Are we all stuck on a Severed Floor watching a Gilded Age delusion to pass the time?
(repost from Substack: originally published June 5th, 2025)
I used to love TV and movies in a way I don’t anymore. I used to be romantic in a way I am not anymore. I used to believe anything was possible. I do not anymore.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I want more than anything to wake up and feel magical in a way that once coursed through me. It wasn’t hard to wake up with passion and purpose. I believed in something bigger. I want to believe in Hollywood’s ability to make us see and feel our big dreams again.
If you look at major streaming services - there is a consistent pattern reflecting the state of the world. Apple’s top show is Severance, trailed by Ted Lasso. Netflix’s top recurring series is Bridgerton, trailed by Squid Game.
There’s an interesting story playing out here: people’s taste oscillates between an imagined future of horrific, dystopian, social systems, and the escapism of an impossibly idealistic world. Take Bridgerton and Ted Lasso. There is no semblance of reality in these shows. No team is run by a coach who cares more about developing character than a winning line-up. And there is no version of Georgian Britain that resembles a post-racial, feminist, sex-positive, elite - who also bear the fruits of extreme social inequality that is conveniently never really dealt with. The whole show screams, “You can have a luxurious life AND promote social justice without any changes to your spending habits!”
It’s all true crime, and Love Is Blind. A fascination with the grotesque and the mindlessly tantalizing.
It seems that the world exists in these two poles. The most cynical, dystopian version of our future, vs. halcyon days of a world we know is an escape - not a residence. This seems to be the compromise that many have made. The bargain is that if we grind forward with joyless, isolated work-from-home careers, we can make enough money to remove ourselves from as many depressing public spaces as possible and live like our favorite instagram influencer. We’re all trapped in a game, and gross sums of money is the only consolation prize for a burning earth and a life relegated to a virtual existence.
Bridgerton and Ted Lasso are many things. But they do not exist in the same universe as When Harry Met Sally. They are not Moonstruck. I’m not talking about quality (although…), I’m evaluating the world view each gives license to. Yes, Harry and Sally’s courtship journey is romanticized - but the life and love they aspire to is not improbable. They don’t live in Gilded Age mansions where the only real conversation topics are nonsense fights which lead to raucous sex. Sure, they inhabit a prettier world than most have access to, but not a world of obscene wealth most viewers could only ever be visitors in.
The early seasons of Sex And The City have transformed into the surface value world of a New York City that looks more like a set than any avenue I’ve ever walked down. In those early seasons, our four protagonists - and the cinematography of the show itself - reflected a New York that, while wealthy, still bore the grit of a city. In And Just Like That, the park avenue apartments and perfectly soft, even lighting all reflect a world that has so much glitter we only become superficially attached.
Charlotte has a non-binary child and we get to take in the “after school special-esque” lesson we’re meant to learn from that. But, her character has none of the loveable, insufferable, depth that made us actually care when she miscarried and her dreams of bearing a child fell apart. It’s because she felt like an actual human being we might know. Yes, rich. But also, a flawed woman who says the wrong things and then doesn’t get a scripted monologue to repair any damage done later in the episode. She is a deeply-flawed Pollyanna, and we watched her gladly. However, if viewers had originally met the And Just Like That iteration of these characters, we would not have fallen in love with their journey and have so much fealty to them, that we’ll sit through a half baked reboot of it 20 years later just to hang out with sad - borderline AI rendered version - of the characters we once knew.
I’m not pretending the 90s were some magical time where everything was more equal. But it was a time when the media we took in reflected romance and fulfillment within a world we could imagine ourselves taking part in. And now you are either in a Gilded delusion or stuck on the severed floor.
