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Reviews Of Six Feet Under From A Realist/Thematic/Ideological Points Of View

Part 1
Write a 400 word review discussing and/or evaluating the pilot episode of Six Feet Under from the perspective of a thematic or realist approach.

The events of Six Feet Under Season 1: Pilot should be a hint that the dead never truly stay dead. The same goes for family secrets.
Six Feet Under focuses on the emotional journey of the dysfunctional Fisher family in the wake of the patriarch of the family’s death and the awakening of the many ‘ghosts’ of Fishers’ pasts. Set against the backdrop of an independent funeral home in Southern California, ironically enough, it is Nathaniel Fisher’s death that introduces the rest of the family to the audience in the first episode.
The story opens with Nathaniel Fisher, the director of Fisher and Sons Funeral Home who is killed in his own hearse when it collided with a bus while driving to the airport on Christmas Eve to meet his son, Nate (Peter Krause).
Alongside is matriarch Ruth (Frances Conroy), second brother David (Michael C. Hall) and younger sister Claire (Lauren Ambrose) and also their friends and co-workers, including David’s boyfriend, Keith Charles (Matthew St. Patrick), family friend and fellow mortician Federico Diaz (Freddy Rodriguez) and Nate’s on-and-off girlfriend, Brenda Chenowith (Rachel Griffiths).
In the wake of the tragedy Nate finds that he also has to deal with his mother Ruth, whose guilt because of her affair with her hairdresser, Hiram, is consuming her, brother David, a closet homosexual who holds a grudge against Nate for abandoning the family, and rebellious sister Claire, who is high on crystal meth when David calls to tell her their father is dead.
After several rounds of reality checks I was somehow glad that Six Feet Under portrayed the world as it is instead of shying away from forbidden issues like gay sexual identities and nude dead people that was once deemed the ultimate taboo subjects in the history of American film-making in its attempt to portray as much of the real...