8:1:22
Uncoupled, S1, 2022.
This is the only true moment in an otherwise completely shallow, corporate series. Perhaps because the sentiment literally comes from an anachronistic (poetic) figure of the past. An old ghost speaking to a new machine.
Dead entertainment.
It’s amazing how something so commercial, trite, and dystopic has come to signify a Great life. Everything looks like Reality TV. I don’t even recognize the City—my hometown—Uncoupled portrays. I kept remembering Woody Allen’s opening montage to Manhattan every time a new episode bled into the next—a generic Globalist metropolis posing as New York City, or what’s left of it. City lights vs. LED glare.
The show, amongst many others on Netflix and HBO, demonstrates what a decade of film and TV by a new generation looks like.
It is bleak. And ugly as fuck.
Another sad fact: Zoe Cassavettes, who made a great film about love called Broken English in 2008, and is the daughter of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, John Cassavetes, directed multiple episodes of Uncoupled.
At least bad 80s and 90s thrillers had pathos. The people onscreen actually felt things, even though though they were technically just pretending to, and the world was beautiful even when it was difficult and ugly. Which is better than today’s glitzy, poisonous Nothing.
