Emma Stone & Nathan Fielder’s Forgotten TV Series Is Even Weirder Than You Remember

Right now, everyone is talking about Nathan Fielder and for good reason. The filmmaker, comedian, and actor has made waves for his work on the documentary You Can See Everything, where he follows disgraced businesswoman Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks leading up to her prison sentence. The film has gained widespread acclaim and is something that everyone needs to see. For those who want more of Nathan Fielder and his signature style, there are plenty of options. His shows Nathan for You and The Rehearsal are some of the wildest and most surreal projects to ever air on television.

Fielder is known for his deadpan persona, use of satire, and the awkward situations he tends to put himself in. It makes for hilarious, yet also somewhat uncomfortable viewing, but it’s what you sign up for when you watch one of his projects. One of his best pieces of work saw him star alongside two-time Academy Award winner Emma Stone for the Showtime original series The Curse. The show had a simple setup on the surface, but anyone who knows Nathan Fielder understood to go in and expect something off the wall. What they got was a show that’s even stranger than you could likely ever imagine.

The Curse Is Classic Nathan Fielder

The premise of The Curse follows Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder as Whitney and Asher Siegel, a married couple who host an HGTV show about the passive homes they remodel and sell. We see them deal with life as they handle producing the show, problems that crop up with the homes, and trying to conceive their first child. Things take a wild turn early when Asher gives a young girl a $100 bill for B-roll footage, only to take it back once the cameras stop rolling. The little girl proceeds to put a “curse” on him and even though she later “lifts” it, things begin to spiral for the couple.

Without getting into too much detail about what happens to Asher and Whitney, The Curse is everything you’ve come to expect from Nathan Fielder in terms of its style. That makes sense since, along with starring, Fielder directed most episodes and wrote each installment with co-star Benny Safdie. You are never really comfortable watching these characters. Every interaction they have feels both tense and awkward, even when they’re attempting to show each other affection. It’s also a biting satire on the forced optimism of home renovation shows, the white savior trope, performative social media culture, and more.

The Finale Of The Curse Is One Of The Wildest Things You’ll Ever See

The entirety of The Curse is a strange journey. The series is often shot through a voyeuristic lens, making the audience feel as if they’re peering into aspects of life they shouldn’t be privy to, which is especially unsettling as Asher and Whitney fight. The combination of Safdie’s high-stress style with Fielder’s penchant for cringe social awkwardness makes every scene feel a bit slimy and odd. From Asher getting upset at a focus group’s negative views on him to a very uncomfortable conversation about a piece of art deemed racist, you never know what you’re going to get in each episode.

It all comes to a head in a finale that is easily one of the weirdest things in TV history. The series jumps a few months in time to show that Whitney is about to give birth, the marriage between her and Asher seems better, and their show was picked up for a second season. However, one morning Asher wakes up and is stuck to the ceiling as if gravity has reversed for him. The rest of the episode deals with this surreal and absurd situation as we have no idea what’s causing this.

The titular curse could be what caused it, but we’re never explicitly told that. Things get progressively more chaotic as Asher attempts to get to the floor but can’t, with the episode playing with all sorts of odd physics. To make matters worse, Whitney goes into labor and is taken to the hospital, while Asher manages to make it outside, where he is sucked up into a tree that he clings to for dear life. As Whitney gives birth, firefighters arrive and believe Asher is simply stuck in a tree. Despite his pleas to not cut the branch he’s on, they do and he’s immediately sucked upwards, where he dies floating in space.

Despite the weirdness of the entire series, the finale, “Green Queen”, takes it several steps further. It turns The Curse from a show about implied supernatural elements into something that seems to verify that it’s the case. The whole thing comes from out of nowhere and throws you for a loop, making this one of the strangest projects from Nathan Fielder and Emma STone, which is saying something.

Did you see The Curse? If so, let us know your thoughts on it in the comments section.

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