«Easy»: the complicated lives of ordinary people

Saturday Netflix & chill - Lauriane Pipoz

Easy, the Netflix-produced miniseries, ended last May with an episode that lived up to its intelligent content. Over three seasons, this anthology series told us stories about the inhabitants of hyper-connected Chicago. Focusing on characters with relationship problems, it showed how mundane incidents can take on enormous proportions. Using a deft technique that is rare on streaming based on an ingenious cast. Let's decipher the end of a series that is always clear-sighted on societal issues.

As each episode has its own story - what we call an anthology series - and its own characters (with a few exceptions), some will speak to you more than others. Among the most compelling of these is Jacob Malco (Marc Maron), a narcissistic, egotistical writer and teacher with a sickness for the 2010s - and more specifically, for the '90s. post-#MeToo. This character finds himself in bizarre situations because of his unfortunate tendency to disregard others; writing about his life without regard for the people he describes, he is a pretext for reflecting on what art is and the solitude it generates for the artist.

The antibinge watching

It's hard to talk about one season as an entity, since each episode of the series can be watched independently: they don't present any particular theme. Although he has appeared in every season, Jacob Malco is the perfect character in the latest to raise the issue of the excesses that can occur after the wave. #MeToo. We meet him at the heart of a book-scandal written by one of his former students: accused by her of having sexually harassed her, he risks losing his job and his reputation.

While the writer/director has a certain courage in evoking the negative aspects of such a movement in right-thinking America, the theme itself is not revolutionary. But its treatment is: Joe Swanberg presents neither the characters nor the events in black or white terms. And so we find ourselves sitting around a table with these two characters, both of whom seem to be doing their best to judge who's right and who's wrong. There are no answers: the anecdotes end with open ends, leaving us to reflect on what has been said.

Netflix and think«, that's what we've come up with. Easy. Unfortunately, this is certainly the reason why the series didn't get enough ratings to qualify for a fourth season: while the reviews were often glowing, it didn't find its audience on Netflix. The platform is known for releasing all episodes of a season at the same time. It therefore allows users, becoming addicted to fiction, to watch them all at once. Here, we never find out what happens next: it's up to us to think and imagine!

Chicago Bobos

These unanswered questions are everyday ones: does the other person understand the situation as we do? Is our privacy too exposed? Is technology making us lose touch with reality? This last issue is particularly present, especially in the form of dating applications. It takes on a special dimension in the story of Annie (Kate Micucci), who decides to accept a date from every man she's ever been with. match on Tinder for a month. This anecdote illustrates one of the main drawbacks of technology: we want everything, right away.

This will lead to a series of problems for Annie. Although she'll be feeling very ill, it'll all be harmless discomfort. This is one of the criticisms levelled at the series: although it's set in Chicago, it shows only a rather glamorous side of this extremely dangerous city. Only one episode deals with people in precarious situations, and from a rather undramatic angle.

This criticism can easily be refuted: a mise en scène serves precisely to highlight a part of things, to draw our attention to the message to be conveyed. The screenwriter has deliberately focused on the Chicago bobos to show ordinary problems with which we can easily identify: self-centered and stuck behind their screens, the characters willingly transform themselves into drama queens, They're more or less the same, depending on their personalities, as they deal with the hassles of their hyper-connected daily lives. Just like ours.

Realism and mumblecore«

To add to this realism, the screenwriter chose to adopt the particular technique of the mumblecore. This low-budget practice, inspired by the independent cinema of the 20th^th  century leaves plenty of room for improvisation: the actors of’Easy had only the general outline of the episode and their character's personality on their script. The result is rich, spontaneous dialogue, which makes it all the more easy to identify with the characters, who sometimes stammer or don't pronounce every sentence in the same tone.

This technique also gives the episodes a sometimes scrappy feel. This impression is entirely in keeping with the theme of the series, which is based on the lives in the making of characters desperately trying to find meaning in a world that's moving too fast. A fine example of a carefully crafted series in which form supports substance.

Write to the author: lauriane.pipoz@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Netflix