Even if everything was going well in the world, the recently scenes of a tsunami crossing the Pacific in Hawaii, then on the west coast of the United States would have been annoying.
After all, many of us who looked HeavenHulu and ABC have succeeded this year, this is exactly how the world ends – or, at least, almost everyone who fails to escape to the Mountain City with technology where Sterling K. Brown kept a president. By looking at the show this spring, we, already soaked in the general fears of climate change, suddenly think of an extremely specific event which did not come to mind most of us before. And now, this event was rolling up our news screens.
Television and reality have collided unlikely in recent months. The big contenders for the Emmy still have a socially relevant spectacle here and there, but has there been a torrent like this one?
Environmental disaster, toxic masculinity (Adolescence), Presidential overreach (Andor), health care costs (The Pitt), mass shots (The Pitt again), the disparity of income (The white lotus), Moving the AI job (The studioand maybe Breakup If this is what the name of Sam Altman does) – the concerns that have already overwhelmed social media are now wherever we are also looking in entertainment.
These are nervous times, and scripted television responded with an exceptionally nervous set of offers. This is what happens when you cross the high-end television boom of the last two decades with worse social concerns than any point of half a century.
The white lotus The star Carrie Coon, who played in perhaps the most topical of all, as a agitated lawyer by looking at all these disparities in a Thai station, has captured the moment.
“Welcome to capitalism at an advanced stage,” she said strongly when I ask her questions about the issue. “It’s crushing everyone. And art reflects life and helps us to consider it. ”
It continues: “AI as an existential threat, the tragedy of Medicaid, the demonization of immigrants – it is the responsibility of entertainment to present real problems, even if it must sometimes be delivered with laughter. But when we see a theme or a trend in our art, we would be careful.”
The rise in health care costs is never far from many of our minds – the millions of people who have soon been launched Medicaid, but also many of us who were naively thought that well -assured would never need to worry. And so it continues The PittWhere Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) pleads for more resources from the administrator of the Gloria Underwood hospital.
Large technological machinations come just in the foreground Breakup and its headquarters of Lumon. We have no idea what troubled company they are doing there, but do we have a much better idea of what Google and Openai do? These are not abstract concerns in real life, and now television makes them even more intimate.
This may be why one of the signature shows of the season is Contraction – An entire series dedicated to anxiety. And the most appropriate moment of this program came when Sean by Luke Tennie, a veteran struggling with the SSPT, seems to risk letting his anxieties overwhelm him. The graying therapist of Harrison Ford Paul looks at Sean and advises him judiciously: “Say,” Bring it. I love pain ”. And then finally, the cloud will spit you in the light, feeling that you have won something. “He could also speak to us directly.
Whether these shows are predicted or simply channeled real concerns in a way lower than the effect they have. Television is now a place where we will see our anxieties reflected towards us.
And, sometimes, to look for a waste of the waste.
After all, in Etor, A rebellious alliance repels an emperor. In White lotus, A percentage spends the season to rush into a mist while he slowly realizes that he will pay his crime. In AdolescenceToxic masculinity is literally imprisoned and judged.
Maybe not this moment this season no longer seemed cathartic than on The studioWhen Ice Cube shouts “Fuck Ai” to the applause of a comic-conted crowd on the awareness that a business manager is about to use technology to put human workers out of jobs.
The question of knowing if his moment of protest would ultimately make a difference – if one of the resistance established in these emissions really sends the demon – has been largely left unanswered. This season, television was not trying to offer realistic solutions. He was just trying to hug us.
And when life is so disturbing, that may be enough.
This story appeared in the August 6 issue of the Hollywood Reporter Magazine. Click here to subscribe.
