Desperate Parishioners in Six Foot Pews

Early in 2001, when we in the Brilliant household were emerging from a run of horrible fate that included one layoff, the deaths of two family members, and the deaths of two more if you want to count both of our cats, it occurred to me how nice it would be if the dead could come back and visit occasionally, just to let us know how they're doing.

The long run of Six Feet Under provided some realization of that theme, with the late Nate Fisher Sr. popping in every now and then to provide some snarky perspective to his compellingly dysfunctional family. When we said farewell to the Fishers last spring, it was like saying goodbye to old friends...only now, with the current re-running of Season One, it's sort of as if the old "visit now and then" wish is being fulfilled.

HBO is running SFU opposite the right wing's latest Public Enemy #1 now that the War on Christmas is over, The Book of Daniel on NBC. Because I've learned that the ONLY way to watch network shows is after the fact, from the DVR box, with the commercials skipped, I've just caught up with the series this weekend.

I can sort of see why the wingnuts are upset, because this show packs so much dysfunction into one congregation that Wisteria Lane might as well be an offshoot of Bob Jones University. And these are just the straight characters.

Let's see now....we have the show's patriarch, Daniel Webster (the broodelicious Aidan Quinn) who's addicted to Vicodin and seems to be having LSD flashbacks involving a hip Jesus who seems to have either just walked in from the road company of Jesus Christ, Superstar or be a living incarnation of Kevin Smith's Buddy Christ. His wife is an alcoholic. His oldest son is gay, but lacks David Fisher's endearing complexity. His middle son is adopted and Chinese, which is about as much racial tension as exists in the show's preposterously affluent community. He's also the local teenaged horndog, which endearingly turns the entertainment industry's emasculation of the Asian male on its ear. And his daughter Grace, who seems to be cobbled together from the parts of Claire Fisher left on the cutting room floor, is a talented Manga artist.

Daniel's father is a bishop whose wife has Alzheimer's, so he's boinking another bishop (Ellen Burstyn), who bums "headache pills" from Daniel. Daniel's sister-in-law Victoria is what would have happened to Miranda on Sex and the City if she were transplanted to Westchester and became a lesbian after her husband absconded with church funds and ended up being found dead with a variety of objects in his rectum.

Had enough yet? No? Well, OK, let's see...there's the hyperintelligent, hyperprecocious, undoubtedly Jewish computer geek/whiz who lusts after Grace with all the ardor of a kid who has yet to have a wet dream; the Catholic priest (Dan Hedaya) with ties to the mob, the black housekeeper (yes, really) who sneaks tokes when no one is looking, the tightassed WASP couple whose daughter Daniel's Asian son is boinking and who have a marriage that is either abusive or highly kinky -- I can't decide.

Should I go on? I thought not.

Have I mentioned that I love this show?

Maybe it's just because the way life is now, I'll take whatever dumb diversion I can get, or maybe that I'm so not over the Fishers that I'll take a pale imitation as a substitute. Maybe it's BECAUSE the show pisses off the right so much. Maybe it's because Aidan Quinn is absolutely marvelous he manages to pull this mess of a show together. Or maybe it's just that with life in America these days being so dysfunctional, a show, even one as messy as this one, that distills just about every kind of peccadillo you might find in American life, into a one hour dramedy, is just what we need.