Nathan For You

that part was very funny

i'm not certain its a satire, but i also dont know what i think its doing. whatever it is, i'm not convinced yet that it needs 10 hours to get there.

having an issue with this that i have with stuff sometimes where there are elements that seem very obvious, stock, or overfamiliar, and i'll end up overthinking and getting confused about how intentional that is, how aware of it i'm expected to be, etc - if that makes any sense. i'm obviously curious about where it will end up but so far i feel totally lost at sea with it.

there are a lot of semi-satirical points in the episodes I’ve watched. all the people asking them if the mirror house is related to the work of an artist who had a similar concept, the constant talk about how they’re enabling people and then immediately fretting how those same people are doing it wrong

they don’t want to help people, they want the perception that they’re celebrities helping people. and they’re not succeeding at either! they’d be effective in one of those goals if they just did what was prescribed at the beginning: shout at someone that you have a small penis and move on with your life, imo

I just got done watching episode 7 and I'm a little confused... I was listening to a podcast host who had already seen the advance screeners and said it gets really weird and funny in episodes 6&7, but that was not my experience at all. And also those episodes are 10-15 minutes shorter than all the others. I'm wondering if they may have been recut at some point?

I think the thing that I ponder the most is how different characters perceive the existence of a reality tv production intersecting their lives. A different show might be too on the nose and have a populace that fawns over the characters in an attempt to glom on to
fame, or more people reacting with outright disgust

Having most people see this as benignly annoying or malignant but not overly threatening, or not have any opinion whatsoever, is something Fielder’s brought to the table. All of the supporting cast here is just viewing this as a curiosity that probably won’t affect their lives in any particular way.

I liked seeing that one actor as the sweaty prospective homebuyer husband. He’s got a great look

Yeah the fake homebuyers were probably the highlight of the series so far. "Can we do another one where you don't touch your belly" lol

the complete lack of commentary on the guy giving his wife a look and then bursting into song was excellent

It should finally be noted here that Emma Stone is giving an all-time great performance in this.

I’m also loving the use of Alice Coltrane music.

Stone is incredible in this, but now that we're caught up we still have no idea where this is going. Death?

Yes came here to exclaim about Stone's amazing acting here, I really don't know much about her and had no idea she was this good

that conversation with the native artist had so many twists and turns and Stone’s expressions were so awkward and on point

Episode 8 definitely bringing the lols. I love how when Brett is making up fake profound Native spiritual shit to troll Whitney, you can tell by her face that she isn't really buying it, she kinda wants to call his bluff (or at least say "I don't understand"), but she weighs her options and lands on the fake earnestness that is her default setting ("... That was beautiful")

I think she's thinking "wow, this seems really stereotypical but it's not my place to question it."

Right, which is why it's such good trolling.

Dougie is really becoming an archetype for how I think of sleazy reality TV producers. I think his contempt for Asher stems from Asher having a humiliation fetish and being unwilling to call out Dougie's bullying for what it is.

"I can't *make* you do anything if some part of you doesn't already want to do it" = the reality TV producer code of ethics in its entirety

I worked in reality for years (editor) and knew many producers. None of them were like Dougie. We all knew we were making trash for the most part but had fun on the usually very short ride that was a series or pilot. People like Whitney and Asher, though? Dime a dozen.
Have to say Emma Stone is excellent in this.

I both like and cringe every time the show tries to define Dougie. He's very amorphous in that he seems to want to make a sleazy show, seems to actually be interested in people tangential or not in the show, but he's only ever identifiable as "the guy with the dead wife" (do not ask about her)

He's a guy who goes to the liquor store in a blackout, buys booze for teens when they ask him, but then forces them to hang out with him and endure lectures about how he killed his wife while driving drunk. What's not to get?

He's sad and lonely and (as he tells his date in an early episode) he doesn't feel like himself unless he's busy with work. He must be vaguely aware that a lot of his creative choices (starting with the menthol in the eyes) are things that would strike the average HGTV viewer as manipulative or cruel, but he views it as a sign of his professionalism that he is able to do the work without ever feeling squeamish.

Okay I just saw another comment re: Dougie's compulsive breathalyzing that made a lot of sense to me. He's obviously traumatized by the car crash that killed his wife, and he's also heavily invested in the idea that the crash was not his fault because he wasn't impaired in any way when it happened. Successful drunk driving is a way he tries to prove his innocence to himself. Each time he blows above .07 and still makes it to wherever he's going, it shows that he's a good drunk driver, not a dangerous one.

This show is so strange and hard to pin down, and even eight or so episodes in, whatever it is up to, its characters are still defining themselves. Asher is basically a meek, insecure lifetime bullying victim trying to reinvent himself as an alpha dude. Whitney is a seemingly not self aware victimizer (at least in the aggressive white privilege sense) trying to mold herself into a well making exemplar. And then there's Dougie, who is a lot more self-aware, totally steeped in self-loathing, boiling in a stew of denial and self-destruction. Their collective motivations are a fascinating muddle of complex contradictions.

