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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 6

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 6 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 06

There is no fade to black happy ending moment with depression. You keep carrying on, hoping things get better, but with no guarantees. Shun’s story about discovering The Grubbs Family books reflects the one thing that can bolster a person suffering in seemingly unending depression: This is how the world can be, and there are others who feel like you, you are not alone. All we can do in the end is be there for each other, making sure that even someone a million miles away knows you are there for them and you feel the way do as well.

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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 5

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 5 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

Flowers

Sadness is a painful emotion to express the full experience of to others. Each of our encounters with deep sadness and depression is profoundly personal that it inhibits us from letting others know. These emotions seem to exist outside known language which is what leads to people sound intelligible or merely sobbing, their only avenue of release. Series creator Will Sharpe understands the immutable incoherence of sadness and manages to express his understandings on this state of being with honest humor. In this penultimate episode, characters either reach an explosive pinnacle or find themselves strangled by their condition and unable to speak. Sharpe has stated that Flowers is “comedy with mental illness,” a description that at first may sound merely witty but after you view the series is the very core of everything that happens.

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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 4

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 4 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 04

Maurice has his publishing contract terminated meaning the Grubbs Family books are finished. This sends him spiraling into an even deeper depression. Deborah feels immense guilt over sleeping with Barry, the builder. The two refuse to communicate. Barry also feels guilt and confesses what happened to Maurice who honestly is too caught up in his internal struggle and depression. Amy has her first date with Abigail and after an awkward start things suddenly go entirely right, that is until Donald shows up with a camera. Maurice and Deborah accept a dinner invite from Barbara and Steve, who have mended their marriage. This ends up being a breaking point where Maurice can’t take pretending things are fine any longer and Deborah joins him in breaking.

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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 3

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 3 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers amy bed

Deborah has enlisted the builders to help her clear out and burn much of Nana Flowers’ things. Maurice has the pressure put on him by his editors to produce a new Grubbs Family book. Deborah has the family plant sees, and Nana’s ashes in the garden as a way to “heal” them but Amy questions why she keeps telling people lies about how her grandmother died. Maurice allows Deborah to spread his lie of Nana’s attempted suicide while keeping Shun his only confidante. Deborah’s sister Viv comes to visit, fresh off a divorce. George slinks around in an attempt to bed Deborah but ends up with Viv instead. Maurice comes close to telling his wife the truth but balks at the last moment.

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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 2

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 2 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers s01e02

Nana Flowers is rushed to the emergency room in the wake of the disastrous anniversary party. A romantic rivalry is stoked over Deborah by the skeevy George and the earnest Barry the builder. Amy is having difficulty processing Nana’s imminent death after the doctors deliver a troubling prognosis. Abigail comes to comfort Amy, but Donald sees it as an opportunity to try to seduce their neighbor. Looming in the background of all this drama is Maurice who is having difficulty explaining just how Nana injured himself. He enlists Shun to dispose of his noose so that his attempted suicide will be kept a secret. However, young Hugo draws something that will force Maurice to open up about what happened.

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PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 1

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 1 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 01

Maurice Flowers is a depressed children’s author living in a quaint country cottage with his family. A few months ago, after his depression began, Maurice entered into an open relationship with his wife, Deborah. Deborah is awkwardly attempting to extend herself and explore this option given to her but is feigning enthusiasm. Their twins, Donald and Amy, are overly ambitious grown children who bicker constantly and are sunk into their obsessions of craft (inventing and music, respectively) but share a mutual love for their neighbor Abigail. Rounding out the Flowers household are Maurice’s aged mother and Shun, a young Japanese artist who illustrates Maurice’s books.

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Movie Review – In the Loop

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In the Loop (2009)
Written by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, & Tony Roche
Directed by Armando Iannucci

in the loop

In the UK Minister for International Development Simon Forster makes an off the cuff remark that “war is unforeseeable” when questioned during a radio interview about the Middle East. This does not mesh with the company line coming out of Downing Street and the Prime Minister’s communications head Malcolm Tucker is more than happy to ream Forster out over this. Toby is new to Forster’s staff and, to make a good impression, he gets a spot in a meeting between the UK’s foreign office and a US delegation from the state department. This leads to another verbal flub from Forster and Tucker’s eventual solution to send him to Washington D.C. on a “fact-finding” mission. Problems snowball until all parties, those for and against war end up in a race to head each other off.

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