Six Feet Under
An Open Book
TV Flash files “An Open Book” as hour 5 of 63 in the TV Flash guide — Six Feet Under (2001–2005) on HBO, season 1, episode 5, aired 2001-07-01, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E05: listed hour 5 of 63 in the Six Feet Under guide, hour 5 of 13 in season 1. It aired 2001-07-01 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Familia” (S01E04). Next is “The Room” (S01E06).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
An adult film star electrocutes to death in her bathtub, which leads to a memorial service that is anything but ordinary.
Viewer FAQ
Where does An Open Book sit in the Six Feet Under guide?
S01E05 is listed hour 5 of 63 — hour 5 of 13 in season 1, season 1 episode 5.
When did Six Feet Under S01E05 air?
An Open Book aired 2001-07-01 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Is it just depressing?
It is grief-forward, not misery cosplay. There is comedy in the parlor and the family. If you need caper energy, you will bounce. If you can sit with a dining-room silence, you will not.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Watch it because death is the schedule, not the twist — a family drama that practiced ending every week until it knew how to finish. Five seasons, no kingpin required. If you only know the finale’s reputation, the preceding hours are why that reputation is not a rumor.
Someone has died before the credits finish introducing themselves. That is the cut Six Feet Under refuses to treat as a gimmick. Alan Ball built an HBO drama whose cold open is a stranger’s last day, then asked a family business to metabolize it. The Fishers are not antiheroes moonlighting as philosophers. They are workers in a house that smells like lilies and unfinished conversations. Prestige television of the early 2000s was busy inventing the charming monster. This one invented the weekly reminder that the…
Filed against
- Peter Krause as Nate Fisher
Peter Krause’s Nate Fisher wrestled life, death, and family on Six Feet Under — HBO’s funeral-home masterpiece of messy adulthood, grief as house style, a finale the culture still uses as a measuring stick. Death was the schedule, not the…
- Michael C. Hall as David Fisher
Michael C. Hall’s David Fisher is grief as posture on Six Feet Under — the funeral-home son who treats repression as blocking inside Alan Ball’s HBO family. Death is the weekly frame, not the twist; Hall made therapy, work, and a life in…
- Frances Conroy as Ruth Fisher
Frances Conroy played Ruth Fisher on Six Feet Under — funeral-home matriarch, death as a weekly frame, therapy as plot. TV Flash files her as Alan Ball's domestic weather: a mother who makes HBO's ending reputation feel earned in the…
- Lauren Ambrose as Claire Fisher
Lauren Ambrose’s Claire Fisher is Six Feet Under’s youngest argument with death — Alan Ball’s funeral-home family, grief as house style, a finale the culture still uses as a measuring stick. HBO emotional counterweight to antihero crime.…
- Rachel Griffiths as Brenda Chenowith
Rachel Griffiths’s Brenda Chenowith brought Six Feet Under its most complicated guest in the house — a partner who made grief as house style into a relationship problem. Alan Ball’s funeral-home family practiced ending every week. TV…
- Freddy Rodríguez as Federico Diaz
Freddy Rodríguez played Federico Diaz on Six Feet Under — the funeral home's other craftsman, grief as a job site, HBO family drama that practiced ending every week. TV Flash files him as the series' skilled-labor heart, the reason the…