Bravo Vince.
Recently, Chika and I have found time to rekindle what we did almost every night before having Hana.
After she goes to sleep, I tiptoe out, shut the blinds, and we
watch the television.
Not just any TV, mind you, Chika has access to the TiVo equivalent of Japanese TV, but quality shows.
Curated TV shows by Harvard.
It dawned on me this week that everyone who is drinking a macha latte now has not watched The Wire, Mad Men, or The Sopranos.
How about Fargo, True Detective, Mr. Robot, Chernobyl?
How about lightweight, like House MD, Sherlock, and How I Met Your Mother?
What do kids talk about when they gather around the KBBQ grills nowadays?
Like shooting film in photography, I feel a little at a loss about how the new generation will never get to experience the wait for each episode of Breaking Bad.
I mean, how did we do it?
A TV show used to last a year.
We have a week to digest an episode. Discuss.
Nowadays, entertainment feels like those jelly packs they sell. You squeeze, suck out the jelly, and chuck the pack away.
Anyway, it’s also good that we’ve been away, because we’ve been catching up on Adolescence, which is the arthouse BBC version of The Slap. Watch it for the long cut.
She has never seen Dexter, and I did not watch it beyond season two but Dexter: Resurrection was super fun.
This week, we started Pluribus.
I don’t think I’m spoiling to reveal the premise of the show:
Carol is trying to survive in a society where everyone else is a giant hive mind. They are aware of her and are extremely nice to her. All they want is for her to be happy, even though they are desperately working hard to find a way to absorb her.
The collective human-soup narrative has been done to death—see: Evangelion, The Matrix, Get Out, Being John Malkovich … somehow Fluribus pushes it into this uncanny, lo-fi, sci-fi direction.
The budget is US$1.2M-per-episode, but the ‘invasion’ scenes have zero CGI. I think the budget was spent on set designs, the actors, choreography, cinematography, and all that Vince Gilligan-style of slow-burning, drug-making in the lab.
I missed that so much.
What are we implying with the hive mind? COVID, social media, AI, religion, workplace bullying, therapy culture, peer-pressure, parenting, communism? That fake smile with uncertainty underneath becomes a projection surface for the viewer’s anxieties.
The fact that Apple, the company most associated with sheep culture, bankrolled this feels almost too meta1.
In the latest episode, Carol, having told the hive mind to leave her alone, drives to her local supermarket. She discovers it’s empty; when everyone shares one mind, supermarkets become obsolete.
“I just want my sprouts,” she demands.
70 minutes later, trucks roll in and restock, making a Whole Foods whole, just for her.
The moral is almost too clean: no one is truly an island.
No one person is actually good for the environment, even if you’re buying organic.
Every “single packet of food” carries an invisible number of hands and resources.
I want to be left alone, but I also want what I want.
In the end, Carol chose a microwaveable frozen meal.
Ultimately, are we miserable because everyone else seems happy, or do we choose to be miserable?
Are we pretending to be miserable2?
Are they pretending to be happy?
Is there a difference?
I’m sure there’ll be twists and turns down the road, and I’m not expecting this to outshine Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul.
I’m just here for the ride.
And the bonding.
Maybe it’s not the quality of the show; you just need to experience something with someone together.
It’s birthday month, so I’m thinking less and writing more.
If you have any empathy in your bones, you’ll buy me a present. Better yet, buy me a coffee in the form of a subscription, and I don’t know, maybe unsubscribe after the month is over.
Also, you can never convince me that releasing an iPhone in bright orange colour during this presidency is just a coincidence.
During a literal ‘cold’ open of S01E03, Carol was being extremely Asian - complaining about everything in a hotel in Norway, only to reveal later that it was a cherished happy memory.