It Is What It Is: Reckoning with "The Curse" finale

I try to grapple with the surrealist finale of "The Curse" and accept things at face value (with spoilers.)

It was a weeknight, about 3:45 am. I found myself laying on the walnut hardwood of my living room, staring up at the ceiling I knew but couldn’t see in the darkness. What the hell did I just watch?

I had made the irresponsible decision to press play on “Green Queen,” the tenth and final episode of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s The Curse, in a heel-turn moment. I had just picked up the show back up based on a friend’s recommendation. I watched the first five episodes as they were released before bailing, a painful move for me as a staunch Fielder advocate— but it had become simply too uncomfortable. Between his character Asher’s vapid financial motivations and his wife Whitney’s (Emma Stone) inability to grasp her reality as a slumlord nepo-baby, the couple trying— failing— to ingratiate themselves in the mostly indigenous on behalf of their impending HGTV show, and their overpriced “passive homes”, I had no interest in powering through until the end. But, boy, I’m glad I did (Note: I should have known this last episode was going to be insane when it opened with Big Pussy Bonpensiero from The Sopranos on Rachael Ray.)

There was a moment in the penultimate episode where my begrudging respect for the show turned into genuine interest. After maybe the most awkward scene— Whit refuses to tell Asher that she loves him— the two inexplicably agree to go bowling together, and what transpires is the only moment in the whole show in which you feel genuine love between the two main characters. Asher’s confidence soars and it’s palpable; a sparkle even shines in Whit’s eyes while she watches him. It reminds me of a scene in the Succession series finale, when the Roy children finally accept Kendall as the heir apparent and have a food fight together in their mom’s kitchen. It makes you want to cry as a viewer, not because of the rare moment of isolated happiness, but because you know this will preface something horrifying. The Curse was never going to end with Asher and Whit happy together, and when Asher’s former coworker (who he manipulated earlier in the season) shows up at the bowling alley, throwing off the vibes and causing Ash to posture and puff his chest out in defense of his actions— which Whit cannot stand— thus ending their romantic evening. They return home, and Whit hears Asher masturbating in the bathroom, fantasizing about the former coworker cucking his wife. 

This pitiful moment seemingly pushes Whit over the edge, and she forces Asher to watch an alternate cut of their show in which she laments their relationship and all but plans a divorce. Asher, broken, leaves the room and comes back with a further commitment to his cuck-dom, claiming he’ll do anything to make her happy, and that she doesn’t actually want to divorce him, and that if she did, he would feel it, and subsequently disappear— all while Whit watches on in horror, tears in her eyes.

I had to watch the finale, which I was convinced couldn’t get any crazier, but I had to see how things shook out between the troubled duo. Inexplicably, Whit wakes up to Asher stuck to the ceiling, some reverse gravity hijinks that they mistake for a problem with the new HVAC system in their passive home. Meanwhile, Whit’s contractions begin, and a friend takes her to the hospital while Dougie (their problematic producer played by show co-creator Benny Safdie) is told to figure out the Asher situation.

Nobody believes anything supernatural is happening to Asher— not Dougie, and not the fire department, who was now in charge of getting Asher down from a tree he flew up into in an attempt to get out of the house. Asher is hanging on for dear life and the firemen chainsaw the tree branch off in an effort to get him down, but he screams in terror knowing he won’t fall. He launches into the stratosphere, spinning and screaming and burning up in space, dying what was surely a gruesome death. The scene cuts to Whit and Asher’s baby newborn at the hospital, and Whit smiles, not knowing her husband is dead, or, worse, not caring.

Even writing the play-by-play down now, it doesn’t feel real. 

