six feet under.

You know, the TV show.

I watched the pilot episode and had to talk myself into watching the next. Mostly because the creator (Alan Ball) annoys me and he annoyed me with the pilot. See, I hated "American Beauty", which he wrote, and I found some things in the first episode of "Six Feet Under" to be too annoying and cutesy. My biggest gripe was the advertisements for undertaking supplies that were interspersed throughout. Ugh. I'm sure Ball thought they were edgy and enlightening. Sorry -- they were simply stupid and irritating.

But, I figured the man couldn't possibly write and direct every episode of an ensemble drama, so I stuck around. I found every other installment of the first season quite good and engrossing -- with the exception of the season finale which (surprise!) Ball wrote and directed.

Then, well, I had a baby, and couldn't get too excited about a death every week and I gave up on the second season after a few shows. I should probably feel badly about this and get the DVDs from NetFlix. But I don't think I will.

Then I heard that the series was ending and there was some big stuff that was going to happen. Woo! And I watched the last few episodes. And, lo, they were good. Painful, but real and true -- well, as real and true as it can be with ghosts and all that.

The finale worried me. Because Ball was handling the whole thing. And, near the end, there was a scene with Nate all in white, lipsynching and I thought, "Here we go. Now it will start to suck." But it was a dream. And then the last, what, 15 minutes? Pretty wonderful. I think it might have been the perfect ending to the series.

And damn that Lauren Ambrose. They couldn't make her look old, could they? (I'm thinking the very elderly Claire was someone else.)