I watched the Season 2 finale two nights ago and cried pretty much straight through it. It's amazing the extent to which I empathize with the characters on this show. They pretty much feel like my own family at this point.

Favorite show ever. I stated it on the DDD of the olden days, but whenever Nate lost it, I did as well. Relate to him more than any other character.

And cot damn that finale. I was already crying heavily before the final 6 minutes, and when that hit I began sobbing disastrously. Weird thing I find with SFU is that I can't rank the seasons. Maybe it's because I need to watch it again and I watched it too fast that it blended into one whole thing, idk. I mean it's not easy to rank The Wire(2nd best, very close), but I think i have that one down now.

Goddamn, I think I need to see this show.

My favorite drama, and probably in my top 5 all time. Saying a lot because im very much a comedy guy, and not a drama guy.

After rethinking it out, I think Claire might be my favorite character on the show. Partly because normally it's the type of character i would despise, but she finds a way to make herself likable and real which is a triumph in terms of art school pretentious bitchz. Tho Nathaniel Sr and David for the close second.

Claire is definitely my favorite, for largely the reasons you mentioned.

I love how you have to piece Nathaniel Sr. together almost entirely from others' perceptions of him. Really cool character development trick.

Yeah those are my top three. David is my favorite character, hes the one who really holds the family together throughout the show. Claire for the close second. Not a big fan of nate jr

yeah not a fan of nate jr either, not just how he's written but also i just don't think that dude is an effective actor

I love Claire's tendency to be high at inopportune times.

I can't say I have a favorite character all throughout the show, the characters change so much season after season, sometimes I hate em', sometimes I love em'. Yeah, probably my favorite tv drama, but it might get edged out by a new contender, which I'm about to make a thread for.

Oh my god, the scenes with George in s5e4 and s5e6 (both towards the end of the eps) are unbearably sad.

Yeah, the way Ruth treated him at times also were nearly unwatchable for me.

Re-watched the Breathe Me segment of the finale, ensued.

starting season 1 here in about 10 minutes. getting excited. never seen it before.

Anyone else think that this show really started to lose its way somewhat during the third season and then completely went off the rails in the fourth? I'm through four seasons - and I actually expect a much improved fifth season having heard that the finale is just wonderful - but the show has become far too melodramatic and lacks any subtlety. And while some of the characters have become annoying and just need to shut the fuck up *cough*Nate*cough*, I'm also getting sick of watching other characters, who are actually likeable, just continuously suffer, like David. The whole kidnapping thing was just too much and may have been the moment the show officially jumped the shark (either that or the ideal with Lisa at the end of season three).

Much of Keith's bodyguard stuff was pointless and Rico's marriage issues were nothing but cliched melodramatic bullshit. None of that was worth watching at all. On the other hand, the stuff with George and Ruth was alright. I'm still interested in those characters and for a while I really enjoyed just how disconnected George is from everyone else. It was nice to have one character be somewhat outside of that world of pain that is the Fisher family. Of course, George has his own problems but at least he didn't complain about it constantly. And while I despise Claire's friends, she's still quite alright. Like many of the characters she complains way too much, but she's developed well enough not to be just an art school cliche (which is precisely why I dislike her friends because that's precisely what they are), and she also provides some of the shows funniest moments.

There's just too many horrible things that this family has had to endure and it's starting to feel really contrived. It was fine at first, and I loved the first two seasons (and I look forward to revisiting them in the future) but it has just gotten out of hand at this point. Honestly, if I hadn't heard that the finale was so great, I would've given up and not bothered with the fifth season.