The monologues proceed apace in Flanagan’s newest (and sure ultimate) sequence for Netflix: The Fall of the Home of Usher. Whereas the eight episodes of this present current a pleasantly nasty fashionable interpretation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in addition they characteristic characters ceaselessly droning on about one factor or one other. Monologues in Usher embody a number of tortured backstories, an anecdote a few automobile, and even a meditation on how the traditional Greeks began experiments on animals in 4th century BCE. They’re all fairly boring. Save for one.
There’s one monologue in The Fall of the Home of Usher that’s so compelling it reminds you of why Flanagan loves to jot down them for his actors within the first place. The second comes halfway by way of episode 3 “Homicide within the Rue Morgue,” wherein C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) alludes to the cliche of “making lemonade out of lemons.” His dialog companion, the evil Pharma CEO Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) has quite a bit to say about that. The complete monologue follows, as transcribed by person “bfeebabes” on Reddit:
“When life fingers you lemons, make lemonade? No. First you roll out a multi-media marketing campaign to persuade individuals lemons are extremely scarce, which solely works in the event you stockpile lemons, management the provision, then a media blitz. Lemon is the one option to say ‘I really like you,’ the must-have accent for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she gained’t have intercourse with you until you bought lemons. You narrow De Beers in on it. Restricted version lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds known as lemon drops. You get Apple to name their new working system OS-Lemón. A bit accent over the ‘o.’ You cost 40% extra for natural lemons, 50% extra for conflict-free lemons. You pack the Capitol with lemon lobbyists, you get a Kardashian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked intercourse tape. Timotheé Chalamet wears lemon footwear at Cannes. Get a hashtag marketing campaign. One thing isn’t ‘cool’ or ‘tight” or ‘superior,’ no, it’s ‘lemon.’ ‘Did you see that film? Did you see that live performance? It was effing lemon.’ Billie Eilish, ‘OMG, hashtag… lemon.’ You get Dr. Ouncesto advocate 4 lemons a day and a lemon suppository complement to do away with toxins ‘trigger there’s nothing scarier than toxins. Then you definitely patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes the lemons look just a bit extra like tits… and also you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, you cross-pollinate… you get these seeds circulating within the wild, and then you definitely sue the farmer for copyright infringement when that genetic code exhibits up on their land. Sit again, rake within the tens of millions, after which, whenever you’re carried out, and also you’ve offered your lem-pire for a couple of billion {dollars}, then, and solely then, you make some fucking lemonade.”
This prolonged lemon lesson works on a few ranges. For starters, it’s simply intelligent. Apart from some dated references (Kim Kardashian’s leaked intercourse tape is sufficiently old to drive by now), Roderick’s imaginative and prescient of engineering a citrus-obsessed world is sort of good. Extra importantly, nevertheless, that is probably the most compelling instance the present ever presents of the Usher household’s ruthless competence in constructing their evil empire.
For a lot of The Fall of the Home of Usher, Roderick is just too preoccupied with burying his lifeless youngsters to show any actual enterprise acumen. One of the best he can do because it all falls aside is to speak with some board members on the cellphone. Right here although, we see a glimpse of the cynical thoughts that may create a devastating opioid epidemic from nothing.
“Present don’t inform” is an effective storytelling maxim usually. However when a personality can ship a monologue this inventive, telling works simply high quality.