I was once at my friend Emily’s house, and she kicked me out so she could watch Six Feet Under. “You can watch, if you want.” It was the second season. “Is it funny?” I was really into sitcoms (forever). “Um… sometimes?”

Six Feet Under was more morbid than a show about funeral home workers really needed to be, honestly. It was as if the show Weeds’ entire cast were high all the time, every episode. Sort of.

Listen to the opening notes of this song. They strike you like a terrifying combination of a metronome and church bells. With every second we move closer to death, until we die, and then we’re there. Thomas Newman’s music here is a little bit ironically upbeat, but just sad enough to remind you that the center of every episode is a dead person.

The visuals here were designed by Eric S Anderson, Scott Hudziak, Paul Matthaeus, and Danny Yount. They’re the usual lush, expensive, and moody cable title sequence that they use to convey SOPHISTICATION. You know, it’s not TV. It’s HBO.

But nobody cares about the Six Feet Under opening theme. The following video, the end of the series, elevated the whole affair to something incredible - it made the show’s five seasons feel so ephemeral it was as if you’d dreamt the entire thing, and now you couldn’t recreate what you’d seen within the short time it took you to dream it if you tried. Obviously, don’t watch if you don’t want the see how the show ended.