When The Curse came around, if viewers didn’t come to the show for Emma Stone, they came for the kind of uneasy humor that Nathan Fielder brought to The Rehearsal, but what we’re seeing, three episodes into The Curse, is a completely different kind of uncomfortable.
Most people know Nathan Fielder for making people uncomfortable, if not in Nathan for You, then with his hit Max series The Rehearsal. Forcing people to rehearse uncomfortable situations prior to confronting their own issues just as he does, the series was an introduction to Fielder for a lot of people.
He’s the kind of comedian who knows how to make an audience groan and squirm. You know you’re going to ask “why” at least once when watching something from him, but The Curse irks me because there is a simmering anger under Asher (Fielder) that doesn’t really come across in his other work, maybe because it’s one of the first times we are seeing “actor” Nathan Fielder and not just a character version of himself.
But the eerie nature of The Curse really comes from the white savior nature of characters like Asher and Whitney (Emma Stone) and how Asher shows a side of Fielder’s comedy that is uncomfortable, just not in the same way people expected the show to be. And frankly, that’s a great thing because Fielder hasn’t ever been a rinse and repeat kind of guy. If The Curse were just more of the same energy of The Rehearsal, it wouldn’t feel genuine.
It isn’t the same kind of show, and that’s a good thing
There is a kind of lightning that can strike twice, but what Fielder has is a magic that reinvents itself. His “lightning” as it were, is not the same. He changes his approach to making you think with his comedy and the kind of character he’s playing. The Rehearsal was unique in how it highlighted the people he was “helping,” and The Curse is using people like Whitney and Asher to spotlight a real problem in “improvement” shows and the white savior complex.
We are only three episodes into the series, but I don’t doubt after an explosive episode between Asher and Whitney, that Fielder is working on a deeper commentary with a character like Asher. So while The Curse is very different from his other shows, it works, mainly because it’s a show that knows the kind of commentary it’s making and sticks to it. Making you uncomfortable in the same way as Fielder’s previous work is not the job of the show, but The Curse should sit in a weird place in your body and leave you hollow, and that’s a testament of Fielder’s brand of humor.
(featured image: Richard Foreman Jr./A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME)
