u/MonkeyMeatSteve

I started watching this show because I was really interested in a thorough dissection on class inequities through the lens of addiction. I assumed that the pedagogical use of comedy in the first episode was a commentary on how the plight of oppressed minorities is treated as a joke by everyday society.

Having watched all four episodes several times im starting to think this might just be a vehicle for fart and sex jokes.

Gasp.

Kinda started thinking about this in another thread and thought it would be a fun discussion. The fun thing about this character is how Curry designs him to be sympathetic before flipping the table and making you feel bad for sympathizing with him. Like in the opening scene you feel for him as he pours his heart out to the waitress and then you feel for him when he gets home and his cat is dead.

The cat thing kinda speaks to future flaws though, in that he left oxy out where the cat could get ahold of it. There's no way it would have gotten them if the lid was on... so yeah, Bear was lazy and killed his cat. Strike 1 (but really on super obvious in hindsight).

Then Nikki calls him and you see them interact and he goes out even though he doesnt want to... Curry uses things that happen to everyone here to make him feel relatable. Agonizing over a gift purchase, getting constantly interrupted when trying to talk to somebody, etc... he's getting you ready for the twist.

I think the biggest red flag for his character though comes when he makes his wish. It shows how fundamentally selfish he is. Obviously he doesnt think its real here but i think it still speaks to his character. He doesnt wish to fix himself in a way to achieve his goal, he wishes to make someone else change FOR him.

Say he wished for the confidence to pursue Nikki? Totally different outcome, maybe she would have rejected him, but it wouldn't have mattered, he would have had something to move past that. He would have been LESS broken. He didnt wish to fix himself though. He wished to BREAK Nikki. So while the movie slowly peels back his layers to show the rot underneath, i think this is the scene that reveals that the rot is all the way to his core.

My wife had a funny point when we were talking about this though. She said that if he had wished for confidence the movie would have ended with him getting arrested in Miami wearing a blouse.