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The scene: Nate, the undertaker, is having dinner at a restaurant with his fiancée, Brenda.
BRENDA: How was your day?
NATE: Oh, it was weird. Buried that psychic woman's husband.
And she was still, like, talking to the guy.
BRENDA: Oh, that's sad.
NATE: Not for her. I mean, she really believed he was there, ya know?
BRENDA: Well, she has to say that, right? If she claims she's a psychic.
NATE: You don't think that that's possible? What about you saying that things happen that leave marks in people, in places, in time?
BRENDA: That's physics. Energy affecting matter. Talking to dead people is delusional.
NATE: So you definitely don't believe in any kind of life after death?
BRENDA: I think people live on through the people they love, and the things they do with their lives. If they manage to do things with their lives.
NATE: But that's it? That's it? That's all there is? There's nothing more? There's nothing, like, bigger?
BRENDA: Just energy.
NATE: But there isn't a plan--?
BRENDA: No, there is definitely no plan. Just survival. Should I have ordered the salmon?
NATE: Uh, I don't know. (back to the topic) How can you live like that? I mean, what if you found out you were going to die tomorrow?
BRENDA: I've been prepared to die tomorrow since I was six years old.
NATE: Really?
BRENDA: Yeah, pretty much. (changing topic) We never got butter.
NATE: Well, why since you were six?
BRENDA: Because I read a report on the effect nuclear war would have on the world, and it was pretty clear to me at that point that this was definitely gonna happen.
NATE: When you were six?
BRENDA: And I wake up every day pretty much surprised that, uh, everything is still here.
NATE: Well, I don't understand how you can live like that.
BRENDA: Well, I thought we all did.
From "Six Feet Under," episode "The Plan" (2002)
Written by Kate Robin
This scene really resonates with me. Brenda is the character I identify with the most on the show "Six Feet Under", and this exchange captures me so succinctly that I had to copy it. The only difference between me and Brenda here is that I was 10 or 11 when I reached the same conclusion she did… but I understand the fatalism totally.
BRENDA: How was your day?
NATE: Oh, it was weird. Buried that psychic woman's husband.
And she was still, like, talking to the guy.
BRENDA: Oh, that's sad.
NATE: Not for her. I mean, she really believed he was there, ya know?
BRENDA: Well, she has to say that, right? If she claims she's a psychic.
NATE: You don't think that that's possible? What about you saying that things happen that leave marks in people, in places, in time?
BRENDA: That's physics. Energy affecting matter. Talking to dead people is delusional.
NATE: So you definitely don't believe in any kind of life after death?
BRENDA: I think people live on through the people they love, and the things they do with their lives. If they manage to do things with their lives.
NATE: But that's it? That's it? That's all there is? There's nothing more? There's nothing, like, bigger?
BRENDA: Just energy.
NATE: But there isn't a plan--?
BRENDA: No, there is definitely no plan. Just survival. Should I have ordered the salmon?
NATE: Uh, I don't know. (back to the topic) How can you live like that? I mean, what if you found out you were going to die tomorrow?
BRENDA: I've been prepared to die tomorrow since I was six years old.
NATE: Really?
BRENDA: Yeah, pretty much. (changing topic) We never got butter.
NATE: Well, why since you were six?
BRENDA: Because I read a report on the effect nuclear war would have on the world, and it was pretty clear to me at that point that this was definitely gonna happen.
NATE: When you were six?
BRENDA: And I wake up every day pretty much surprised that, uh, everything is still here.
NATE: Well, I don't understand how you can live like that.
BRENDA: Well, I thought we all did.
From "Six Feet Under," episode "The Plan" (2002)
Written by Kate Robin
This scene really resonates with me. Brenda is the character I identify with the most on the show "Six Feet Under", and this exchange captures me so succinctly that I had to copy it. The only difference between me and Brenda here is that I was 10 or 11 when I reached the same conclusion she did… but I understand the fatalism totally.
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From: (Anonymous)
Six Feet Under; the Plan
You and "Brenda" reached a conclusion. I used the same life experienced and reached a different one. Since I was 11 I've heard about "Greenhouse Effect". Twenty years ago, I bought my first house up on the hill, assuming that it would be beach front property soon. Nothing happen. The oceans haven't risen a centimeter. (Personally, I never took nuclear annihlation serious.) So, botom-line. It ain't going to happen. No green house effect. No nuclear winter. It ain't happen in 40 years I've been around and it happened in the 6000 years of recorded history.
Bill
From:
Re: Six Feet Under; the Plan
Still, it doesn't scare me now at 37 the way it did at 10. But that boogeyman still lurks around in the back of my consciousness, and pops up unexpectedly, like if I am in the downtown of a city, I get chills thinking that all of this could be wiped out by a single bomb.