"Pleasure and pain"

In a growing trend that has me doing nothing but sitting at home watching television I started watching season one of Six Feet Under (blame Daynger Mouse). I've only seen two episodes so far but it's already quite good. There are some characters I like and others I hate but apparently everyone changes around anyway. I like Claire the best so far (it helps that she's cute) but I hate the dumb guy she makes kissy faces with. He's an ugly rat-douche.

It made me think about how television shows deal with death. It's kind of a precarious tight rope to walk. On the one hand if you belabour the grieving the show will be sucky and mopey and no one will watch. But if everyone is over the death by the next episode then it just doesn't do real grief justice. So how do you portray grief convincingly and remain entertaining at the same time? Daynger Mouse put it to me like this, "TV shows don't show all of time though. There are instances where these characters are grieving that we don't see because twenty minutes of sobbing just isn't moving the story forward." I guess that's pretty true. I just hope this show can maintain it's balance.