Writers Back at Work

[vashti1999]

Anxious fans will be happy to hear that it won't be too long before the Fisher family returns to HBO, according to Six Feet Under Executive Producer Alan Poul, who reports that the show's writers have returned from hiatus and are at the table working on the series' fourth season.

The writing team started working on the new season at the beginning of October, Poul says, and spent several weeks just talking about general directions and storylines for the characters. Now, as details are fleshed out, each episode's outline is completed, "and one writer peels away to go write it." As of mid-December, the writers had scripts for the first four episodes and had worked out stories for the first seven.

Poul says time away from the show between seasons has been a key to keeping the storylines fresh. "The most important thing to do during the hiatus is to forget about everything," he says. "This was especially true for Alan Ball, who was really exhausted after three seasons in a row. Only during the last month or so of the hiatus did we begin to focus on the new season, and we were able to do so from a refreshed vantage point. Many of the ideas we had at the end of last season were discarded and replaced by more interesting notions that wouldn't have surfaced without the long break."

So what can we expect to see in the coming episodes? "In this season we will follow our characters' healing processes after the traumatic events of last season, and I think there will be an unusual amount of personal growth and change across the board. We didn't want to get stuck in a rut or become repetitive, so there may be more reaching out and more connecting than the Fishers have experienced in their recent history. But don't worry, that's not to say things will go smoothly; we may just reach a higher level of dysfunction."

[EricIdlefan]

Was getting sick and tired of the reruns like the Sopranos are having but can't wait for the new season to begin!!