Episodes – The Reluctant Psychoanalyst Realizes that Sometimes it takes a Brit to help us see ourselves....

The Reluctant Wife has been binge watching a series called Episodes.   Originally available on Showtime, it is now a completed series of five seasons that is available on Netflix.  The premise of the show is that two British comedy writers married to each other, Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Greig), have a successful show in England and the rights to it and their talent are bought up by a Hollywood network to air the series in the US and Matt LeBlanc (Played by Matt LeBlanc) is plunked into that series by the producers and agents and studio heads and powers that be, ruining the show, their marriage, and rudely awakening them to what Hollywood and fame can do to undermine their integrity while simultaneously casting a spell on them so that they become starstruck, transfixed and mired in a world that they hate but can’t seem to pull away from.

Watching this series has felt like eating candy – it tastes good, but it doesn’t fill me up – in fact, I feel a little sick – OK, rotten to the core – after watching it.  I feel as sucked into the series and Sean and Beverly feel sucked into Hollywood.  And that reminds me, oddly, of the feeling of having been sucked into watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was teenager.  Just as I am currently identifying with the good, clean Sean and Beverly from England, I identified then with Brad and Janet – virginal kids from the Midwest who stumble into an alien universe.  Hollywood as the alien universe is filled with beautiful people who are so enamored with themselves and so pampered that they don’t even know where the sheets are kept.  Rocky Horror’s alternate universe included a seemingly seamier assortment of sexually obsessed transsexuals, transvestites and, of course, Meatloaf.  In both cases, I am both repulsed and fascinated.  I want nothing to do with these alternate universes – and I want to live – or wallow – in them and their lurid qualities.

The actors who play Sean and Beverly don’t fit on the screen with any of the others.  Beverly has lines around her eyes – delightful, expressive lines that help make her real and alive – but no other woman character has any lines – their faces are all stretched tight by genes, botox, surgery or some combination.  Sean is just plain goofy looking.  At one point, he is compared to Wallace and Gromit, the British claymation characters, and it is an apt description.  It is not hard to see how this dweeby couple would be star struck.  It is also not hard to see how they would experience themselves as simultaneously superior to these characters whose antics betray levels of shallowness that compete with the Himalayas.  Every time LeBlanc or his pals do something low – they top it with something even more astoundingly low.

So what is the fascination?  With Rocky Horror, it’s clear.  Sex – as messy and dirty and confusing as it is – especially when we start bending genders – is still sex.  We are built to be drawn to it.  Brad and Janet’s prim personas soon drop away and they, like we, revel in what the “creatures of the night” have to offer.  How is it that Matt LeBlanc – the least interesting of the pretty banal group of white kids that hung out in New York together in Friends those many years ago – holds any fascination at all?  I fear that it may have to do with a crazy identification with him.  I think that he is a bit like us.

“Hold on,” you may say, “are you saying that you feel like one of the beautiful people – one the vacuous beautiful people?  You aren’t that pretty, pal.”  True.  And I don’t play basketball well either, but I still dream of being Michael Jordan.  But it’s more than identification based on wishing to be like.  I think we are, in odd ways, quite close to the essence of the Matt LeBlanc that Matt LeBlanc plays in this dramedy.

I am fond of pointing out to anyone who will listen, that we are the most privileged people to have ever walked the earth.  Queen Victoria – Alexander the Great – Louis the XVth – have very little on us.  For one thing, we have indoor plumbing and none of them – with the possible exception of the Queen in her dotage – did.  We can also fly.  In fact, we can get from city to city faster than any of them could, whether by land, sea or air, and in much greater comfort.  And when we get there, we can find accommodations that they could not have imagined – and we don’t have to carry bring along a whole retinue - we can stick a few things in an overnight bag and go.  We live in homes that are warmer – and cooler – than any of them did.  We are living (perhaps not sustainably, but still…) better than anyone in history has ever lived.

So, while Matt LeBlanc, like Queen Victoria, has no idea where his sheets are kept – we (who wash and put away our own sheets, thank you very much), like Matt and the Queen, command more luxury than our grandparents could have imagined.  And what are we doing with that?  How are we using it to serve the greater good?  Do we appreciate it?  Do we wake up in awe each morning that our homes are reasonably clean, dry and temperate?  That we eat fresh food that comes from halfway around the world?  Nah, we complain that the oranges we bought last week are going moldy or that our internet connection is lousy or that we ran into too many red lights on the way into work this morning.

When we see through Sean and Beverly’s eyes what Matt and his ilk are up to, we are, I think, gazing at a fun-house mirror version of ourselves.  We see a pampered group of people who are so concerned about getting their own cut of whatever pie is being cut up that they don’t actually taste the pie – they don't have a clue just how damn good it is.

OK, but it is not just a mirror.  We are, as Hannah Gadsby points out, looking at the people who are responsible for our stories – for the narratives that we carry around inside of us and that will give order and meaning to the lives we lead.  And these people – perhaps oddly reflecting us – are as distracted by things like texts and pettiness as we are.  As a neighbor recently pointed out to me when I was complaining about the political state of affairs while walking the dog – we are living in Rome, not Athens.  We are not the beacon shining bright to gather others in – we are self-absorbed idiots in search of even greater creature comforts - and a good fight at the Coliseum.

As I was writing this piece in my head, I thought to myself – if people have read other posts, they will wonder what has happened to the irrepressible optimist who wrote at least some of them.  The more psychologically minded might wonder if that fellow is depressed.  Well, all is not currently jolly around here – locally, regionally, or nationally – but I think this show and its craving for me (I don’t desire IT - IT wants me to watch and admire it) – evokes an awareness of the finitude of narrative – of the limits of the story about the human condition to lift ourselves above the human condition.  It does not quite have that power.  We are always – in fact, we are always more deeply – human.  We are drawn to sex and creature comforts – and to believing that whatever we are interested in at this very moment is the most interesting thing ever.

Thank goodness Beverly and Sean are lurking around the corner – noticing what we are doing, calling us on it, and writing about it (and the writing on this show is very good).  Perhaps, in addition to being sucked in and drowning in the saccharine sweetness of it all, we can also laugh at ourselves a bit – step back – and take a moment to appreciate that this is a pretty wonderful world that we live in – the one that’s just outside our own craniums.

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