In the dark ages, imagine dramatic comedies like this one. barry And Bear collecting trophy crates, there’s a funny comedy on tv. So funny. Laughs per minute, sniper-sharp dialogue and eerie physical comedy that tests the limit of how many moments in an episode deserve to be remembered.
that series The other two, its third season is currently airing on HBO Max. Two siblings in their thirties, Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke), embody the highly relatable contradiction of not only working desperately to succeed, but also feeling entitled to that success. Their journey to fame is an admirable effort and an ensuing exercise of incessant humiliation—especially when they have to reckon with the fame that their younger brothers (Case Walker’s Chase) and their mother (Molly Shannon’s Pat) have achieved, apparently without effort. .
Since it premiered on Comedy Central in 2019 before moving on to HBO Max for Season 2, The other two It has been hailed as a cult-favorite comedy, featuring a rare combination of shrewd commentary and laugh-out-loud jokes. It’s a stark satire of show business and a funny anvil that turns the media into a humiliated puddle. He is unapologetically frank and often brutal in describing the oppression that the gay community exerts on one another. And there are deep points of mismatch between what we think can make us happy and the emptiness we feel when we achieve that goal.
That’s all to say The other two He has had fans since Season 1. This season, however, their love for the show seems to have been palpably rabid. I extracted calling out on social media For viewers to tell me via Direct Message about Season 3 that elevates the show to a new level of excellence.
Installations: Greg Endries/HBO Max
Many hailed the righteousness of his absurdity; its subtle realism while presenting gay relationships, while still being funny; how to rival 30 Rock in the frequency of jokes; how brutality is tempered by the sweetness of family; how deeply silly as well as traumatic; and how relatable the characters’ respective crap is.
“It bites a lot but it never feels like it’s punching,” said one fan. How did someone praise The other two It shows “the Faustian agreement that became famous, both reluctantly and at all costs.” Another simply replied: “Molly Shannon.” Fair.
Another response came from an actor who said that a scene in a recent episode where Cary auditioned for a sitcom character and was transformed from female to gay man without being rewritten (“Still working!”) actually happened. It happened to him while he was studying for the CW pilot. And in another response, she said, “My best friend is currently single and looking for someone nice and sweet and mostly mature. If you’re a gentleman over 30, I think the two of you might be a match. Okay, I get that someone can be a bot.
The third and fourth episodes of the show, which premiered on Thursday, are particularly noisy. In Episode 3, Brooke calculates her decision to leave the industry while attending a party at Ellen DeGeneres’ house where she won’t be “so people can have fun”. Cary has the weird auditions mentioned above.
In episode 4, there’s a parody placenville, among all the movies used to comment on how unattractive and pretentious the actors can be on sets. This pleasantville The scenes are an exciting new backdrop for the show – there are so many special effects! — and yet familiar: a bizarre distillation of a flaw that we all know in the entertainment industry but would never think to show in such a way.
With The other two It seems we have a moment, with the show’s creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider recounting the season so far and why it has particularly resonated.
After watching the premiere, I wondered: Was there anything about filming in COVID that you needed to throw your boobs on?
Schneider: No, this is a fictional show. I don’t know what you’re talking about. [Laughs]
Was it comforting to choose certain parts of the COVID-era production to talk about? The scene where Cary and Beanie Feldstein try to have lunch together and are shouted at by the COVID monitor especially seemed taken from real experiences.
Kelly: Yes, [we were] shooting a full-on comedy show, trying to be a riot of laughter, and then eating quietly at lunch, all on the floor and in small cupboards, in medical suits – and then having to do comedy. It was wild.
Installations: Greg Endries/HBO Max
Brooke’s sentence about nurses knocked me down: “We argued for about two weeks… It’s 2023. Enough of the nurses!” Then we learn that Lance is a nurse. What inspired these jokes?
Schneider: At the end of last season, we made a joke about Cary’s movie, which will start shooting on the day everything shuts down in March 2020. So we wrote that we needed to address the pandemic, but we didn’t. I don’t want to live in a pandemic. It was like we’d see how this would affect our characters.
Cary’s [pandemic connection] It is open. Then we were talking about Brooke and we thought that the perfect hurdle that her perfect boyfriend now has his whole life focused on service and how that would affect him and how he felt about his job – if he’s doing enough and if he’s doing whatever. what he does is meaningful, what he does is meaningful.
Kelly: We didn’t want the pandemic to be strictly part of the show, but to be the quietest springboard for both of their stories. for so [Cary’s experience with] pull night nurse Not being exactly what he thought it was is kind of a testament to his entire experience this season. “Is acting the way I think it is? Getting what I want is what I think will happen?
And then for Brooke, this change in Lance made her reassess, “Should I change? Should I have an awakening? Am I bad because I don’t want to change my life and find something meaningful? Wasn’t that my ‘meaningful’ version of me?”
