In its first season, "Six Feet Under" was arguably the best drama on television.

Offbeat to the point of being off-putting, this HBO drama about the Fishers, whose family funeral-home business was, oddly enough, a breath of fresh air. With characters who were deeply flawed by compelling and situations that revolved around life and death, the show burst onto the screen with 13 episodes that deserved the Emmy for best drama that season.

Creator/writer/executive producer Alan Ball, who won a best-screenplay Oscar for "American Beauty" the same year that "Six Feet Under" debuted, said the show was "very well-suited for my particular view of things, which is kind of dark and cynical and absurd but at the same time, hopefully compassionate and hopeful."

Which it was for that first season, but was not — at least not for long stretches of time — over the next four seasons.

The show was very much up-and-down in Seasons 2, 3 and 4. As for the fifth and final season, well, the show got soooo dark and unrelentingly downbeat — even for a show that included death as a major element — that even longtime fans complained. And abandoned it.

Not that there wasn't still a lot to admire in the performances and the writing. And the sheer audacity of killing off one of your main characters, Nate Fisher (Peter Krause), before the final season ended.

Of course, being dead doesn't mean your character disappears. Nate is still around as a ghost of sorts in Sunday's season finale (10 p.m., HBO).

Not that that comes as any surprise. After all, the Fisher family patriarch (Richard Jenkins) was killed in the first couple of minutes of the very first episode, and he's still around in the finale, too.

It's a remarkable farewell. Written and directed by Ball, it's a reminder of just how great this show could be, deftly mixing pathos and tragedy, compelling characters and a narrative that's funny and heartbreaking in the same moment.

The surviving Fishers aren't handling Nate's death well. Ruth (Frances Conroy) clings to her granddaughter, which puts her into conflict with daughter-in-law Brenda (Rachel Griffiths). Brenda is terrified about the health of her newborn daughter. David (Michael C. Hall) is such a mess that his partner Keith (Matthew St. Patrick) has to keep him away from their adopted sons. Claire (Lauren Ambrose) goes on another binge. And Federico (Freddy Rodriguez) is worried about the business.

This being "Six Feet Under," don't expect a "7th Heaven" ending. But we do get closure in this 75-minute episode, which includes scenes that are so real they're painfully joyous — including a wonderfully understated sequence when family members' memories of Nate mix laughter and tears.

And this finale goes beyond closure. A wonderfully crafted closing montage of wordless scenes, musically accompanied by Sia's "Breathe Me," show us major life events coming for the Fishers — as well as the deaths of all the main characters at intervals over the next 80 years.

It's great stuff that will make fans miss the show. Even fans who stopped watching it.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com