Producing reality television is a kind of invisible art. If it’s an art at all. And from what The Curse has been showing us, Dougie (Benny Safdie) may well be a most accomplished artist in that regard. Whitney (Emma Stone) has been trying to wrestle control of Flipanthropy and nudge it toward a direction that better reflects her and her husband Asher’s (Nathan Fielder) interests in green passive homes and community-first local engagement. But it was only a matter of time until such a blandly positive angle would prove to make not even remotely watchable television. As Dougie puts it while watching an early cut of the episode they shot with the hired-for-TV buyer couple Whitney herself cast last week, what they’ve been assembling is a frictionless show.
“It’s lifeless,” Whitney agrees, perhaps for the first time realizing that Flipanthropy can’t operate solely as a PSA for how great Española is, how forward-thinking her own architectural designs are, and how devoted she and Asher are to nearby Indigenous tribes, whose artwork they shamelessly display at any given opportunity. And you have to agree. Those scenes with that happy-go-lucky couple who appear to be super excited by how great their new house is, who can’t stop talking about how thrilled they are about helping paint over graffiti with green-certified paint that dries really quick (!), and who smile their way through a lunch at their neighbors where the most interesting topic of conversation is the weather (!!) are interminable.
Dougie, canny producer that he is, has an idea for how to improve the show. He knows Whitney wants all that eco stuff front and center. And he doesn’t want to compromise that part of the project. But if the drama’s not gonna come from (real) buyers clashing with the Siegels over different political views—about land easements, gas emissions, and the like—the tensions at the core of the show must come from somewhere. So why not their marriage?
He zeroes in on one quick moment when Whitney rolled her eyes on camera at Asher. Why? Well, Whitney explains, Asher couldn’t put his phone down for one second—not even while taking hold of a pot specifically made for the show she was showing off. Like, come on! It’s the kind of confessional “I’m explaining why I said/did that thing I said/did” reality TV has ingrained in us for decades. And, once Dougie films her with his phone and puts a makeshift cut together that shows how well it could enliven the lifeless, frictionless edit they’d just watched, Whitney is sold (maybe) on the benefit of turning Flipanthropy into a show anchored by her marital exasperations.
She’s also been thinking of changing the title. Flipanthropy has never felt right. (They don’t do flips! They do tear downs!) Why not Green Queen? In Stone’s hands, such glaringly embarrassing moments are equally calculated and spontaneous. She can’t possibly be that blind to her own self-involvement, can she? Not when she’s proven she’s also a canny reader of the room and able to weaponize her privilege to get her way. This is clearly a negotiation: She may give Dougie the show he wants but maybe in exchange she’ll get this change. It’s a brilliant moment of the two playing one another while never letting themselves think they’re being played.
Of course outside of all of this is Asher, who arrives at the fire station where they’re all shooting a sequence all about the buildings’ green energy upgrades without a clue that his marriage will soon become a key plot driver of the perhaps-soon-to-be-retitled show. Instead, he’s worried about why Bill was openly ignoring him at the hardware store. (In Bill’s defense, who of us wouldn’t choose to be deaf to Asher’s calls when out in public?) But also, has he forgotten what happened last time he hung out with Bill? Bill found himself face to face with a bumbling Asher spilling Gatorade all over Bill’s office—and himself (all a ruse to get key files from Bill’s casino computer that are sure to play a part in the episodes to come).
The fire station bits are the first chance Dougie gets of producing Whitney in earnest. And he wastes no time: Soon he has her flirting with a hunky fireman (and getting him to flirt back), all while getting more and more wooden, clueless moments from Asher that will surely make it look like the Siegels are clearly out of sync. Because, as ever, Asher is focused on nothing else but the curse. This time around, he’s haunted yet again by raw chicken, which is what’s all over the sink in the fire station’s bathroom. He first thinks Dougie is playing a trick on him—and even when the producer scoffs at such an accusation (if there are no cameras rolling, that’s a rather useless Dougie prank, no?), he becomes obsessed with finding out who could do such a thing. Which is what sends him to check up on security tapes that seemingly prove Dougie’s innocence. And prove, of course, that Asher’s fixation on this curse is getting out of hand.
Case in point: While doing some more work on Abshir’s (Barkhad Abdi) home, he continues to try and get Nala to either admit she has no cursing/witchy powers all while ingratiating himself to her. That involves gifting her a portable tetherball set and being extra kind to her and her father. It also apparently involves testing her powers by, say, getting her to guess how many screws he’s hiding, first in a bucket (she gets it right every time) and later in his hand (she has no time to guess given how quickly Asher’s hand starts to bleed). Yes, while Whitney is busy concocting ways to make Filanthropy (or Green Queen, now) ever more entertaining, Asher is…harassing a child. Truly a match made in HGTV heaven. No wonder Dougie, producer extraordinaire, sees a bright reality TV wreck of a future for them.
Stray observations
- At the start of the episode the editor of the show was about to voice an idea as to how to better the cut he was working on—until Dougie shushed him. One wonders if he had feedback that wouldn’t have required Whitney to play up her marital drama for the cameras…or was it all a ruse to voice Dougie’s own ideas?
- Can we talk about Dougie’s style or lack thereof? I mean, I’m not saying overalls are easy to pull off but maybe they shouldn’t be paired with a shapeless tee and more rings than you could ever conceivably wish to don on your fingers?
- Did you catch that blink-and-you’ll miss it credit-card charge notification appearing on Whitney’s phone? Looks like her commitment to cover any thefts at the store is already being put to the test.
- I like to think that Dougie’s many attempts at milking drama out of the frictionless concept behind what Whitney envisions for Flipanthropy is in some way indebted to the way many of us spend our time watching certain married hosts on very famous flipping shows (namely, reading into their every passive-aggressive eye roll).
- If Whitney is the Green Queen, what does that make Asher? Well, the village idiot, of course. (Dougie can be quite cruel sometimes, no? But then so is Whitney, who tries to egg on Cara to text her back with talk of Dougie’s infamous burn victim reality TV show.)
- In between the eerie music, the claustrophobic close-ups, and the drummed-up sound design (no one needs to hear cartilage or joints make any of those sounds at the levels “The Fire Burns On” offered us), did we just witness the world’s most discomfiting physical-therapy session in the history of American television? Abshir would very much say: Yes, absolutely.
- So what was the deal with the chicken, do we think? Is Nala, as Asher fears, in command of any kind of cursing powers or is he being made to be the butt of someone’s cruel jokes? Are we watching a nightmarish supernatural dramedy that feels wholly grounded IRL or a pitch black satire whose sensibility is even weirder than Asher’s sense of humor?
Stream The Curse now on Paramount+.