The mirrored exteriors of the houses for sale in the new Showtime drama “The Curse” are the first hint of the series’ interest in distortion. They reflect nearby trees and the clear New Mexico sky—an illusion that leads some unsuspecting birds to an untimely death. To the human eye, their effect, like that of the show itself, is more than a little disorienting. The homes are the futuristic wares of Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone), an aspiring property developer who views her ultra-sustainable, sci-fi-on-the-outside, cozy-on-the-inside bungalows as works of art. But the buildings are costly to construct and niche in their appeal; it’s a vanity project that can’t be underwritten by Whitney’s parents forever, even if they are millionaire slumlords. She and her husband, Asher (Nathan Fielder), think hosting an HGTV series will solve their problems, simultaneously stoking demand for Whitney’s designs and raising the national profile of the small town of Española. Ever mindful of optics, they foreground their support for the community and their dutiful efforts to offset gentrification—so much so that the program they pitch, “Flip-lanthropy,” is all broccoli, no candy. Their producer, Dougie (Benny Safdie), decides that the best way to salvage it is by mining the conflict between his two “characters.” There’s a lot more to excavate than the couple want to believe.
Under his influence, “Flip-lanthropy” becomes a different sort of mirror—one for the mismatched newlyweds’ repressed tensions. Dougie, who has a wicked story sense as well as tragic reasons for eschewing any appearance of marital bliss, observes how often the telegenic Whitney rolls her eyes at her socially stilted husband when she thinks no one’s looking. She’s decidedly camera-ready, but Asher is picked apart by a network focus group. When one of the participants notes that the couple have “zero sexual tension,” giving voice to a disconnect Whitney had tried to ignore, she can’t help but fixate on her partner’s shortcomings. Dougie gets her permission—but not Asher’s—to fashion their onscreen dynamic around her obvious superiority. Stitching together the narrative he wants involves creative use of hot mikes, the discreet nudging of day players, and confessionals filmed on the sly. But even a genre as artificial as reality television can bring out the truth.
“The Curse,” created by Fielder and Safdie, solidifies the former as one of the most innovative TV auteurs of the past decade. The ten-part scripted series doesn’t, and probably can’t, play with form as ingeniously as Fielder’s previous outings, “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” wherein he starred as a dead-eyed, inept host who offered his “services” to people in distress. On “Nathan for You,” he styled himself as the would-be savior of flailing small businesses around Los Angeles. With “The Rehearsal,” in which he helped his subjects prepare for difficult confessions or try out alternative lives through elaborate trial runs, he took the same role—and the docu-comedy genre—to yet more absurd, occasionally disturbing extremes.
Fielder continues expanding and complicating the possibilities of that persona in “The Curse.” The series’ overt acknowledgment of race and class may be something of a mea culpa for him; though he skirted around the fact at the time, many of the struggling businesses that he messed with on “Nathan for You” seemed to be owned by immigrants or people of color. (When the prank show originally aired, the memory of my parents’ failed restaurant was still a fresh wound; for much of its run, a comedian with corporate backing making light of people’s imperilled livelihoods felt unwatchable.) On “The Curse,” whatever sympathy one might feel for Asher as the lesser partner in his marriage, his clumsy, conditional allyship and ability to inflict harm are always front of mind. There’s something canny in the yoking together of various institutions that are rife with potential abuses of power: television production, the art world, even marriage.
For a series with such naked thematic ambitions, “The Curse” proves surprisingly moving, largely due to the depth of feeling that Asher reveals as his relationship disintegrates. By fully embodying a character rather than playing a heightened version of himself, Fielder shows off his acting chops as never before; his vaguely befuddled, still-buffering affect obscures the emotions roiling beneath. Stone and Safdie, too, are perfectly cast, their roles tailored to their individual strengths. She’s irresistible when evincing desperate, petty want; untrustworthiness radiates off him like a dark aura, or stubborn B.O.
“The Curse” takes its title from a small act of retribution committed by a young girl named Nala (Hikmah Warsame) in a store parking lot. When Dougie spots Nala selling cans of soda to passersby, he persuades Asher to approach her for a scene. Asher has only a hundred-dollar bill in his wallet, so he allows himself to be filmed handing her the money, then yoinks it back once Dougie gets the shot. The girl wishes him harm and disappears. Strange coincidences begin to mount—and, after Asher buys a teardown that Nala and her family happen to be squatting in, he inadvertently becomes their landlord. He can’t shake the idea that Nala has derailed his life, even as he has the power to evict her at the snap of a finger. Similarly, Whitney, despite her generational wealth and the eventual series order from HGTV, craves the approval of an acquaintance named Cara (Nizhonniya Austin), a Native artist whose buzzy reputation and supposed race-based credibility she envies. Whit’s efforts to buy her friendship—and to leverage their connection for “authenticity” on air—expose the white woman’s transactional approach to social justice. But “The Curse” is better at satirizing the gentrifiers than at humanizing the gentrified. As in the first season of “The White Lotus,” an emphasis on the moral flexibility of the privileged gives short shrift to the characters of color, who are too often forced into moments of pointed silence or unconvincing passivity. (The underdeveloped role of Nala’s father, played by the gifted Barkhad Abdi, is a small but keen disappointment.)
That leaves Whitney and Asher’s slowly collapsing marriage as the most consistently compelling story line. Sendups of the millennial obsession with virtue signalling aren’t hard to find in pop culture; much rarer is a multifaceted portrait that illuminates how a perceived ethical imbalance can poison a relationship. When Asher calls Nala and her family “homeless” while relaying the events of the day to Whitney, she immediately instructs him to use the term “unhoused” instead. Asher would be the first to invoke the truism that Whitney inspires him to be a better person. “The Curse” smartly asks: What are the natural resentments that arise when both parties believe that to be the case? Whitney seethes at having to constantly prod her husband to do good; in reality, she’s a willful naïf who has him do the dirty work for her, then looks down on him for sullying his hands. To avoid feeling like a total asshole, Asher lies to her compulsively, recasting quotidian incidents to inflate his righteousness or heroism. He supports her unconditionally, in his blundering way, and blows up at anyone—a would-be buyer, a TV reporter mid-interview—who fails to treat her as dotingly as he does. When she announces that she’s pregnant, he says, “You are happy,” as though he’s willing her to be. She doesn’t contradict him. But he also knows to pose the question: “You still love me, right?”♦
