YMMV / The Curse (2023)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Dougie's constant bringing up his wife's death a sign that he genuinely grieves her and has unexplored trauma surrounding his involvement in it, or a cynical attempt to exploit it to garner sympathy from others? A combination of the two? In the case of his grief being genuine, how much of his behavior can be seen as a manifestation of his guilt over it? Additionally, was Dougie's desire to be cursed by Nala an example of self-destructive behavior due to his guilt over his wife's death, or were there other reasons for this behavior?
  • Does Dougie really want to be friends with Asher, or does he only care about manipulating him for the show? Although often he bullies and manipulates Asher, there are also times when he seems truly lonely and wants to spend time with him. Does he actually care about Asher at all, or is he merely a tool to him? After seeing Asher clinging to a tree in the final episode, he immediately had the thought to start filming him for the show, for obvious reasons not believing that Asher's gravity was reversed. However, after watching Asher fall up to his death, he breaks down, genuinely remorseful about the part he played and everything he'd done, revealing that he did care about him some.
  • Is Cara's art a parody of True Art Is Incomprehensible that Asher and Whitney struggle to understand but assign an important meaning to anyway out of a need to fit in, or is it so on the nose that their failure to understand it just highlights how clueless they are? The most obvious example of this is the tipi performance, which uses some very strange props and imagery but could also be interpreted as a critical reimaging of the traditional American "First Thanksgiving." Similarly, does the governor's lack of a reaction indicate that he dislikes the surrealist aspects or that he finds the messaging to be too obviously aimed at white art consumers to appreciate himself?
  • How much self awareness does Whitney have? In many situations, Whitney seems to have no idea that her activism is hurting the town, or at least she is in deep denial. Does she realize deep down the negative effect she has on everyone around her? She also may or may not be aware of when some people are mocking her. For instance, does she not realize that Brett is making fun of her by putting on a stereotypical act, or is she merely going along with it to avoid embarassment? Whitney's reaction to Cara talking about the true meaning of her tipi performance might show some awareness, as she changes the subject due to possibly realizing that she was the type of person the performance was taking aim at.
  • How much guilt does Asher feel? While he is perfectly fine taking advantage of other people at times, there are some moments where he seemingly shows sympathy for others or tries to do something good without gaining anything. Whitney claims that he wouldn't do anything good if not for her influence, yet he seems to show more guilt over his actions than she does, like when he worries about Fernando and his mom when Whitney brushes them off. Do his more sympathetic moments come from an actual good side to him that is often outweighed by his greediness and selfishness, or does he only do good things out of fear of the curse?
  • Why does Whitney smile in the final episodes ending sequence? After giving birth, she seems to no longer care about whether Asher made it to the hospital, despite being aware of his predicament, and seems to be thinking about something. At the same time, she can't possibly know that Asher is dead by the time her baby is delivered, as his death just happened and no one has told her about it yet. Is she thinking about the possibility that he's dead and that she can move on with her life without him? Is she just happy that her baby was born happy and healthy? Or maybe Asher's death was a literal metaphor for him disappearing from her life, and the audience is supposed to be tipped off about it from her expression.
• Critical Dissonance: Despite getting praised by critics and having a dedicated following of A24 and Nathan Fielder fans, general audiences are much less enthusiastic, with only 37% of viewers on Rotten Tomatoes enjoying the show. This can be attributed to its generally slow pace, off-putting content, and unlikable characters.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many viewers interpret Asher as being on the autism spectrum due to being incredibly awkward and for his difficulties understanding social cues.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Some viewers perceive Asher as being less awful than he is portrayed in the show. His character has some sympathetic qualities, and it is very easy to feel bad for him due to his mistreatment by other characters and his difficulties understanding social interaction. Some relate to the struggles he faces and perceive him exclusively as a victim to everyone else, especially Whitney, who is emotionally abusive towards him. However, he is a Jerkass Woobie at best, as he has done many morally bankrupt things such as allowing a casino to take advantage of a woman with a gambling addiction and even laughing at it. Asher is a greedy and vindictive man despite him being easy to feel bad for.
  • Some people see Whitney as sympathetic because they dismiss her mistreatment of Asher as deserved because she doesn't want to be with him, and they either believe she is unintentionally manipulative or take her manipulations at face value, interpreting her as someone who wants to do good but is going about it all wrong rather than someone who is hypocritical and only trying to increase their importance and moral standings in the eyes of others, as well as rebel against their parents through activism, as she is portrayed as in the series, especially in the latter half where her mask begins to crack more and more.
