense.

In the meantime, David Fisher is also defeated. In the beginning of the series, he was a self-loathing gay man, helpless. After a horrible kidnapping and the loss of Nate, David is helpless again. Alan Ball, the show's creator, wrote during the run of the fifth season, "David has made a remarkable journey toward self-acceptance, but something traumatic, like... having his older brother die just sort of undoes all that and takes him right back to square one."

That Nate's death comes out of nowhere should come as no surprise to viewers, given the nature of the show (isn't that the whole idea?), but it does. Nate experiences his seizure at the worst possible moment (naked, after an affair), and dies at an even worse one (when it looks like he's safe, out of the woods, but not before needlessly hurting someone who loves him), quite suddenly. Even if we were ready for it at the beginning of the episode, we weren't when it happened. But I suppose they just call that realism.

In fact...

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