This month, viewers are watching HBO to see what a power-hungry family of morally questionable white people plans and plots in the media world in New York City. Helicopters fly these characters through their screening rooms to their Long Island mansions. Some of the most exciting scenes take place at flamboyant garden parties or around company boardroom tables. The head of the family, a billionaire media mogul who loves his kids, to be honest, they Negative serious people
To forget Subrogation; I’m talking about The other twoThe hilarious HBO comedy returning this month for an amazing third season.
No other program on air now satirizes this much. The other two. Not only has the series been the most screaming representation of gay culture on television, it has also quietly become the most original, poignant exploration (and takedown) of the current state of the media, Hollywood, and the entertainment industry at large.
This season, the hysterical plot twists Disney and Hallmark for self-congratulatory morsels of LGBTQ representation (a holiday movie is simply called “Christmas But With Gay People”) is the boring, meaningless content that pops up on most lifestyle programs (including includes. fake TV shows “Drape Disaster with Maria Menounos” and “Junk Drawer Rehab with David Archuleta”) and the cold-blooded commercialization of a young pop star’s sexual appeal (i.e. armpit).
At one point in the first episode of the season, The other two even biting the hand that fed it, mocking the notoriously flawed HBO Max app. In another part, it makes two While making jokes at the expense of Ellen DeGeneres’ reputation, most shows probably wouldn’t be brave enough to do so. One. “Ellen is throwing herself a big birthday party and has agreed not to go for people’s fun,” says recording industry executive Shuli (Wanda Sykes). Wild.
But it’s not just industry jokes or big-name parodies; the satire of the show also fades. The other two It nails the feelings of existential crisis that can come with working in an industry where success is never entirely dependent on hard work or talent, and where the mere prospect of catching a break can lead you to act in embarrassingly embarrassing ways.
That’s because instead of giving us a top-down view of the Roy family playing chess with all the news networks and movie studios, The other two The pawns enter muddy trenches as they fight for their lives in the shitty, soul-crushing reality of show business.
A world where friends compete against each other for scraps of lazily rewritten tracks from straight female to gay male characters. A world you can willingly accept to partner with BrooklynBurito.com (“The rolling rock The number of websites about burritos in Brooklyn in exchange for a bit of publicity that might help your career”).
Indeed, if the reality of American politics is closer to the truth, buzz than it is west wingthen the media industry is much more The other two than it is Subrogation.
It would be appropriate to talk about the media and entertainment sectors together here because, The other two knows, the symbiosis between the two means that one cannot exist without the other. Publicity is the lifeblood that unites and empowers them, creating a human centipede of never-ending content. (Trust my word, I used to guest host some of the popcorn social media shows The other two Parodies with tracks like “The Gay Minute” and “Bagel Bites TV”).
“I’ve been deformed every morning from the industry,” says guest star Kate Berlant, who has since resurrected her iconic character from Season 1, who has had a spiritual awakening during the pandemic. “Why? What did he give me? He just took it. He just took it. He just takes it.”
At this point in the series, siblings Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke Dubek (Heléne York) have each enjoyed a grain of career success, but it has left them more empty and lost than ever before.
It seems like Cary is now shifting into the relevant field of mental health, especially as Cary is completely consumed by the need to take more pressure or reserve another role. It’s obviously not about his art, but about the validation that art brings him, as well as the chance to measure himself against his friends.
At the premiere, we see him working almost pathologically to get his new movie shown—not so that their loved ones can watch his art, but so that they can watch it. to them watch it. When this sugary burst of attention finally ends, she sits quietly in her dark bedroom, scrolling through Twitter to mention her name. She then posts about the movie on Instagram so often that her friends shut her up and her mother intervenes.
“No part of making it was what I thought it was,” Cary says of the movie, “but I thought I’d at least watch people watch it when it came out and then hear how good it was. They would even say it.”
Cary’s addiction then strains her relationship with her best friend Curtis (fortunately, the brilliant Brandon Scott Jones, who has a much bigger role this season), and the two compete for the same roles. That’s because Cary understands another dark quirk of show business and its limited opportunities: your success can often come at the expense of my failure.
Brooke has also been distorted by the industry, but at least she has more self-awareness than her brother to see how unfulfilling her career as a talent manager has been after the pandemic. After traveling across the country to safely deliver a photo of her younger brother/pop star Chase Dreams (Case Walker) under her arm for a magazine cover, she told her colleague Streeter (Ken Marino), “Neither of us did anything. not,” he says. “It’s nothing we do!”
And as Dubek chieftain Pat (Molly Shannon) climbs to the extremes of show business and becomes an Oprah-style entertainment and lifestyle mogul, that comes at a heavy price. She is effectively held captive by a security team at her mansion, to deal with a population and industry that constantly demands her. She may be one of the most powerful people in the culture, she is, but she is effectively taken away from her.
“I feel like I can’t be in the world anymore,” Pat cries in one of the last episodes of the season. “It’s like I ruined my life.”
He might have. If The other twoIn its first season, the Dubek family suddenly entered the show business industry, and in its second season, he saw them running around to take advantage of their opportunities.
It was stripped of glamor (which only some enjoy) and art (as we are constantly reminded of). The other twoalways comes after profit), there is a surprisingly empty void at the center of the entertainment industry.
If you’re lucky like Dubeks, you have family and friends who will add meaning to your life, keep you steady, and let you know when your social media presence becomes unbearable.
After all, what could this be The other two The truest thing about show business: at the end of the day, this is business like any other. If you seek satisfaction through work, you will never be satisfied. Your job is none of your business; loved ones do.
So the cast of the movie Emily DeniedThe tedious legal procedure that Cary guest-starred in episode four might actually have settled that for the best. Of course, this is a low-risk, low-effort business and can deprive you of any colorful creative challenge. But hey, as they’ll all cheerfully tell you: they’re out until 5.
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