I’m guessing a bit here, but I remember it felt silly to be the one writing about it during the pandemic. real housewivesWhile there are people who are doing meaningful, life-saving things, I understand why Brooke wondered what would happen if she left the industry. Is this a self-doubt that you both are working on in this story?
Kelly: Yes. I mean, none of us on this Zoom became nurses, did we?
Schneider: I think we’ve all felt signs of that during the pandemic, so we thought Brooke was the perfect character for us to explore that.
Kelly: We also wanted it to hopefully not be black and white. Lance isn’t right because he’s a nurse – “Lance is good because nurses are good and what Brooke does is bad.” We wanted him to be a little confused.
Schneider: We thought we should raise this question in Season 3 of our comedy show: What makes a life meaningful? [Bursts out laughing]
Kelly: I requested this for the poster. “What makes a life meaningful?” But they said no. [Laughs]
Installations: Greg Endries/HBO Max
In these early episodes, there’s a big story about Chase turning 18 and his cowardly sexualization right after. Was it something fun to explore?
Kelly: That’s another reason why we skipped three years. We were like, we just gotta make Chase an adult. [Case Walker] she’s 20 in real life now, so we can’t pretend to be 14 anymore. He gave us a different wheelhouse to play and different jokes to play.
Were there any particular celebrity coming-of-age stories about sexualization that you mentioned? The armpit story looks very special.
Kelly: We were talking about armpit photos in the writers room. Magazine covers had something like this. I remember Justin Timberlake had one. We were looking for the dumbest way to sexualize it. We like to zoom in on something to the left of center and so we thought it was funny that it was an armpit photo and then combined it with Brooke having to do something silly and pointless for her job.
We wanted to talk about sexualizing his character and the industry sexualizing him without actually feeling like we were doing it, so we loved the idea of choosing a silly joke. We never show your pit!
Schneider: Our original idea of turning 18 was that for her to turn 18 she had to be in a bunker 30 miles below ground, because otherwise she would have been smashed by teenage girls. I remember the countdown clocks for the Olsens to turn 18.
The show looks a lot hornier this season. I saw more of Drew Tarver’s body in the first four episodes than in previous seasons combined, and there’s a very hot sex scene with Brooke and Lance. Was this intentional?
Schneider: Cary hasn’t been as embracing about her sexuality as she used to be for the past few seasons and is now more at peace with herself. Brooke and Lance have separated, so for the first time they are comfortable with both their sexuality and their people. not intentional [it’s just that] The story took us there.
let’s talk pleasantville parody. How did you come up with the idea to use this movie as a metaphor for Cary’s unsatisfying experience as an actor on the set of a fictional show called? Emily Denied?
Schneider: we are excited [doing] something completely different like a challenge, something more ambitious. We’ve never worked on such a huge set before. We’ve never done VFX like this before. So it was exciting to have such a challenge. We were like, “This is going to be fun,” as we wrote it, though. And then we were doing this and we were like, “What did we do?”
Kelly: Our production did an incredible job. Even when watching fiction, Dana Delaney [who plays the star of Emily Overruled] and all the actors in the series Emily Denied The world is so good. It was very difficult to choose people who played smooth and felt like they were procedural, but also had a nice agility to them. They exaggerate a bit, but they don’t feel like a joke. Our casting directors have found some great actors. It’s fun to watch because it feels like every department is working really well.
Installations: Greg Endries/HBO Max
From where pleasantville?
Kelly: It turned out the way most of our ideas came out, so we know the general story of the season. We know the general drama of the season. And then, episodically, we know what we want each character’s will, struggle, or goal to be. So we really wanted Cary to feel like, “Okay, I got my first big job after that.” night nurse. That’s it, baby! night nurse wretched night nurse It was weird Now, here we go. This is a reset.” But let him be disappointed again and say, “Why isn’t it for me to play everything in the world? Why is this experience not transcendent?”
We were finding fun, silly, silly ways to tell this story and we stumbled upon it. pleasantville– that’s the idea of this nine-to-five, solemn courtroom drama, where everything is just “Hit your mark baby!” He doesn’t want to hit his mark. He wants to be an actor in something like Blue Valentinewhere the cast lives together in a house for a year and celebrates Christmas together and they are always in character and the camera follows them on the road and there are no permits and they are just raw.
Right. He seeks the experience nominated for an Indie Spirit Award.
Kelly: “Sorry, I thought every moment of acting was going to be like this. Are you telling me to stand here and say my line and go home? This is nothing.” We liked the juxtaposition of what she imagined life would be like as an artist and what happened next, she.
Installations: Greg Endries/HBO Max
How was Dana Delany chosen to play the Joan Allen type character? pleasantville?
Schneider: Oh my god, he was perfect. We asked our casting directors, “Who do you think would be the game for this really crazy thing?” The first thing we shot was the speaking scene. [where her character orgasms in a crowded bar]. So, “Hello, nice to meet you. Would you orgasm over the idea of directing please?” Very crazy. They threw it at him and he fell to the ground she. We are big fans of it.
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