I think Asher may be the most mysterious to me. As Fielder portrays him, he seems to recognize when people are fucking with him, and he's doing real time calculations to try and determine how much he is willing to take to achieve his transformation.

i dont believe anyone actually likes this show they are just stockholmed syndrome'd by nathan

i think this because it kinda sucks and is boring

i dont believe anyone actually likes this show they are just stockholmed syndrome'd by nathan

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, January 5, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

I'm generally not a fan of Fielder, but I started watching this... idk I guess out of peer pressure? There are moments/episodes where I love how smart/funny it is. And others where the discomfort is too discomfiting. I had a hard time with the last episode. I'm in it to the end at this point though I'm not totally convinced it will have been worth it.

It's funny to dislike nearly every TV show and then get accused of performatively liking one of them.

i dont believe anyone actually likes this show they are just stockholmed syndrome'd by nathan

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, January 5, 2024 12:50 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think this because it kinda sucks and is boring

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, January 5, 2024 12:51 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is otm.. i am pot committed at this point so will watch ep 10 but i expect to still think it sux

Latest episode was even more twisted. Things are shifting ... somewhere.

Are you talking about ep 8 (with the smoke detector batteries, and the arms dealing art collector) or is there a newer one out? I can never keep track of when this releases

9. It came out yesterday.

I was a few eps behind and watched 3 in a row to get caught up today. Put me in a weird headspace, but I like this show and think it’s good and interesting. Can totally get not liking it, I think I’d be hesitant to recommend it to most, but it’s compelling to me ymmv.

I had to pause this after episode 5, think I’ll wait until I can watch the remaining episodes in (relatively) quick succession. Watching them week by week just left me feeling “so what?” after each one, like the mains are just repeating the same character beats over & over & over again.

The last ep I watched was when she walked over to the neighbors house to talk about amazon package theft, and iirc we are shown her entire stroll over there in real time and idk, after so many hours of scenes like that overlaid with ominous synth music it started to feel like wheel-spinning. the characters are well-constructed and the performances are good but it might just fundamentally be too long for me.

I think there's been enough movement but it's a slow build for sure - also it didn't help that it's been impossible to figure out what any build that's building might be building to! I've been enjoying it.

Despite liking it ("enjoying" is the wrong word), based on where the show is now I still can't really justify the number of episodes. This probably would have worked as well with, say, six episodes. Then again, they would have probably had to cut down all those really slow, long scenes of, like, people standing there in shock, just staring in silence.

I loooove all the slow push-ins. Someone compared the camerawork to Tarkovsky, which is somehow both lol and otm

There are definitely some experiments with pacing. That sequence at the beginning of one episode with Dougie looking for something lasts for about 10 minutes. Then I think episode 6 is just over 30 minutes long.

The ending of episode 9 reminded me of the intensity of something like Scenes from a Marriage, albeit with vastly different character emotions.

Is next week the last episode?

Yes, episode 10.

ok, halfway through e8 and there have been ten minutes of solid jokes

the native artist’s friend hamming it up was killing me

We'll see how it ends but in general I've been wondering how much of Emma's character is a broad parody of what would happen if rich, extremely online liberals tried to put their vision of the world to practice with as much nuance as the tweets and retweets that shaped it (with the best of intentions by all means but really ill-equipped when managing expectations) or if it's primarily just about a particular character that is especially delusional and lacking self awareness?

^ Not a dig at liberal beliefs or anything just a observation about the caricature the show feels like it's conveying through her imo

a friend who has watched a lot of reality shows, although more the Bravo-style ones than the HGTV ones, is checking out The Curse now. I'll see what they think.

i cant believe i'm only just now remembering that IRL i used to know an eerily similar couple who briefly had a HGTV home-flipping show like this, even down to the fact that their whole thing was funded by massive family wealth that they worked hard to keep secret. idk how The Curse will turn out but in this case the marriage did not survive the show

spoilers!

I just rewatched the last 3 eps with my gf to get her all caught up for the finale. I think my new favorite scene is the one where Whitney and Asher have just come home from bowling, and Whitney overhears Asher pleasuring himself(?) while having an imaginary conversation with his former coworker, the way it just drags on and on, it's so good. And then the last line I hadn't previously caught until we watched with captions on: "That's whose wife you want to fuck. The whistleblower's wife."

OH SHIT I was totally unable to make out the dialogue, it was so quiet, thank you for explaining this to me

I ended up rewinding a bit and turning captions on too.

I say this after nearly episode to my partner, but: goddamn, Emma Stone. That scene is my favorite as well--all those micro changes in her expression as she overhears Asher in the bathroom. And she has so many exquisite forms of "performative enthusiasm" that seem so cringy in Whitney's "off camera" interactions, but you can see why they make her look like a pro in the HGTV clips. Excited for and dreading the finale--Whitney looked a bit terrified in the final scene when Asher says "good girl".

I'm glad she won the Golden Globe for Poor Things, which I loved, but I think I might like this performance a bit more.

I love how "that's beautiful" or "that was beautiful" has just become the ultimate recurring signifier of empty, meaningless praise on this show, culminating in Dougie saying it after Asher had his meltdown in the hotel room.

also: does Asher even have that small of a dick? I guess the implication here is that's where his cuckold fetish comes from. seems more likely someone just told him that he had a micropenis and he just believed it.

I dunno, I think it's supposed to be pretty small. But that's also the contrast between him and his fellow little weiner father in law. Is alpha father in law embraces it, but Asher (it's implied) can't get beyond it, because his alpha aspirations are so weak and insincere. He's constantly struggling where his wife is striving.