Emma Stone: "The Curse"

The astonishing series, "The Curse"--which is like a horror-film version of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"--has to do with bodies. It's partly about how embarrassing our bodies are.

In one scene, a producer of reality TV needs a certain subject to weep on camera. She won't comply--she isn't feeling joyful, and in fact she is dying of cancer. But the producer assaults her with a pipet of fake tears, then tries to rub a potion on her cheeks, "for redness."

Later, shockingly, a father-in-law speaks to his "mentee" about the phenomenon of the small penis. "There are beefsteak tomatoes, and there are cherry tomatoes--but once you stick them in a sandwich, they all taste the same...."

Some of the grossest jokes concern skin. A popular show--in the fictional world of "The Curse"--has a masked lover dating various interested women. No one knows what the masked man looks like. It's only on a climactic wedding night that the mask comes off--and we learn that the lothario is a victim of severe (and "global") burn marks. (The show is entitled "Flaming Love," or something like this, and it has a catchy theme song, "The Fire Inside." It's possible to imagine this program airing on Bravo.)

There is more to say about "The Curse," which is making me giddy, but the body stuff alone is already gripping. I think I'd follow Nathan Fielder wherever he wants to go.

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