In the Flesh: The Curse s1e04 'Under the Big Tree'

It’s a real treat to watch the Siegels’ principles roll over dead at the first whiff of money and power. Asher’s (Nathan Fielder) monotone slowly escalating in volume as he rationalizes cutting material on displaced locals from the show, Whitney (Emma Stone) talking herself into and out of increasingly crass and commercial beliefs at lightning speed; it’s an ugly reminder that there’s nothing inside these people but incessant self-regard, that they are incapable of believing or thinking things that might even modestly inconvenience their ambitions and equally incapable of admitting this to themselves or to each other. The way they light up when HGTV greenlights their show with a ten-episode order and remain lit up as the network rep systematically trims away even their rudimentary and misguided attempts at instilling some kind of conscience into the predatory hucksterism of the reality makeover genre is astoundingly ghoulish. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine they’re glad to have been discharged of that self-imposed responsibility by an authority figure they can cast in their minds as ultimately inescapable and impossible to negotiate against.

But ‘Under the Big Tree’ has less to say about the Siegels than it does their desperately dysfunctional alcoholic director and showrunner, Dougie (Benny Safdie), who wakes in a hung-over haze with the titular phrase written on the back of his hand. Watching him navigate his way backward through an increasingly disturbing lost night is both deeply engrossing and very, very sad. The revelation that he bought alcohol for a group of teenagers in order to “teach them a lesson” he seems unable to call to mind and then, in the process of getting blackout drunk with them in the woods, took their car keys and buried them to prevent a repetition of the drunk driving accident that killed his wife is about as squalid and pathetic as it gets. Safdie’s blank affect, thinly concealing a well of white-hot self-loathing and grief that feels almost frightening, seems in constant jeopardy of crumbling as he roots around in the dirt, argues with the mother of one of the teens, and comes perilously close to self-awareness.

Perhaps the most affecting scene is a brief sequence in which Dougie apologizes to Asher for having bullied him at summer camp, prompted no doubt by the shift in their power dynamic now that Asher’s show has been picked up, but nonetheless surprisingly tender in tone. Asher’s response to Dougie’s litany of cruelty, up to and including pantsing Asher in front of a crowd, is to smile blankly and say it was all just “messing around.” Dougie has the moral character at least to look taken aback, but having been denied catharsis or punishment he quickly slips into a darker mood. “I was cursed,” he tells Asher after the other man confides in him about Nala’s (Hikmah Warsame) curse, and the life drains from his eyes as he haltingly begins to explain something he clearly doesn’t understand and has never externalized, something as much an excuse for his own failures as it is a black mark impressed on his soul by his conscience. In one of the final scenes of ‘Under the Big Tree’, Dougie sits alone in his car contemplating a piece of pottery he found at the scene of his blackout. What is he projecting on this meaningless object? What does his dark and brooding stare portend? Unselfawareness is a challenging trait to write well, but Fielder and Safdie manage it in spades.