A darkly comic look at members of a dysfunctional L.A. family that run a funeral business.
When death is your business, what is your life? For the Fisher family, the world outside of their family-owned funeral home continues to be at least as challenging as--and far less predictable than--the one inside.
This tv show contains 87 potentially triggering events.
A character imagines himself being presented and carved up like a holiday ham or turkey. The carving part is shown in a cartoonish way but no eating occurs.
Arthur is asexual but not aromantic, I think, and is somewhat cruelly rejected once he reveals that to his romantic partner.
Explicitly anti-ace sentiments expressed regarding Arthur (the ace character) in S4E3, a gay man says he thinks asexual people are only asexual because they don’t want to come out of the closet (as gay).
A couple neurodivergent characters are played by presumably neurotypical actors. None of the portrayals feel disrespectful to me personally as a neurodivergent person, but it could vary depending on the individual. Billy is sort of a borderline offensive representation of a person with bipolar disorder, but it’s well established that there’s also trauma causing some of his more toxic behavior.
The main premise of the show is about a family who runs a funeral home. Someone dies every episode and most of the episodes open with a quick scene about how the corpse-of-the-week died.
Some of Keith's behavior can be interpreted this way, and it's mentioned that he was abused as a child (not shown). His behavior improves but could be triggering for some.
Season 3 episode 6 Nate brutally beats a snake to death. Not a ton of love lost between me and snakes but it was gratuitous and turned out the snake posed no actual threat.
Throughout this season, a college art teacher has a very questionable and toxic relationship with two of his students. Although the students are technically adults, the power dynamic is super icky, and there is a lot of emotional abuse and gaslighting. One of the students eventually “has sex” with him but the student was inebriated when this “sex” occurred. The show doesn’t treat it as an assault but I feel that it was.
Mild but some of the bodies that the funeral home receives are in pretty bad shape because they died in a gruesome way, and sometimes they do show typical mortuary techniques like wiring jaws shut.
Honestly, more than once. A couple of the corpses died from severe head trauma. One of the opening deaths is a lady who died sticking her head out of the moonroof of a limousine. A guy shoots himself in the head in S4E12 and half his head is destroyed.
I wouldn’t say excessive, but it kinda toes the line at times… There are some pretty gruesome deaths when it comes to the corpse-of-the-week (the deaths of the funeral home’s clients’ loved ones are shown at the beginning of each episode). And occasionally there’s focus on the corpses being prepared for viewing, which can be intense. For instance, (trigger warning: detailed description of a mortuary procedure) in one episode, a scalp is pulled back so that a filler piece can be fitted where the skull and inner cavity of the head is missing, then the scalp is fitted back over it.
A child dies tragically by accident in the beginning of the season 1 episode 9. The death is offscreen, but a gunshot can be heard. His body is never shown. His mother and brother’s grief is addressed throughout the show.
Yes. Everybody dies. Not trying to be THAT person but this is the ultimate message of the show, that everybody dies and life is brief, meaningful, and precious.
So SPOILERS, kinda… In the finale, it shows the future deaths of every major character. And it’s really beautiful. (/spoilers)
Emotional and physical infidelity happens very frequently in this show. To a degree that feels unrealistic and tedious. In literally every single commmitted relationship depicted, someone cheats. It’s one of the very few things I don’t like about the show.
Series revolves around a funeral home, grief and death are major themes. Every episode, someone dies in the first few minutes, and leaves loved ones behind, who become main characters’ clients. Usually these are family members or spouses.
There are many situations in which the characters see or interacting with their dead father or with other dead people. They are not ghosts per se but perhaps "a presence" they use to reflect on their own lives.
One character dies after falling in to a large body of water from the deck of a large boat. Descriptions of the death can be disturbing if this type of fate triggers you.
At the very end of S4 E2, George opens a box that contains a pile of p**p. Happens again in the next ep and the ep after that.
In S4 E5, at around 48:30, david gets the runs in an alleyway after doing drugs.
Season 2, Episode 1: bad vomit at the intro when a girl ODs.
Season 2, Episode 13: around the 47 minute mark, right after David and Keith have a fight and end up on the floor, look away. On-screen vomit at the scene change. Comes from out of nowhere.
Season 3, episode 3: around 18 minutes in, when David and Keith walk into the outdoor pool
Season 4, episode 12: nate and rico explain how a guy died to his “emergency contact” - just look away
It is partially obscured so you only see the front profile and knees of the person squatting, no nudity or excrement shown. It is heard though. (Mild Spoilers) Happens just after David drives away from the crack dealer in panic.
A cop shoots and kills someone who had a gun but did not explicitly aim it at the police. They dance with it a bit but other characters affirm that the cop did nothing wrong (which he denies, saying he could have aimed for a different body location)
A major character is a cop so expect that to be a prevalent plot point if it is hard to watch for you
Not trans-specific slurs so far (I’m on s2) but Rico makes fun of a guy who is dressed “like Jackie O” at the funereal of a guy who was killed in an anti-LGBTQ hate crime.
David is held hostage and tortured by a seriously disturbed man. Unclear what specific disorders or past trauma he has, but he’s definitely not well or thinking logically.
Ruth asks Claire several times if she has an eating disorder throughout the show, but Claire does not have one. Mention of it could potentially be triggering though.
Not abuse, but there’s an autistic-coded character (Arthur) who is implied to be not cared about by his family, and is misunderstood frequently, and occasionally made fun of.
A little after 50min in. Nate is talking to Lisa’s brother in law. After BIL says “I did not get angry with her”, mute and look away. Very disturbing/graphic visual and gunshot audio. Safe again at scene change, after 51:10.
There is use of homophobic slurs in multiple episodes.
A gay man who is murdered in a hate crime in the opening scene sparks the central storyline in episode 12 “A Private Life”. It is a very upsetting scene/episode and David keeps seeing the murdered young man for the rest of the season.
A gay man murdered in a hate crime in the opening scene is the central storyline in episode 12 “A Private Life”. It is a very upsetting scene/episode and David keeps seeing the murdered young man for the rest of the season.
One scene describes the life of Temple Grandin in a pretty off-color and inaccurate light. They also poke quite a bit of fun at a recurring character, Arthur, who is autistic coded.
(Mild spoilers) in S4, Brenda gets into a relationship with a man who likes BDSM. So far it seems to be very safe and consensual, and very much on the tame/vanilla side of things (handcuffs, light roleplay, etc.).
I can’t remember the episode but Claire sees her aborted “baby” in the afterlife, and it looks like an infant, even though she was only a few weeks along when she terminated the pregnancy. Not exactly anti-abortion, but definitely perpetuating the idea that a newly fertilized egg is already a fully formed infant with a soul.