  • Similarly, many hold Dougie in higher regard than Asher and Whitney due to believing that his brutally honest Jerkass persona makes him come across as more authentic as a person than either of them and sympathizing with his guilt and trauma over his wife's death. This ignores the fact that Dougie is routinely shown to be a manipulative bully who constantly misleads others (including his supposed friend Asher) for the sake of making entertaining television.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Brett instantly became beloved by fans after his first appearance in Episode 8 despite only playing a minor role. Viewers found him hilarious for mocking Whitney's stereotypical understanding of Native Americans by putting on the act of a wise Native American shaman who speaks in Tonto Talk and gives long speeches about his ancestors and his people's connection to nature. He is seen as very likable in a show with a very unlikable cast.
• Fourth Wall Myopia: Some viewers have reacted with anger at the firefighters in the finale for not believing Asher when he tells them that his gravity is reversed and for being responsible for his death. However, due to living in a seemingly mundane world, the idea that someone's gravity could be reversed would seem impossible and it would be more logical to assume that Asher is having a mental breakdown. On the other hand, their attempts of helping Asher have received more legitimate critiques, as cutting off the branch he was on rather than putting a harness on him and helping him down the ladder could have seriously hurt him even if he wasn't being affected by a supernatural force.
• Friendly Fandoms: Due to the presence of Nathan Fielder as playing one of the main characters, as well as the co-creator, director, and producer and for all having a lot of Cringe Comedy coming from Nathan's character, the show shares many fans with Nathan's other works Nathan for You and The Rehearsal. The series also all satirize the exploitative nature of reality television.
• He Really Can Act: Some were initially unimpressed by Nathan Fielder's acting skills in the first two episodes, believing that his performance was awkward and stilted. However, the show eventually demonstrates that this is an intended audience reaction. Episode 3 sold many viewers on his performance, as we see Nathan put forth a surprisingly realistic performance of Asher's argument with Whitney. This is one of the first times one of Nathan's characters displays extreme anger, showing that he has a lot more range than initially believed and that he can do a lot more than be awkward and emotionless.
• Informed Wrongness: Asher is framed in Episode 1 as being in the wrong for initially being hesitant to give up his pin to a Hispanic man who wanted to help him get his money out of a tricky ATM, which is the first indication that he is not actually comfortable with the people he claims to want to help. However, in most cases, giving your pin to strangers is a bad idea, regardless of your feelings about their ethnicity, and Asher had no way of knowing the man had good intentions.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Dougie might be a manipulative and selfish person, but he is also very pitiable. He is extremely broken due to his wife dying in a car accident when he was driving drunk, and he shows a lot of loneliness. Asher's disinterest in spending time with him seems to hit him especially hard, even though it may be karma for bullying him when they were younger.
  • Asher is a bad person who is selfish and greedy, but he is also mistreated by everyone around him, including his wife. He has a lot of difficulties understanding other people and fitting in and is seen as a loser by almost every character. It's immediately apparent to everyone that all this makes him a bad fit for reality television, but he's committed to Whitney enough to be her on-screen partner even as she and Dougie work in secret to make the show even less flattering towards him. Whitney constantly belittles and manipulates him despite how much he loves her. Oh, and he may have been cursed and he has a very small penis, the later of which more and more people are being made aware of without his consent. In Episode 9, he breaks down after realizing how unhappy Whitney is in their relationship. He tells her that he's a bad person who is just holding her back and that he used the curse as an excuse to feel better about himself when he is the real problem. Just as things are finally looking up for him in the finale, an unexplained supernatural force, possibly the curse Dougie put on him, reverses his gravity. This first causes him to miss the birth of his child as he gets stuck in a tree, then kills him after falls upwards out of the Earth's atmosphere.
  • Whitney is self-absorbed, treats her husband very poorly, and her activism is both ineffective and clearly just a way to assauge her guilt from growing up rich with slumlord parents. She's also extremely insecure and doesn't seem to have any real friends, essentially paying Cara to be her friend by hiring her as a consultant using her parent's money. After learning that she and Asher need to stay a couple for the show to last, she is basically forced to stay in a relationship she is unhappy in.
  • Cara is a pretentious artist and a sellout to rich white people, yet she also feels degraded for selling out her native identity for money, including basically being paid to be Whitney's friend despite hating her. She tells Whitney that as an indigenous woman, she is tearing away a piece of herself every day. In Episode 9, she is working as a masseuse and it is implied that she's given up on her art career.
