Six Feet Under character types

[Nicodemus]

I am currently watching the show.

Are you excited?

 

[Ivy]

Threads merged.

One of my favorite shows of all time. I hope you enjoy it Nico.

 

[Totenkindly]

I am currently watching the show.

Are you excited?

So proud.
Ps. Keith is a hottie.

I find Brenda pretty fascinating.

Nate also starts off as more compliant, even if he does offer standard pushback in conversation. He tries to fix everyone's problems and be the golden child / oldest for awhile. Then he finally reaches a "F* it!" kind of attitude late in the series; it's interesting to me because sometimes he does come off as unkind or selfish, and yet it's also part of his own maturation process, where he really had to grow up some and start looking after himself, so as part of a growth process it's necessary and can't really be condemned.

 

[Tiltyred]

Ahhh! I'll watch it again.

 

[Nicodemus]

Ps. Keith is a hottie.

He does absolutely nothing for me. He looks like RoboCop.

I find Brenda pretty fascinating.

So far (1x08) she is the only character I like and understand.

 

[chickpea]

I love six feet under even though I really hate a lot if the characters, especially Brenda and Nate. Claire can be annoying but probably because she's too relatable. And I like David and Keith.

Probably one of the best TV finales of all time.. Always makes me cry.

 

[Totenkindly]

He does absolutely nothing for me. He looks like RoboCop.

RoboCop was white.

So far (1x08) she is the only character I like and understand.

She's probably in my top favorites characters on the show. She only gets more complex as time passes.

Probably one of the best TV finales of all time.. Always makes me cry.

Yeah, when I want a good cry, I watch the last 20 minutes or so.

I just watched it the night I came home after leaving my son at his college orientation. It seemed apropos. "You can't take a picture, it's already gone." Brutal truth.

 

[Ivy]

Yeah, I'm actually hard pressed to think of a character I would enjoy spending time with. But for some reason I find their fucked up asses very compelling.

Keith's not my type. Jeremy Sisto is hotter than hell to me, but his character was even more fucked up than the SFU average, which is pretty impressive. So I was not attracted to Billy. Typically I have to like a person to find them attractive.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, I agree about Sisto, and Billy has a magnetism/attraction that would be compelling except he's batshit crazy and narcissistic -- getting near him would be as dangerous as body-painting with acid.

 

[Nicodemus]

RoboCop was white.

The suit.

 

[Ivy]

Yeah, I agree about Sisto, and Billy has a magnetism/attraction that would be compelling except he's batshit crazy and narcissistic -- getting near him would be as dangerous as body-painting with acid.

Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it. RUN AWAY!!!

 

[Totenkindly]

The suit.

But Keith looks good in a suit! *hmph*

 

[Tiltyred]

Claire, Brenda and Nate are my favorites.

 

[Nicodemus]

Nate and Keith really piss me off (s2e13).

 

[Nicodemus]

Types:

Ruth: ISFJ
Nate, Sr.: ISTP
Nate, Jr.: ESFP, suffering from an ESFJ complex
David: ISTJ in the first season, then ISFJ ad nauseam
Claire: xxFP?
Brenda: INTP
Keith: ESTJ
Lisa: ENFJ
George: INTJ
Federico: ESFJ
Vanessa: ESFJ
Billy: ISTP?
Russell: INFP
Margaret: ESTP
Olivier: ENTP
Sarah: ENFP
Bettina: ESTP

Nate Jr. is such a nuisance! Only Keith in his anger period is more annoying. Also, has anyone noticed that Brenda stops being intelligent and instead becomes someone who just reads popular science books somewhere in the first three seasons? I liked Claire in the beginning, but she lost my sympathies around the time she began to take her art seriously. Her eye movements annoy me as well. I guess my favorite characters overall are Nate Sr. and Bettina, minor characters, tellingly.

I understand emotionally repressed, but these people are all so emotionally stupid... The last four episodes of the series are by far the best, probably because fucking Nate is finally dead. Catharsis galore.

 

[Tiltyred]

Aw, really? No love for Nate? Tell more about why, would you?

 

[Totenkindly]

I don't where the hell you got an ESFP read on Nate. He's probably one of the most introspective characters ever to be on the show, and horribly indecisive as opposed to just leaping in with the manner of an ESFP. It's such a bad read, I can't even waste more time criticizing it.

He's also the oldest child. Maybe you associate that with ESFJ based on certain cultural standards, but as the oldest in my family, I could see where Nate was coming from. MBTI has little to do with it.

I didn't really like the "new Nate" so much in the last season or two; at the same time, I thought it pretty ballsy to allow Nate to explore darker sides of himself along the lines of embracing his shadow. It was another aspect of him I could identify with, as I feel more "self-ish" and "less nice" than people had thought of me all my life, but I also feel more empowered and free and whole. Nate never got to quite finish that integration before the series ended.

 

[Nicodemus]

Aw, really? No love for Nate? Tell more about why, would you?

I am not sure. He usually makes stupid decisions, is impulsive when he should think first, indecisive when she should act. He is understanding only when it suits him, which reeks of insincerity. He has no plan. I dislike his face, his way of speaking. There are really very few scenes in which I do like him.

I don't where the hell you got an ESFP read on Nate. He's probably one of the most introspective characters ever to be on the show, and horribly indecisive as opposed to just leaping in with the manner of an ESFP. It's such a bad read, I can't even waste more time criticizing it.

