Exit the Glass Cube
How long can we endure the revolving apocalypse?
The Oxford Dictionary describes nostalgia: “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. It is often described as a complex emotional state when you feel a mix of pleasure and slight sadness.” I wondered whether this is what I felt when searching for old television shows. Was it curiosity about whether I would feel the same way as when I watched the show originally? A dissatisfaction with the present? A little bit of both, including the overwhelming acedia that’s descended upon me.
Recently, I began to watch (for the first time) the tv show, Californication, which ran for seven seasons from 2007 to 2014. It features David Duchovny as Hank Moody, a New York writer, living in Los Angeles, caught in a series of life events made up of sex, alcohol, writer’s block, and loathing for L.A. Sex is treated more humorously than erotically, as it should—Hank’s promiscuity is absurd. He’s a man who stands in his own way, if he only knew what that way even is.
Another show with a similar ethos (minus the sex addiction) is a brilliantly-written and executed, Enlightened (2011-2013). It stars Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe, a woman who’s always on the edge of another nervous breakdown but amusingly and naively trying to get her life in order by a way of New Age/Buddhist retreats, mantras, and crazy oscillations between enlightenment and anger.