The finale of ‘The Curse’ is out of this world and extremely frustrating

Jeff Newman/A24/Paramount+/Showtime

This post contains spoilers for the final episode of The Curse, currently streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime.

Early in the final episode, curse, “Green Queen” Asher and Whitney’s Shabbat dinner turns into a discussion about Carla’s decision to quit the popular art world. Of course, Whitney is jealous that Kara is enjoying the kind of media attention that Whitney thought she would get on her HGTV show. Asher is trying to be more generous, but he’s as perplexed as ever when it comes to talking about more temporary issues. He stutters several times, unable to finish the phrase “Art is about…” and suggests, “Sometimes you have to go to extreme lengths to get your point across.” .

That sentiment applies to both. curse In general and in particular this strange and very misunderstood finale. Throughout the nine episodes so far, Fielder, Safdie, and company have gone to the most extreme lengths possible to make viewers feel trapped in the Siegel marriages along with Whitney and Usher. In the process, they’ve created a series that’s much more fun to talk about than it is to actually watch. But there were highlights along the way, most notably Usher’s reaction to Whitney’s marriage confessional video last week.

Over the past two and a half months, I’ve asked many people who have been watching the show what they think. The most frequently heard sentiment was that everything feels confusing, but believes Fielder and Safdie are heading in an interesting direction.

“The Green Queen” can certainly be said to be interesting. The question is whether it is in any way consistent with the story that has been told in the nine episodes so far, and how the creators will decide in the finale where Asher literally flies into space to die and Whitney gives birth to a child. What point are you pointing out?

Let’s repeat that. Later in this episode, Asher wakes up and discovers: The laws of gravity were reversed for him.And when he makes the mistake of stepping outside the relative safety of his passive home, he first jumps onto a high branch of a nearby tree, and then completely jumps up when firefighters cut off the tree branch. jumped out of the atmosphere. Have a mental health episode and fall safely to the pad below.

sorry. He first saw this episode four months ago, but he still needs time to understand how he got here.

yes, curse Its name contains supernatural concepts. And there were hints throughout the season, or at least in the episode where the creative team remembered the existence of Abushir and her daughters, that Nala’s powers were real. She knew that the chicken had disappeared from Asher’s dinner. There was no explanation as to how another chicken appeared in the fire station’s bathroom. Her mean classmate, whom she taunted, actually fell and injured herself later that school day. And Nala was able to guess the number of nails in Asher’s hand several times before Asher cut himself badly trying to continue the test. So whether it’s as a result of Dougie taunting him a few episodes ago or as a result of Asher promising Whitney last week if he still did, a big, huge, mysterious mishap ends up with Asher It wasn’t completely sudden that he was summoning someone. After giving the marriage another chance, not wanting to be with him, “I feel it, and I’ll disappear.” Literally falling off the face of the earth and freezing in the harsh vacuum of space. It’s more difficult to completely disappear than to put it away, right?

Even considering all that… what?

In “Young Hearts,” Asher insists that the curse isn’t real and that all the problems in his marriage are his fault. This isn’t a completely accurate sentiment, as he has contributed a lot, starting with his decision to marry a man Whitney clearly doesn’t love and barely even likes. But the larger ideas about human behavior and external magic are poignant and align perfectly with the arguments Fielder and Safdie were making about the lies we tell ourselves and the damage we do to the world around us. It seemed like a match.lean this Far in the opposite direction doesn’t seem like a proper culmination of the story being told, but rather that Fielder and Safdie, like everyone else, begin to feel the claustrophobia of the show, and the only way out of it. It feels like the decision was made to have half of the central couple literally eject from orbit around the entire Earth.

In early press for the series, Showtime used the phrase “genre-bending” to describe it. This finale bends rather than shatters, or, if you prefer, flies away from the earlier genre as quickly as poor Usher takes to the skies. . Not only does the extreme emphasis on the surreal feel out of step with what’s happened before, but this twist renders most of what’s happened so far meaningless. Nine episodes – nine long and intentionally difficult episodes – that could have easily conveyed the ideas in a more compressed way. curse is about the unreality of reality TV, gentrification, cultural appropriation, ethical capitalism and hypocrisy, and above all the challenges and compromises of marriage in general and this deeply dysfunctional marriage, and much more. It was a program that talked about a lot of topics. specific. The finale throws all of that out the window in favor of gravity being a no-brainer and the surreality of Asher’s new situation, as if the creators had lost interest in all sociological themes, or perhaps they were just Either they haven’t found a satisfactory way to bring about this. Everything comes to a proper conclusion.