He's also the oldest child. Maybe you associate that with ESFJ based on certain cultural standards, but as the oldest in my family, I could see where Nate was coming from. MBTI has little to do with it.

He is 40 years old at the end. As an adolescent, it appears, he was the leaping-in kind of guy. He stills leaps in often. When he does not, it is because he struggles with what I jokingly dubbed his ESFJ complex, the question of what he should do as Nate, the oldest child, the father, the husband, as opposed to what he feels like doing. I am willing to concede he might be an extroverted ISFP, but he certainly feels like an extrovert to me.

But, Jennifer, please feel free to grace this thread with your superior reading.

 

[Tiltyred]

I am not sure. He usually makes stupid decisions, is impulsive when he should think first, indecisive when she should act. He is understanding only when it suits him, which reeks of insincerity. He has no plan. I dislike his face, his way of speaking. There are really very few scenes in which I do like him.


He is 40 years old at the end. As an adolescent, it appears, he was the leaping-in kind of guy. He stills leaps in often. When he does not, it is because he struggles with what I jokingly dubbed his ESFJ complex, the question of what he should do as Nate, the oldest child, the father, the husband, as opposed to what he feels like doing. I am willing to concede he might be an extroverted ISFP, but he certainly feels like an extrovert to me.

But, Jennifer, please feel free to grace this thread with your superior reading.

I guess it's his very ineptitude that I find so sympathetic, because it's in tragic contrast to his earnestness. He so wants to be doing it right, and so has no clue what that could mean for him. I'm afraid I relate all too well. It also seems to me that life plays shitty tricks on him. The hot beautiful woman turns out to one of the hardest possible people to live with; the granola girlfriend he left behind turns out to carry incredible obligations; the gift of an inheritance imposes crushing responsibilities -- he never gets a free lunch. And just about the time he adjusts with his best available grace to what fate has thrown his way, she turns around and takes it back, or throws another monkey wrench in the works.

 

[Totenkindly]

I am not sure. He usually makes stupid decisions, is impulsive when he should think first, indecisive when she should act. He is understanding only when it suits him, which reeks of insincerity. He has no plan. I dislike his face, his way of speaking. There are really very few scenes in which I do like him.

It sounds to me more like you just don't like him on a visceral level, and it's coloring your perception of anything he does rather than maintaining some objectivity about the character. Seriously.

He is 40 years old at the end. As an adolescent, it appears, he was the leaping-in kind of guy. He stills leaps in often. When he does not, it is because he struggles with what I jokingly dubbed his ESFJ complex, the question of what he should do as Nate, the oldest child, the father, the husband, as opposed to what he feels like doing. I am willing to concede he might be an extroverted ISFP, but he certainly feels like an extrovert to me.

At best, it would be one of the low-key extroverts... I don't think ESFP falls into that category.

Much of the time you are also seeing him engaging people he is familiar with. With people he is not familiar with, they are receiving a packaged image of Nate especially in his role as the "nice gracious funeral director" that always has to do and say the right thing in order to be the "nicest, warmest, most understanding person in the world."

But there are typically two selves -- his public face, and then the one he shows in private to his family. He is far more personal and engaged with his family, and he throws his weight around more there, and even treats himself as the pseudo-father figure, which his two siblings sometimes give him crap for. Extroverts by nature typically are themselves in the external face; the difficulty comes in cultivating an internal self, that's the one they typically have to work at and bring into sync.

But, Jennifer, please feel free to grace this thread with your superior reading.

Already did.
But thanks for graciously offering me your permission.

I guess it's his very ineptitude that I find so sympathetic, because it's in tragic contrast to his earnestness. He so wants to be doing it right, and so has no clue what that could mean for him. I'm afraid I relate all too well. It also seems to me that life plays shitty tricks on him. The hot beautiful woman turns out to one of the hardest possible people to live with; the granola girlfriend he left behind turns out to carry incredible obligations; the gift of an inheritance imposes crushing responsibilities -- he never gets a free lunch. And just about the time he adjusts with his best available grace to what fate has thrown his way, she turns around and takes it back, or throws another monkey wrench in the works.

That's more of how I see him.

He's an idealist who had a lot of ideas about how life should have fit together; he had wonderful intentions, but nothing ever seems to pan out as he thought; he's got an unstable mother so he feels like he has to be in charge of the family; yet he can't be the perfect "golden child" oldest figure in the family anymore. Don't forget that Lisa was murdered, his one chance at a "normal" existence taken from him, which left him back with Brenda (where he was basically cheating with her on her boyfriend because at the time she's pretty messed up too).

You basically see him start to revise his idealism, because it's not making him happy and in fact is creating a lot of pain for him; and instead he takes a tougher, more self-absorbed, grittier approach to life. I think it's the right overall path for him but only a way stage, and it's typical for introverted idealists. Another reason for him to be an introvert -- the idealism was him positioning himself consciously against the world a certain way (rather than identifying with the world), and he's constantly speculating on that border between him and external life. It's a typical division between self and world in introverts, and how we express and experience power.

As I've said, I did not like him very much by the end, but I did see how he got to where he got and why, and I could track his logic. In some ways, I feel like Brenda was coming out of her mess stronger, though.