The family saga was widely celebrated for reaching places that few series even contemplated, which is why the stakes are so high for Ball's next foray into television. But instead of probing further into the territory he opened up with "Six Feet Under," Ball has chosen a more whimsical TV project: the oddball genre drama "True Blood," premiering on HBO Sept. 7. Based on Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampire" books, the new show blends sly humor and gory violence, politics and the supernatural. This is a world where the living drink vampire blood to amp up their libidos, and vamps try to stay out of trouble by drinking synthetic blood (which might already be familiar to you from the show's hilariously ubiquitous viral ad campaign, found here, here and here ); where civic-minded bloodsuckers campaign for undead rights ("we pay taxes, we deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else," one activist tells Bill Maher) while their more brutal brethren stalk the streets of Louisiana in search of their next fix.

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Reactions here were highly mixed to Martin McDonagh's festival-opener, "In Bruges," with its scabrous British and Irish gangsters (aka suicidal hit men), its coke-snorting dwarf and its overloaded elements of Christian parable. I've just driven back up the mountain from the Salt Lake City world premiere of Alan Ball's "Towelhead," and that's one I perhaps should see again, to sort out my complicated feelings about it. One thing for sure I can say: The "Six Feet Under" creator's directing debut doesn't have a single damn suicidal hit-man magician in it anywhere.

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In "Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants," Soloway courageously dives right into her past -- armed with a dangerous intellect, a prickly sense of outrage, and a scathing wit -- and comes to the surface with a riotously good read. Spending time with her book is like spending an afternoon with your closest, funniest girlfriend -- the one whose tragic anecdotes and outlandish pronouncements on everything wrong with the world match your own feelings so exquisitely that, after several cups of strong coffee, you feel that together you might stumble on some life-changing epiphany. (Mostly, though, you just snort coffee through your noses.)

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Boy, are you in for a rude surprise. No one tells you how impoverished and empty most human interactions are, how flat and unoriginal most books and TV shows and movies are, how tedious most careers turn out to be. We all want to experience the world as a big, beautiful, romantic place, but the truth is that it can be achingly dull, and confusing, and difficult.

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It probably goes without saying that the man behind "Six Feet Under," a show that shoves mortality in our faces when every other part of our culture tries to distract us from it, is more than a little fond of challenges. He's that rare type, the Buddhist overachiever, the success story who never fails to stop and smell the roses, the busy mover and shaker who takes time to be friendly and to listen.

In fact, when he spoke to me on the phone from his Hollywood office, he told me his day had been pretty hectic, and I countered with some thoroughly off-topic digression about planning for months to plant bamboo in my backyard, only to learn it's a terrible choice for the space and that I'll have to plant a hedge instead. Ball listened and offered his own advice -- forget the bamboo. Let go, move on! -- and went on to discuss why viewers hate Nate Fisher, with the same honesty and humor.

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The frequently tortured, brutally sarcastic, unlucky-in-love youngest member of the Fisher family could easily be played as slacker caricature. Over the course of five seasons, though, Claire has consistently evolved -- she's searched for her identity in art and in men, tried to make peace with her family's gloomy business -- and yet she hasn't always moved forward or learned from her mistakes. No matter how much she wants to be treated like an adult, she can't seem to forsake her adolescent poutiness.

Ambrose, 27, grew up in New Haven, Conn., the daughter of a caterer father and design consultant mother. She attended Catholic school, had roles in several off-Broadway productions, and studied piano and opera -- even singing arias at weddings and, yes, funerals. Ambrose has had small roles in a series of teen movies ("Psycho Beach Party," "Can't Hardly Wait") and a starring role in the 2000 independent film "Swimming." She married Sam Handel, a photographer (whose photo of his wife accompanies this article), four years ago.

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You see, in America, The Man is a neurotic, overworked hosebag who's always breathing down our necks, hoping to boost productivity with his steamy halitosis and his incessant high-fives and monthly awkward bad-birthday-cake breaks. In Europe, of course, The Man spends his summers smoking Gauloises and chuckling over the latest strikes in France. He hops from cafe to cafe all day, sipping espresso with his little poodle, Henri, until it's time to get drunk. And little Henri is allowed into the nightclubs with him! How can the march of freedom possibly matter to anyone who can bring his dog with him into a nightclub?

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What's that? You say you haven't watched any television all week? Well, good for you, fritters. Good for you! And what did you do?

Um, you can't remember? What do you mean you can't remember? You checked your e-mail, you say? Well, that's something. You watered your plants? You showered? You ate some cereal? You called your friend on the way to work and complained about how hot your apartment gets in late July? You went to a doctor's appointment, and in the lobby you read an old copy of People magazine that had Jennifer Aniston cuddling with Vince Vaughn on the cover, and you were excited that Jen was getting a little revenge, but when you read the article, you saw that Jen and Vince weren't even dating, they were just starring in a movie together?

