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Carol & the End of the World
Jun. 10th, 2024 10:29 amCarol Kohl is a quiet woman leading a small life. She's also the protagonist of the ten-episode series "Carol & the End of the World". When a rogue planet named Keppler is suddenly predicted to impact Earth and obliterate all life in seven months' time, society changes. Wall Street has rung its final closing bell and money is worthless. The military, it's presumed, handles the infrastructure so groceries are still available and there's some semblance of law and order. But in a world where all we have are the next seven months, most people are looking to cross off their bucket list.
Not Carol, though. We first meet her in a dream where she's on an empty train. The car on the next track is filled with revelers celebrating the end of their lives, or people finally allowing themselves to bloom. She's stuck, though. Or uninterested. That is, until gas floods the car and she wakes up choking.
It feels like she's choking on the expectations of the world around her, this constant supply of "LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE" and "NO REGRETS". When she visits her parents, they fret over a neighbor spotting her wandering around an empty Applebee's -- so she lies about learning to surf to make them feel better. A rave in a public park is an overwhelming assault of bodies and noise she struggles to withdraw from. There are so many huge emotions and intense, desperate actions that she can't hope to process. She's a highly sensitive person who found a wavelength that worked for her...somewhat, but with Keppler the collective tempo of life on Earth has erased it. What does one do when all you want to do is pay your credit cards but money is worthless?
Eventually she finds others like her through this place called "The Distraction", a fully-functional accounting office staffed with dozens of people working on...who knows? Only one person, it turns out, but it gives her and others a sense of purpose that allows them to process the enormity of the situation in their own way.
That slow unthawing is what "Carol & the End of the World" is really about. She clings to The Distraction like a lifeline until she finds two colleagues who are also lonely, quiet people. Donna is a middle-aged Black woman with five kids and a serious workaholic problem, but she loves banana bread and genuinely wanted to give her children a better life than she had. Luis is a closeted(?) gay man with a "traditional" Latino family and an empathetic joie de vivre even an office suit can't suppress. The three of them transform The Distraction into a found family over the course of ten episodes, and we learn so much about the mysterious people she shares the office with.
The answers we get to the questions that pop up are both anticlimactic and deeply affecting. Despite the premise, the show is completely uninterested in tackling the big questions that everyone around Carol is asking themselves? What does it all mean? What do I really want in life? What does it matter?
It's a gem. I treasure it because I'm a firm believer in "everyday magic", that our ordinary lives can be a source of rich spiritual fulfillment and deep contentment. For Carol, it's simple small things that give her life meaning. Her journey is not to discover meaning, but to *re*discover the meaning she's already found. Her connections are gone because the framework holding them intact dissolved, not through any deficiencies. So it's US that goes through the arc, adjusting our expectations of the show until we see the shining beauty in every frame. So much of what's in the show is what we bring to it.
It helped me reconnect to that part of myself, that finds contentment and joy in the ordinary. I think we get so caught up in this idea that we should be doing something that makes us MORE that we can't just sit with the idea that we're ENOUGH. Carol reminds us that there is nothing wrong with building a small life for yourself if it makes you happy. It's just as valid a thing to fight for as skydiving or a trip around the world.
It's fine if I play D&D every weekend, and that I don't like going to clubs and bars. It's OK to like Chipotle, and to miss it when it's inevitably shut down in a food poisoning scandal. I can write dumb little stories about firbolg making friends with squirrels. It doesn't matter. The world is big enough for all kinds of stories, even ones as small as mine.
Not Carol, though. We first meet her in a dream where she's on an empty train. The car on the next track is filled with revelers celebrating the end of their lives, or people finally allowing themselves to bloom. She's stuck, though. Or uninterested. That is, until gas floods the car and she wakes up choking.
It feels like she's choking on the expectations of the world around her, this constant supply of "LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE" and "NO REGRETS". When she visits her parents, they fret over a neighbor spotting her wandering around an empty Applebee's -- so she lies about learning to surf to make them feel better. A rave in a public park is an overwhelming assault of bodies and noise she struggles to withdraw from. There are so many huge emotions and intense, desperate actions that she can't hope to process. She's a highly sensitive person who found a wavelength that worked for her...somewhat, but with Keppler the collective tempo of life on Earth has erased it. What does one do when all you want to do is pay your credit cards but money is worthless?
Eventually she finds others like her through this place called "The Distraction", a fully-functional accounting office staffed with dozens of people working on...who knows? Only one person, it turns out, but it gives her and others a sense of purpose that allows them to process the enormity of the situation in their own way.
That slow unthawing is what "Carol & the End of the World" is really about. She clings to The Distraction like a lifeline until she finds two colleagues who are also lonely, quiet people. Donna is a middle-aged Black woman with five kids and a serious workaholic problem, but she loves banana bread and genuinely wanted to give her children a better life than she had. Luis is a closeted(?) gay man with a "traditional" Latino family and an empathetic joie de vivre even an office suit can't suppress. The three of them transform The Distraction into a found family over the course of ten episodes, and we learn so much about the mysterious people she shares the office with.
The answers we get to the questions that pop up are both anticlimactic and deeply affecting. Despite the premise, the show is completely uninterested in tackling the big questions that everyone around Carol is asking themselves? What does it all mean? What do I really want in life? What does it matter?
At least, it doesn't look to answer them through these giant-sized experiences. Carol, and the show around her, is tuned to the mundane moments that most of us overlook -- and that's what makes it so amazing. The pilot introduces Carol as someone who needs to overcome her own stifling anxiety before she can settle her accounts at the end of the world. But the series closes with "The Investigation," an episode that follows an HR representative building the case that she's solely responsible for a five-minute crying jag that swept through the office all at once. Carol doesn't really...do anything grand to change her situation; it's pretty much the same as it was at the top of the show. However, we leave her with the sense that not only will she be OK, she's helped everyone around her make peace in their lives as well.
I showed Ratty the pilot episode and it didn't grab him, which is fair. Carol comes across as a complete drip of a person, with a deadpan voice, frumpy figure and no fashion sense. She is the definitive basic bitch, that person you overlook in the supermarket (and everywhere else), who spends Saturday night at home channel surfing with a bottle of wine -- and looks forward to it. I relate to that so much.
It's a gem. I treasure it because I'm a firm believer in "everyday magic", that our ordinary lives can be a source of rich spiritual fulfillment and deep contentment. For Carol, it's simple small things that give her life meaning. Her journey is not to discover meaning, but to *re*discover the meaning she's already found. Her connections are gone because the framework holding them intact dissolved, not through any deficiencies. So it's US that goes through the arc, adjusting our expectations of the show until we see the shining beauty in every frame. So much of what's in the show is what we bring to it.
It helped me reconnect to that part of myself, that finds contentment and joy in the ordinary. I think we get so caught up in this idea that we should be doing something that makes us MORE that we can't just sit with the idea that we're ENOUGH. Carol reminds us that there is nothing wrong with building a small life for yourself if it makes you happy. It's just as valid a thing to fight for as skydiving or a trip around the world.
It's fine if I play D&D every weekend, and that I don't like going to clubs and bars. It's OK to like Chipotle, and to miss it when it's inevitably shut down in a food poisoning scandal. I can write dumb little stories about firbolg making friends with squirrels. It doesn't matter. The world is big enough for all kinds of stories, even ones as small as mine.