• Just Here for Godzilla: As a collaboration between Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie, and Emma Stone, all of whom have their own dedicated fanbases, many viewers are drawn to the show solely by their interest in watching a project involving one of the three. In particular, many Emma Stone fans more used to seeing her play charming characters in other films dropped the show after realizing it was a Cringe Comedy thriller where the characters are deliberately unlikable, while many Nathan Fielder fans treat it as a direct followup to his previous projects and ignore Benny Safdie's role as co-creator entirely.
• Love to Hate: All of the main characters, specifically Whitney, Asher, and Dougie, are awful and hateable people who make their community a worse place. However, it is their terrible qualities that make them such interesting characters for the audience to root against. Many viewers watch the show waiting for them to finally face serious consequences for their actions.
• Memetic Mutation: Cherry tomato boys ^ExplanationPaul's nickname for him and Asher, which comes from them both having small penises and Paul calls small penises cherry tomatoes. Many fans of the series even call themselves "cherry tomato boys".
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Although the series is filled with uncomfortable scenes, one of the most frightening scenes is when Asher accidentally breaks into Nala and Hani's house. The siblings watch as someone starts drilling off the locks on their door before Asher opens it and starts to chase them down the neighborhood. Although it is just a misunderstanding, as Asher didn't realize that anyone lived there and only chased them due to wanting to give them the money he promised them, the scene is extremely uncomfortable and would be terrifying from the perspective of the girls.
  • We get an inverse of the scene in "Down and Dirty." Several of Whitney's ill-concieved attempts to "help the community" lead to an epidemic of rich white kids coming in from out of town to shoplift. Fernando and several other armed men, all armed with multiple guns, show up outside Whitney and Asher's house to protest, a scenario that neither are prepared for.
  • Whitney's treatment of Asher can be disturbing to those who have dealt with an abusive partner, as some have described her as a realistic portrayal of an abuser.
  • Abshir's chiropractor appointment is legitimately horrifying. It is portrayed like a sexual assault, with Abshir begging the chiropractor to stop because of the extreme pain he's causing him, which he ignores and continues hurting him. The chiropractor completely ignores Abshir's wishes and performs the painful procedure on him against his will.
  • Everything in the finale after Asher wakes up to find that gravity has reversed for just him, leading him to first get stuck on the ceiling, then on a tree when he tries to go outside. As he's stuck in the tree he begs for assistance from the fire department and Dougie, trying helplessly to explain the situation while no one believes him. They eventually, to Asher's horror, cut the branch off, causing him to fall upwards into outer space and die. It's an impossible situation and it makes for an extremely tense final episode.
• No Yay:
  • Dougie is interested in Whitney and often flirts with him, and Whitney never tries to shoot down his flirtations. Dougie comes across as a creep stroking the ego of an Attention Whore.
  • When visiting the house of an art collecting military contractor, Whitney flirts with a creepy man implied to be a cult leader who even makes jokes about rape.
• Paranoia Fuel: The way many of the scenes are shot can be rather creepy, due to being filmed like someone is watching the characters. This helps to increase the show's uncomfortable environment.
• Play-Along Meme: One trailer for the show featured an almost exact reenactment of an awkward intro of a trailer for the film Anyone but You, as both works were released at about the same time. Despite obviously being a copy of the trailer to make fun of its stilted dialogue and performance, Nathan Fielder jokingly accused the film's director of stealing it from the show, which the director jokingly apologized for. Fans have gone along with this joke and reacted with mock anger over Anyone but You stealing this scene.
• Signature Scene: Asher getting stuck in a tree and eventually falling into outer space after his gravity is reversed in the finale took social media by storm due to how shocking, tense, and overall bizarre it was.
• Squick: Plenty of scenes in this show. We see Asher’s micro penis more than once. Asher eats one of the cherry tomatoes Whitney’s father pissed on to help grow. Also, the sex scene between Whitney and Asher in episode 1 was probably decidedly unsexy.
• The Woobie: Abshir and his family are nice people, yet they have been taken advantage of by others and are almost evicted from their house by Asher until he changes his mind out of guilt. Despite paying rent, their previous landlord lost the house due to tax fraud, thus making them legally squatters despite them doing nothing wrong. They are regular people hurt and exploited by a corrupt system and are only saved by the sudden whims of a virtue signaling couple. Nala is also bullied by her classmates for being black and is disturbed by Asher's suggestions that she actually can place curses on people.