№ 702. Six Feet Under

The pandemic and its disruptions are finally beginning to recede in the United States, but the vast scale of collective loss the country endured — and that some areas continue to endure — is hard to fathom. “Dying and grieving and losing and surviving are all experiences that we as a culture, as a people, as humanity, are grappling with in such an unrelenting way right now,” Robin said. “It feels like that aspect of the show, while always relevant, has become even more universally so.”

We have been shaken by the presence of death, but life still beckons to us, asking us to find a way to carry on. Ball sees the show as communicating a simple but profound message that remains as relevant now as ever. “The thing is, we die!” he said. “So deal with it, and live your life.”

“Don’t hold yourself back from fear,” he added. “Because you’re going to die anyway.”

№ 695. Movies Killed the Radio Star

 

 

    The movies are, once again, not dead. Art forms are more like viruses than animal species: They don’t become extinct; they mutate, recombine, go dormant and spread out again in new, sometimes unrecognizable ways, which carry memories of older selves encoded in their DNA. 

№ 424. The Crown

What, exactly, is the point of the royal family? Why, in a time of boisterous populism and expanding social consciousness, do the British continue to tolerate this emblem of entitlement and reaction? No one seems to know the answer, least of all the royals themselves, and herein lies the fundamental irony of Morgan’s show, which returns Nov. 17 for a third season. Constitutionally, the role of the monarch is to keep his or her mouth shut, to abjure what Elizabeth, in “The Queen,” calls “the sheer joy of being partial.” This sphinxlike silence is, in turn, conducive to a second, more intangible function: to serve as a conduit for mass emotion, a projection screen for national yearning or catharsis. In other words, the royals are celebrities. For about a thousand years, they were the only celebrities. As that began to change, around the midpoint of the last century, the House of Windsor found itself fumbling for a fresh raison d’être.