In the Flesh: The Curse s1e01 'Land of Enchantment'

“There’s no such thing as a perfect city,” says Elizabeth Siegel (Emma Stone), donning a dazzling fake smile for the benefit of the empty closet in which she’s recording voiceover for the reality TV show she and her husband Asher (Nathan Fielder) are making for HGTV. Espanola, NM, certainly lives up to that pitch. Blighted by rapidly unfolding gentrification and negligent slumlords with a monopoly on local housing, the city is caught between growth and decay, expansion and oblivion. The newlyweds’ show, the grotesquely-named Flipanthropy, is equal parts self-congratulatory feelgood mythmaking and cynical real estate pump-and-dump scheme, with the Siegels leveraging Elizabeth’s slumlord parents’ fortune to buy up cheap property as they attempt to sell New Mexico on Espanola’s potential, hoping to make a killing when gentrification sweeps over the city. Elizabeth and Asher waver between hard-nosed capitalist pragmatism and mushy sentimentalizing, never really appearing to fully understand what they believe and how it connects to the real world and real people around them. “There are no losers,” Asher repeats mechanically to a reporter as they discuss his hopes and philosophy.

But as in their sex life, which Fielder directs to resemble an alienated form of mutual masturbation more than anything that could be called lovemaking, the Siegels are incapable of real connection with the people they’re constantly trying to convince themselves and others they’re here to help. Eco-neutral housing locals can’t afford, new businesses propping up the sagging local economy while concealing that they’re only in town until the HGTV money runs out, a hundred dollar bill pressed into the hand of a young girl (Hikmah Warsame) trying to make a living by selling cans of Sprite in a hot parking lot and then snatched back once Asher thinks the cameras aren’t looking anymore. It’s this last act of hollow self-aggrandizement which brings the show’s title into play. The girl, Nala, looks Asher dead in the eye and says “I curse you,” with all the gravity of one of Shakespeare’s tyrants breathing his last. Asher is incredulous, then nervous, then slightly frantic, but his dithering costs him a chance to right his wrong.

Scored like a latter-day Eyes Wide Shut and shot with meticulous attention to detail, The Curse, and I mean this in the best possible way, has the feel of a tedious person’s stress dream. What haunts the boring, vacuous people sucking the lifeblood out of America when they close their eyes at night? In what way is their loneliness different from ours? Their fear? Their hopes? Fielder’s show is a petit bourgeois night terror unfolding in slow motion, complete with Corbin Bernsen enthusiastically trying to bond with Asher over their small penises (his good-natured growl of “We’re the cherry tomato boys!” is a contender for line-read of the year) and an invented but drearily plausible trend of “passive housing” in which houses are covered in photovoltaic mirrors to reduce their carbon footprint. Everything is small. Squalid. Dull. It’s brilliant, but what seals the deal is a creepy little fakeout shot toward the episode’s end. We watch through a hotel room peephole as Asher and Elizabeth argue in the hall over whether or not the girl’s curse is something they need to worry about. The show leads us to believe it’s unscrupulous reality TV producer/director Dougie (Benny Safdie) keeping watch, but then the Siegels end their discussion and knock on the opposite door. Dougie lets them in. So who are we in this equation? What’s watching from the (empty?) room across the hall? Whatever the answer, I feel confident The Curse is going to make it worth waiting to find out.