Kenneth Macdonald Henderson died trying to help himself and three other people out of, what they viewed as, a drastic situation. His heroic effort ends up slicing his body in two, as the elevator they are stuck in suddenly begins to go down while he is half in and half out of it.
In the season finale of Six Feet Under, we see several storylines in which our characters similarly get severed in two pieces. It is up to the characters to decide if they will move in a positive or negative direction because of it.
Claire has her first real taste of popular artistic success. Her photographical collage masks have earned her a gallery show of her own. More and more people see her work, and for the first time she feels legitimately happy about her work, and the prospects of her career. At the same time, she manages to alienate almost everyone of her peers as a result of her success. She has a choice to remain grounded in the relationships she’s made at art school or to continue on her self-destructive, drug-riddled parody of what she views as an artistic, bohemian lifestyle. She chooses to say “Fuck you then. Fuck you all.”
George is becoming severed from sanity in his constant worry about a catastrophic event. There are hints here that this is not a new problem, and, as Ruth discovers from his daughter, these problems may have affected many of the previous marriages he’s had. Ruth is now at a crossroads, having to decide if she should sever her ties with him, or remain devoted to him as he declines.
Nate and Brenda have a similar issue. Nate, understandably wrapped up in the threat of Maya being taken away from him, has become less and less of an attractive opportunity to Brenda. She believes that she may be wasting her time, and their relationship may have to end because of it. She thinks that Nate is still too mentally and emotionally involved with the passing of Lisa.
While both of those couples have to choose if they will sever their relationships, Vanessa has already made that decision and, for the first time, Rico has to accept it. His infidelity has ended his marriage, and he will have to live with that for the rest of his life.
As it turns out, Nate’s suspicion that something more sordid happened to Lisa turns out to be correct, and a well-timed clue leads him to Lisa’s brother-in-law, who, after very little prodding, admits that he and Lisa had, at one time, had an affair, and she refused to continue it. When Lisa’s sister overhears this, he kills himself. This is the weakest moment of the season. Although there is no admission that he murdered her, it doesn't matter, because it makes her death irrelevant, from a writing perspective, so much as it was simply a tool to take Nate from A to B and a way to end Lisa's story without ever answering it. It is a season and a half long storyline which gets resolved a bit too neatly.
The most moving story of the season was David, as he deals with the emotional trauma of the crime that was committed against him. When Keith prompts him to face his attacker in jail, the scene is one of the most real and heartbreaking moments in the show, which is at its best when it finds the truths in abstract situations.
David chooses to sever himself from his pain after this conversation, and begin to move on with his life. You get the sense that this is a real change for him, and while he cannot purely accept simplicity of the idea that he's alive, and nothing else matters besides that, one senses that, about this, Nathaniel is probably right.
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