Life sucks, and then you die. And then it still sucks.

That's essentially the legacy of "Six Feet Under," whose 75-minute finale at 9 p.m. Sunday concludes with a 10-minute flourish of bravado seldom glimpsed since Season One.

It's an artfully presented summation. Still, did we really travel all these seasons just to get the philosophical equivalent of a cheesy cha-cha tune, "Enjoy Yourself / It's Later Than You Think?"

HBO launched Alan Ball's drama about a family-run funeral home in Southern California five years ago. Exploring death as a point of transformation was edgy and brave in those pre-Sept. 11 days, and the show's ghost figures seemed to foreshadow the period afterward.

Since then, death has crept closer to us all. So has love. Our insularity has been stripped away by the images and obituaries of World Trade Center victims, of U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens killed each day, of dazed Londoners discovering a fresh hell.

"Six Feet Under" could have illuminated the modern-day journey of those complicated twins, Thanatos and Eros. But the series did not keep up with viewers.

Instead, like a drama queen who craves attention more than understanding, it slipped its head through a self-fashioned noose of misery without standing on the firm ground of insight.

Many a show has jumped the shark. "Six Feet Under" was the first to die from auto-asphyxiation.

The plummeting numbers are testament to audience abandonment. The show's ratings peaked with 6.2 million viewers for the debut of Season Two in 2002. Succeeding debuts were 5.1 million in 2003, 4.2 million in 2004 and 2.6 million last June.

Although this season's move from Sundays to Mondays was cited as a reason for lower ratings, "Six Feet Under" didn't improve much after the return to Sundays last month. It averaged 2.06 million viewers on Monday and was averaging 2.23 million of late.

The suggestion here is of frittered-away opportunity. In hindsight, perhaps an elongated version of Ball's smashing film "American Beauty" couldn't work.

A two-hour sprint through soul-numbing suburbia that turns brutal confrontation into tragedy and transcendence has to be resized for television. The scale of histrionics in "Six Feet Under" was out of proportion to the medium.

A better series also might have offered more to grab onto in the way of characters.

Some viewers did. I know people in therapy for whom "Six Feet Under" was an uncompromising reflection of the ties that bind and strangle. So far as its depiction of rancid relationships went, I agree.

But who was there to really care about? The doomed and cynical Nate, crazy-without-his-meds Billy or just plain crazy Brenda? Claire, the spoiled artistic wannabe?

To be sure, there were glimpses of relatability. David's evolution from closet to kinder und kuchen earned awards from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The first-generation American ambitions of Federico and Vanessa had resonance. The acting generally was first-rate.

Yet often and despite the performances, our tentative bonds were smashed. Whether because the characters were too narrowly written to trigger fresh ideas or too broadly written to use organically, the show wound up being driven by ridiculous plot twists.

Honestly — did any family outside daytime television have worse luck than the Fishers? Well, maybe the Chenoweths, since they had their own misfortunes and were stuck with loving the Fishers to boot.

"Six Feet Under" became a toppling tower of camp agonies fetched each year from farther outside the realm of likelihood. Its psycho-bubbling spew tried to con viewers into mistaking the dross of negativity for the gold of wisdom.

Worse, it lacked the sly, self-deprecating humor that runs through sisters-under-the-skin "Weeds" and "Desperate Housewives," or the despair-balancing absurdity of Woody Allen's old films.

What we got was Ingmar Bergman minus the jokes — and minus Ingmar Bergman.

Consequently, the fan base finally was stripped to its hardest core. HBO's decision to move the show to Mondays may have been an error, but was founded on the sensible premise that people might prefer to laugh on a Sunday night.

Of course, it is possible to laugh and cry at the same show. The recidivist behavior and psychological afflictions that are the be-all and end-all of "Six Feet Under" are just starting points in "The Sopranos."

The former's exit and the latter's return next March raise the larger question of HBO's future direction.

Because it is a subscriber-based service, HBO theoretically does not need to care about Nielsen ratings in the same way as advertiser-based network and basic cable channels.

But you can't ignore popular appeal altogether. Much as I deeply admire HBO's artistic aspirations, it's worth pointing out that the funky little workhorse sitcom "Arli$$" was drawing a respectable 3 million to 4 million viewers in 2002 when HBO canceled it.

Next week, the epic "Rome" debuts with a staggering price tag of more than $100 million for 12 episodes. It is an attempt to blend big-screen richness and historical accuracy with old-fashioned thrills — HBO's very own patrician-plebeian experiment.

That's probably more of what cable's premium channel needs. If the end result is to shift HBO further away from its black-suited New York origins to the golden whirligig of L.A., so be it. Some of those folks in Hollywood know what they're doing.

As to that black-suited clan in Southern California, we know their future, thanks to Sunday's valedictory sequence. In "Six Feet Under," nothing ever stayed buried long — enough.

TV note: At 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday, National Geographic Channel launches "Inside 9/11," a powerful documentary effort to pull together all the strands of planning — including the origins of al-Qaida — that led to the deadly Sept. 11 attacks. The four-hour series was still being tweaked after last week's New York Times story about the claim that U.S. officials identified four of the hijackers more than a year before the attacks, but did not pass along information to the FBI.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com