The Curse recap: How far do you go in the name of "art"?

The absurdist humor of The Curse can sometimes feel like it exists in a completely different world than ours. And then, sometimes, as you watch privileged kids openly shoplift endless pairs of jeans while chatting up the shop’s employee—they know Whitney (Emma Stone) will pay for whatever goes “missing”—drives home how warped this vision of a small town really is. In the same way the series title cards every episode distort the very image they’re superimposed on; this is a funhouse mirror of a reality TV-driven world that’s refracting but mostly just reflecting the very absurd world we do live in.

It was always a matter of time before Whitney’s Good Samaritan vibes-meets-woke politics sensibility would come crashing into reality. It did so in the shape of Fernando (Christopher Calderon) showing up with a gun, rightfully accusing her of abetting theft in the community. From what we’ve seen, Whitney’s credit card purchases are now mostly fueling rich teen escapades, not helping the cause against purposeless incarceration. While the confrontation with Fernando reveals the fractious way in which Whitney and Asher (Nathan Fielder) are nurturing a sense of “community” in La Española (aka mainly doing so for publicity and self-gain), there’s no denying they’re missing the mark even when doing so performatively.

That said, seeing Asher try to embiggen himself and stand up to Fernando (who accurately sees past his bluff and doesn’t even dare entertain such a standoff) is a moment of quiet hilarity: “I was ready to take a bullet for you!” may well be the most tragicomic line Fielder has had to deliver as the sniveling, awkward dork he’s playing. The confrontation also reveals more cracks within the couple—and within Whitney herself. To watch her openly mock Asher, with a craven cruelty we hadn’t seen so brazenly displayed before, is unnerving. It’s proof that she’s slowly unraveling and having a hard time keeping the peace at home.

Segwaying straight from there to Asher’s confessional where Dougie outright asks him what he loves most about Whitney (“She’s kind. Thoughtful. Intelligent. The most selfless person I’ve ever met.”) is further jarring. It gives Dougie (Benny Safdie) the chance to produce the hell of out of Asher, often feeding him lines that I guarantee will be used out of context if/when we get a chance to see the cut of the show he’s working on. I mean, why would you allow yourself to say “Whitney is a better person than me” (with a framed photograph of the two of you as a couple behind you) without realizing it feeds into the very narrative your producing friend is pushing?

No matter. It seems whatever aspersions there are between the two—the kind made even worse when Dougie brings up Asher’s micropenis!—Dougie and Asher decide to dine out together as a way to reconnect. Or so we imagine: Asher is seeing in real-time how the show continues to frame him so it makes sense he’d want to get on Dougie’s good side. The dinner, of course, is a bit of a disaster, with Dougie continually roasting Asher and the two walking a fine line between clearly not liking one another and yet needing the other’s validation.

Their night out eventually leads the two of them to go to Abshir’s house where the excuse to replace batteries on a smoke detector gives way for Dougie to cozy up to Nala: He wants to be cursed, perhaps as a way to make sense of all that is wrong with his life right now. Watching Dougie crying in front of Nala, humiliating himself to ask for the most absurd request one could imagine is peak cringe. And peak The Curse. It all goes nowhere. Nala screams, Dougie excuses himself and Asher is left yet again trying to appear normal in the eyes of his tenant.

Meanwhile, across town…

Whitney is on a crusade to become a part of (by which she means appear to be a part of) the local arts scene. She’s already reframed her run-in with Fernando not as a dispute over how best to deal with petty theft in the community but as an affront to her performance piece (she calls it “activism,” too!); she wants to rebrand herself as an artist. Aren’t her houses art? And who better to help her do this than Cara (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin), who clearly can’t escape Whitney? Not while she’s having lunch with her friend Brett (Brett Mooswa) and not while she attends an arts gathering later with an eccentric buyer.

Cara may wish to remain cordial with Whitney (she did just take $20,000 from her last episode to be a consultant on the show) but Brett sees instead a chance to openly mock this white girl who keeps insinuating herself into her friend’s life. As Whitney sits down to chat with them both while at a Mexican restaurant, he assumes an incantatory affectation as he blesses his burrito (yes, really), wanting to feed on Whitney’s cluelessness who sees in the gesture a beautiful way of honoring Native American tradition. And not, of course, the way such moments are commodified by and for the likes of Whitney.

This all comes to the fore again at that art gathering where Whitney has brought on a crew of one to follow her as she hobnobs with artists and collectors and tries to pass herself off as an artist in her own right. And yes, that requires her staging a conversation with Cara where, like Dougie earlier in the episode, she feeds her friend lines. About how great Whitney’s houses are and how the two see their work as collaborative in the eyes of the show. It’s all rather humiliating for Cara but she knows she’s put herself in a position where to refuse Whitney would be difficult. But it doesn’t come without a mixture of emotions: She’s cornered herself into this situation but won’t give up without a passive-aggressive fight.

So, as she shares how her teepee piece was about Native American artists having to constantly slice themselves off and offer it to their audience (letting everyone choose whether to feed off of her or not), you sense in Whitney the realization of how her “friend” truly sees her. Even as she tries to create a picture-perfect version of herself, she runs up against the reality of her blind spots. It’s that realization we’re left with as Whitney fumes quietly in her car heading home. will she ever be able to better control her image, her marriage, and her life?

Stray Observations

• Eight episodes in and I have not talked enough about this show’s score. It is truly a master class in tone-setting; even the most mundane moments are here given an eerie, creepy vibe by the aid of the music alone. I’m thinking in particular of those final moments where a mere garbage truck (where Cara’s racist statue meets its fate)—a moment as unsettling as it is moving.
• “I would much rather have a dick your size.” Dougie’s alcoholism is ramping up and I have to imagine it will, at some point, catch up with him again. But boy is it hard to watch this slow-motion train wreck (though I guess I could just as easily be speaking about the show as a whole, no?)
• “I curse you,” Dougie says as he drops off Asher. And boy do we feel the rage in his eyes when he does so.
• Q: Is Emma Stone giving us the best “driving acting” we’ve seen on prestige TV since Big Little Lies? Discuss.
• A shout out to Nizhonniya Luxi Austin, who’s tasked with bringing all of Cara’s conflicting thoughts around Whitney and Flipanthropy in the guise of a woman needing to constantly evaluate how much of herself she’s giving—and to what end.