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You heard that right: Narm!

You know, Narm! as in, "My arm is numb!" as in, "I might just be dying right before your eyes!" as in, "I made you hate me all season just so you could take a little sadistic joy in my untimely death!"

Yes, fans of "Six Feet Under" gasped in horror and delight last week when Nate, aka the Man We Love to Hate, fell to the floor and hit his head with a bang. These were his last words, before he fell:

"My arm is numb. Numb arm! Numarm! Narm! NARM!"

It was the last scene of the episode, shocking to the point of feeling slightly abusive. There was no warning. One minute Nate is putting on his clothes after cheating on Brenda with Maggie, that faux-pure Bad News Jane. The next minute, he's on the floor, eyes wide open, and there's a horror soundtrack playing just to let you know it's serious. Suddenly, all of our collective sadistic fantasies are realized. It's as if our worst, most vengeful urges willed the scene into existence.

See how those who watch way too much TV develop boundary issues? But more important, should we feel guilty now that Nate is either dead (no, I don't have any privileged information beyond what we all saw in the last scene of last Sunday's episode) or he's a vegetable or he's about to die?

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This time, Nate has had enough. Drunken and angry, he chases the bird around the kitchen with a broom as his shocked guests look on in horror.

If some scenes from the fifth and final season of "Six Feet Under" feel like a lesson in the use of symbolic imagery in short fiction, that makes sense, since the show has always had more in common with literature than it has with most other TV dramas. Just like Raymond Carver or John Updike, creator Alan Ball returns to the missed connections and melancholy of domestic life, dragging sad, unforgettable images into the frame so that the focus rests on what's missing: what the characters aren't saying, what they don't have, what they long for no matter how their circumstances change.

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We make a cozy party of five, nestled on the grass: me, Mary Roach, Bong, Rosita, and Clarita. Roach and I are here to talk about her new book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." The other three are here because this is their home. Bong (1966-1987), Alicia (1899-1987) and Clarita (1904-1987) make for silent but gracious hosts.

It should be a morbid gathering, just as Roach's book should be a morbid read, with its tours of embalming rooms, crashed jetliners, medical dissecting labs, and Swedish mausoleums. But reading "Stiff" is a funny, intellectually stimulating experience -- one that makes you realize that there really is a chance for life after death. As a cadaver, you can advance medical knowledge (though be forewarned, your body may be used to practice face lifts rather than lung transplants), or you can become part of a human compost pile in Scandinavia. You can even serve time as a crash-test dummy in Detroit.

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After two seasons of grappling with his own mortality, "Six Feet Under's" prodigal son Nate (Peter Krause) is declaring himself grateful to be alive. Still, we only half believe him. After all, on this show, not even miracles are immune from our ambivalence.

But then, we've just been on a head-spinning tour of alternate realities, ranging from Nate's death during brain surgery to his marriage to Brenda. Along the way, in an obvious nod to critics who have compared the show unfavorably to a soap opera, we find an overweight Nate, smoking and watching a crazy highbrow version of "General Hospital" where the actors spout unhinged lines like, "We always end up in a universe in which we exist!"

When we finally land at a backyard barbecue, where Nate has moved in with Lisa (Lili Taylor), the mother of his child, the stakes are higher than ever, but our feelings are mixed. Mixed feelings are the only natural response to such an absurd avalanche of possible outcomes -- which is, of course, the point. Once you've accepted the inevitability of your own death and the arbitrary nature of your choices, you still have to find a way to live.

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Lately, though, Nate has been making his own whirlwind tour through the valley of the shadow of death, courtesy of a cluster of wayward blood vessels on his brain. Nathaniel's appearances on the show have been limited to other characters' memories, and the bodies processed by Fisher & Sons Funeral Home have stayed on the table, their lips discreetly sealed. It's as if Nate's own closer contact with the prospect of death gives the lie to such visions, which are really just a way of fudging the fact that the dead are irretrievable.

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"Six Feet Under," Alan Ball's dark, mordant and often inspired series -- which returned to HBO for its second-season premiere last Sunday night -- concerns the lives of a family of dysfunctional, intermittently repressed Los Angeles undertakers who, as the series began, were as inured to death as anyone knee-deep in it would be. The Fishers -- Ruth (Frances Conroy), her 30-something sons Nate (Peter Krause) and David (Michael C. Hall) and her teenage daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) -- give fresh meaning to the term "funeral home" by sharing their rambling house with their dearly departed clients and the occasional ghost.

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