This series is primarily about the death drive, and how the main
characters have to undo their passions relating it. The original sin
that leads to the undoing of their reality is that of the ignoring of
each other's plight in a new york corner store. Alan is distraught his
girlfriend rejected his proposal. Nadia ignores him being visibly
inebriated and distraught after Ferran dismisses her inquiry, and goes
off with Mike instead. This leads to Alan killing himself, and Nadia
being ran over by a taxi (with it presumably being at the same time as
the suicide).
In the interview[2]
with the Teferit Israel Rabbi, John is told that his relationship
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Episode 3 "A Warm Body" : 9:32
with Nadia is a distraction from the Abyss. With this John later
retorts to Nadia's sarcasm[3] around actually
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Episode 3 "A Warm Body" : 14:38
enjoying his company and wanting to be with him — that she is the
Abyss itself. Both of these can be true. I will argue that poor interactions
with and knowledge of the abyss leads to the driving forces of the
interactions with this show. I reckon that the two differing personalities
of Alan and Nadia, constitue Apollonianism and Dionysianism.
Nadia. Nadia is a seasoned drug addict and programmer. One would erroneously
assume that her interactions with the abyss is that of pure embrace. But
this is a false image. Her interactions are to avoid the abyss of her
childhood, as is seen in the later episodes of the season. She does not
cough up a shard of a broken mirror in a café trying to meet John's
daughter, for no reason. It is through her rejection of dealing with her
abyss, that she constructs a dionysian reality to distract herself. One
could say she is a "Dionysian Abyss", but it confuses and draws one away
from the reality there is something being constructed around the abyss.
Alan is more straightforward, he is someone who likes order, tries to
maintain moral piety, and tries to fit in. He constructs a reality of piety
in order to avoid interacting with the abyss. His confrontation with the
reality of Beatrice cheating on him with Mike, and the realization that Mike
is just flat-out skeevy ,man. — makes him come to
understand that it is what it is, that Beatrice is no longer in
love with him, and that it is fine. That there exists evil, and that one
does not need to confront it necessarily.
If one where to assume that Nadia was an abyss (accepting John's
premise), then one could say that she is acting as such by being rude to
Ruth when she is looking for help with the mystical situation, and the
altercations with the paramedics over not relinguishing the krugerrand
necklace, her curtness with Maxine after every resurrection and so forth.
But this is not the case, given that her inner child stalks her at the
end of the season. She is afraid to submit to accepting the nature of her
childhood, submitting to the abyss relating it. She does not want to accept
that she has to let this part of reality to die and to move on. Symbolically,
this is linked with the earlier scene in which her mother is smashing all
the mirrors she can get her hands on in the house.
[Ruth]
Stop it she can hear you. She can hear all of it!
[I.e. Nadia hearing the mirrors being smashed]
[fn4]
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There was also a comical amount of watermelons being bought earlier
and being cut up by Lenora before this. Something Ruth said as to eating
chicken noodle soup set Lenora off on this attempt at destroying mirrors.
Ruth reckons before this that the destruction of mirrors as being
related to trying to avoid being percieved.
[Lenora]
Good, then you can hear this too.
[Ruth]
There is a kid out here!
[Lenora]
You are not her mother!
[Ruth]
Well her mother keeps fucking up!
The abyss that Alan is ignoring is the emptiness within his relationship with
Beatrice, leading to his abyss being co-located within Mike Kershaw.
[To Alan] Nobody chooses me, I am the hole where a choice should be.
-t. Professor Fuck Mike Kershaw
Within the episode "Superiority Complex", Alan tries to confront him multiple
times regarding his infidelity and sleaziness, to the chagrin of everyone else
involved. Alan does not accept that someone can be involved with his dear
Beatrice and also have casual relations with other members of Nadia's 36th
birthday party.
He learns to undo his posessiveness of Beatrice through these interactions,
and learns that any amount of shows of morality does nothing to dissaude
Mike and his behaviour.
One of the attempts at reasoning about the mystical is that Alan reckons
that they have to go about mending fences in order to undo it. This leads to
the attempts at Nadia reconnecting with John and trying to mend her
relationship with him and his daughter. An amazing quote from one of the
interactions related is:
[To Alan]
Sexualising self-hatred is the hallmark of any relationship based on
marital infidelity.
- t. Nadia
And another:
[To Alan]
With this amount of guilt I am surprised you are not a Jew
- t. Nadia (for reference, 3rd generation Hungarian Jewish immigrant)
During this attempts at ameliorating Nadia's relationship with John, Alan
leads himself to death from inebriation after flailing at trying to win
Beatrice over.
Their life resets are not static. One time Nadia died, a man walking down
the street towards her did not have sunglasses, and a Lady's pram
disappeared also. Major events also change, wherein Alan submitted to the
abyss and submitted to the idea that he cannot fix his relationship with
Beatrice — in that he can do nothing bar submit to the reality that
she is gone — he throws the ring into one of the rivers going through
New York City. The ring itself disappears the next morning after he dies
— along with the fish that will kill if another of its kind is in its
tank with it. Hm.
There is also the loss of the mirror after the incident where Nadia tells
Alan off for cleaning her house and taking out photos of Nadia's mother and
placing them over her computer desk. Alan later kills himself over this,
wherein through this realizes how he dies the first time. The mirror could
be related to Nadia's Mother's relationship with mirrors, but I am unsure.
Hence the loss would be a loss of objectivity, a loss of interaction with
another party that reflects your actions back to yourself. I find this to be
dubious however, since this act does not destroy the relationship between
Nadia and Alan and that Alan uses this to see clearer his own life.
These alterations of the timeline on reset, leads to the appeareance of the
apparition of Nadia as a child. Initially, only minor amounts of people had
disappeared from the world, from Nadia only having 1 person trying to enter
the bathroom after her resurrection, to no one going in.
I am the party.
-t. Maxine
Maxine says this after dancing within a reverie smoking a "cocaine"
(actually Ketamine) loaded dart alone in the old yeshiva.
Ultimately, Maxine does not come with Nadia unlike the previous runs
("I can't"). The way this is shot is interesting, with Maxine lending
her hand to Nadia's shoulder, and saying that, and then a small jump cut
back to her dancing by herself and Nadia leaving. I surmise the jump cut
lends itself to coming across that it might not have been Maxine herself
saying it.
Before the appearance of the child version of Nadia, Alan is quoted in
saying the following at their last meet.
[To Nadia]
You are the most selfish person I have ever met. Thank you for changing
my life. Lives are hard to change.
-t. Alan
When Nadia confronts the last appearance of the apparition, the final day plays
out where the two of them are in a world where their consciousnesses are not
shared. They had a chance to rectify the initial sin that lead down this reliving
life they shared.
In the last episode, where their conscioussnesses do not interact within the
same plane of existence, they get to undo the sins of omission and
commission that lead to their demises. Nadia follows and keeps an eye on the
inebriated and distraught Alan, eventually talking with him down from the
ledge. Alan does the same, talking with Nadia at Ferran's corner store,
eventually convincing her that he does know of her in a non-trivial
capacity, with the exact figure of her college fund. Alan then manages to
convince Nadia that going off with Mike is the wrong decision and that
there is something deeper at play here.
Circling back to the main point, the avoiding of the abyss, the punting the
problem until they die from it. They construct a phantasmagoria to distract
from reality, often hiding from a kernel around the abyss. The kernel being
that of the situation in Nadia's childhood, or the history that Alan has with
that of Beatrice. The rest of their affects derive from constructions ontop
of that kernel: Nadia, the dionysianism, and for Alan that of the
apollonianism.