I spent most of the next hour in stunned silence. I couldn’t articulate how I felt about the show, and my brain was mush. Did I enjoy The Curse, or not? After all, I did stop watching it halfway through because it was so excruciating. But entertainment doesn’t always have to be about making the show (or movie, book, et cetera) an easy watch. In fact, to use the “path of least resistance” as a litmus test for enjoyment and quality is a bad way to engage with art. Some of the greatest art is the hardest to consume. In a world with so much horror, trauma, death, and destruction, it makes sense that people want TV to be a respite from the pain. But that’s a personal preference, not an objective commentary on good art. Good art should generate discussion, or at least make you look inwards. A lot of the time, it takes difficult subject matters to get the point across. In a moment that could be Fielder explaining his entire ethos, Asher explains to Whit— after she makes a poorly-timed Holocaust joke— about why Mel Brooks’ The Producers, a satirical Holocaust film, works: “We thought it was a sad thing, and it is a sad thing, but it’s also funny, too. Or there’s humor that could be found in it. Because art is about … really, art is about, um … sometimes you have to go to extreme lengths to make your point.” The same could be said about all of Fielder’s shows.

Besides, the finale wasn’t really uncomfortable. In fact, it was the easiest episode to watch, in a way. It had the least cringeworthy moments and the purest emotion, moments in which one doesn’t have to peel back layers of emotional masquerading or unspoken tension. It’s just bonkers, full stop; a delicious display of surrealism and absurdity. The finales of both of Fielder’s other efforts, The Rehearsal and Nathan For You, stunned, but The Curse takes it to another level. You could have given me infinite guesses as to how the show would wrap up, and I’d have never gotten it. There were surrealist signs, in hindsight— Asher’s obsession with a little Somali girl’s chicken curse, the ever-increasing eerie backing music, the name of the show itself— but it still left me speechless, the first time I’ve seen a finale give me a physical reaction since Twin Peaks: The Return, which was over half a decade ago now. I think the sheer absurdity of it ultimately increased my enjoyment, but I also understand why it threw regular viewers for a loop. 

I’m not going to try and theorize about what the finale meant, although I do have my own ideas (if you want to chat about it, you can hit me on Twitter.) Plus, Charles Holmes and Justin Sayles at The Ringer theorized ideas better than I could ever imagine. It did make me think, though: what is my litmus test for enjoying a show? I think I have a pretty simple answer.

In the thick of the finale, Asher is miles in the air, careening through space and time in the last seconds of his material existence, and screams, “If I come back...” but never finishes his sentence, a qualifier lost to eternity, or maybe to be the next life, if there is one. In that moment, I felt every feeling that I’ve ever felt all at once. I wanted to cry, scream, embrace someone, throw myself off the roof of my house, kick a dog, dive in frigid waters, collapse and cave into myself in the solace of a sherpa blanket. My heart thrashed and my throat dried up. I was feeling. And that’s all I want. Whether relatable or not, linear or not, “good” or not, I want to watch a show that makes me feel something on a visceral level, because that’s our only truly shared experience as humans. It’s been almost a week now and is still claiming territory in my brain. It’s no more complicated than that. Can’t we just let ourselves enjoy things because they make the hair on our arms stand up?

Sometimes I wonder if we look too deeply into art and it ruins it for us. Mulling over a wild finish is one thing, but trying to “figure it out” is like trying to figure out the meaning of life or trying to conquer love. What does it even mean to “figure it out”? At best you’ll come up with a vague idea that you like but will never know of its veracity, and at worst it will take away from the feeling you had in the moment, which, ultimately, is what art’s all about. That will drive you insane, or at least make you a dogmatic critic that nobody likes. I’m not immune from this way of thinking,of course, but stunners like The Curse finale help me reset. Art is forever shrouded in mystery, but that’s what makes it beautiful.

There’s a Thomas Bernard quote floating around on social media about the art of consuming art that explains what I tried to say. I’ll leave you with it:

“Beware of penetrating into a work of art… you will ruin each and every one for yourself, even those you love most. Do not look at a picture for too long, do not read a book too intently, do not listen to a piece of music with the greatest intensity. You will ruin everything for yourself, and thus the most beautiful and most useful things in the world. Read what you love but do not penetrate it totally, listen to what you love but do not listen to it totally, look at what you love but do not look at it totally. Because I have always looked at everything totally, always listened to everything totally, always read everything totally, or at least tried to listen to everything totally and to read and view everything totally, I ended up by ultimately making everything abhorrent to me, in this way I made all art and all music and all literature abhorrent to me… As I have, by the same method, made the whole world abhorrent to me, simply everything… Now I know that I must not read totally or listen totally or view and contemplate totally if I want to go on living.”