To be fair, “The Green Queen” features some interesting moments before Whitney finds her husband lying on the ceiling. The time jump theoretically allows the Siegel family to get everything they wanted. The retitled HGTV show is now available to stream, and the couple will appear virtually on Rachael Ray’s show. Now that Whitney is in the third trimester of her pregnancy, the Siegel family is planning to change Abshir’s life as well, gifting her with her home on Cuesta Lane to celebrate the end of a life-changing year. But nothing turns out the way they dreamed.None of my friends and family seem to know how to watch green queen.of rachel ray The cast takes issue with the show’s premise, and then quickly loses interest, leaving the Siegel family awkwardly smiling on the monitor for what feels like an eternity, while Rachel tells guests in the studio. It is a humiliating job because of the focus. soprano singer alum Vincent Pastore and his new cookbook. (This is probably the hardest scene to endure in the entire series. Credit to this creative team!) And if it doesn’t make the entire finale great, Fielder and Safdie didn’t make it even longer. It’s kind of a surprise.fake rachel ray ) Abushir is in no way grateful for the generous gift and is primarily concerned with getting the Siegel family to pay the first year’s property taxes.

. And while Usher is excited about becoming a parent soon, it’s clear throughout that Whitney doesn’t continue to find joy in any aspect of her life, either personally or professionally. She smiles when people are looking and just stares blankly when they aren’t. Her attitude is as false as the Siegel’s commitment to the climate neutrality of the Whitney Passive House. Because they plan on climate-controlling the baby’s room, at least initially.

It was a completely underwhelming experience for them, and unfortunately a fitting farewell for Abushir, whose presence on the show was not worth the possibility of hiring Barkhad Abdi for the role. He and Nala existed almost entirely as plot devices or strangers to which the Siegel family responded. Even Kara was given more interior life throughout the season.

Asher attributes his strange new presence on the ceiling to that decision. He thinks he installed an air conditioner in his one room, which somehow created an air pocket that caused him to tip over. He believes this house is a danger to both him and his unborn child, and can’t wait to escape outside where it seems safe. But, as always, things are quite the opposite for Usher. Literally, being at home was the only thing keeping him alive. And as unpleasant as the anti-gravity developments are in general, the scene in which the unsuspecting firefighter begins chopping down tree branches, over Asher’s desperate pleas, was great because the actors and director Nathan Fielder is credited with both. Miserable.

But then again, how did the previous nine episodes get us here? What on earth, or ultimately, does Asher’s strange fate make this show so far? What kind of relationship does it have with the themes and stories you were dealing with? Why create an ending where the two main characters are separated for the most part, and Asher’s story is so amazing and larger than life that Whitney goes into labor? It’s so hard to even pay attention every time I endure and head to the hospital to find out she’s in my body. Feeling true love for her baby? For that matter, why do we have to wonder if meeting Whitney’s newborn will solve all of her myriad emotional problems, even though she has brought as much disastrous results to her marriage and the world as she has so far? , should I believe that it will bring the happy ending that my husband has denied me? he? Just…why? While Asher is still flying through the upper atmosphere, Dougie sits on the ground and sobs, saying this is the worst thing he’s ever done. Perhaps he’s thinking about when he cursed Usher, but that might not be the case since Dougie is such an elusive and enigmatic character. Revealing the full extent of Dougie’s dealings, and why the Siegel family was so easily swayed by such an unpleasant, hostile, and clearly disgusting man, is an unfinished story leading up to the finale. It felt like one of the more important parts of the job. Rather, he remains a mystery, and his feelings are as ultimately mysterious as why Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder decided to quit.

About this memo. trend This is Fielder’s third TV show as creator or co-creator. All three of his finishes ended in unexpected ways, with varying degrees of success. nathan for you The story ends in a reflective and (mostly) sincere way, as Fielder helps an old man track down the woman he believed to be the love of his life. It became an instant classic.The blurring of fact and fiction seemed to go awry.

rehearsal In the finale, Fielder’s bizarre experiment appears to have hurt the boy’s feelings, an episode that ruins what had been a bold and cheerful show up until then. this? Ever since I first saw “The Green Queen” in the fall, I have watched it several times and thought about it a lot in between. I couldn’t quite get this conclusion out of my head, partly because of the previous episodes, and partly partly because of how unexpected this conclusion was. Or maybe we just can’t let go of the resentment that this long, difficult, but sometimes very rewarding journey has somehow led us here.