We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for an aside on summer shows to stream (because my brain needs breaks).
I found myself obsessing over two new shows this year, “Daisy Jones and the Six” and “The Idol,”1 both of which, I realized in retrospect, have a common thread: the creative process.
Each series shows how people become inspired and/or motivated to produce work and how they enter into their creative space. I think about these things all the time, so it was satisfying to watch that unfold, as if a window into someone else’s creative process.
While they both have compelling storylines and characters that could stand on their own, it’s these depths of detail into producing art that show us how human—and individual—it is to make art; how it is, at its essence, our expression of self; and how two or more people can fuel one another or complement one another in such as way as to produce something that is more than the sum of its parts, something that contains the essence of everyone involved.
In “The Idol,” we see how Tedros2 (The Weeknd) pushes celebrity pop star Jocelyn (Rose Lily Depp) to her next level through pain, vulnerability, and intimacy. It makes sense; the creative process is intimate. To me, it feels like the closest we can get to ourselves, and it acts as an exploratory, therapeutic excavation of whatever is going on inside us. Self-expression should be mandatory for our mental health.
“Daisy Jones and the Six” follows a similar creative process in that a man and woman come together to bring out in each other what other people—including themselves—have not been able to bring out.
And both have great soundtracks.
I soon noticed this “creative process” theme runs through a lot of my favorite shows. “Mad Men” (advertising), “Emily in Paris” (marketing and branding), even “Sex and the City” stars a columnist who, in each episode, learns from her (and her friends’) mistakes and shares those thoughts with the wider world by writing them all down. “Stranger Things,” not so much, but I’ll definitely be carving out time to watch Season 5 when it drops.
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As it turns out, a lot of people hate this show … mostly because it was “too dark” and “too graphic sexually.” Like, look around America. How is this shocking in 2023?
Technically Tedros Tedros but officially Mauricio Costello Jackson. A moment between Destiny and Chaim:
“His name is Mauricio Costello Jackson.”
“What is he, Italian?”
“Nahhh, he’s not Italian … he’s got ghetto ass parents that thought that was suave or some shit.”
The Idol was entertaining. It got a bad rap.