BoJack Horseman
The Bear. The show is just a bunch of people trying to process the grief of traumatic life experiences while simultaneously trying to survive the loss of a beloved person in common. All this through the power of cooking and yelling very loudly. The food is awesome though.
The Good Place. The end makes me cry.
As the show went on, I ketp thinking that it was so good, and the end was going to ruin it. That it had to have an end, and there’s no way it could be satisfying.
And then it was perfect, and I loved it, and I watched the whole series over again.
Another easy answer would be Six Feet Under. This show has the most beautiful finale.
The Midnight Gospel, particularly the finale
Now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time, I’m going to have to watch that again
I’m kinda surprised no one has said Midnight Mass. It revolves around suffering and the ideas of redemption.
Honestly any of Flanagan’s work could be used for this question.
The Haunting of Hill House is about loss and the grief of losing.
Haunting of Bly Manor gets around to it slowly, but it also focuses on loss, though not entirely permanent.
And The Fall of the House of Usher is just a sadistic chase of suffering and pain
Easy answer would be the Galactica remake. The entire show is essentially watching humanity break down because of the collective weight of what it lost as a society.
So say we all
Not shows, but video games.
Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Death Stranding. Death Standing hit especially hard for me, since I was half-way through the game when my mom died, so the whole rest of the game I just could not apply things to that.
Outer Wilds. Easily the most profoundly moving experience I’ve ever had from playing a video game. And it does such a good job of starting off - and even remaining, to a degree - a fun, light-hearted story.
If there’s anybody reading this who’s interested in the game, let me say a couple of things.
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Go in as spoiler-free as possible. The entire progression system is based on acquiring knowledge, and a lot of the power of the game comes from discovering everything for yourself, in your own way.
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Don’t treat it like a game. Instead put yourselves in the shoes of your character. See something that you think looks cool? Go and look at it. Don’t think “well, I should probably finish this area first…” Explore. Learn. Decide for yourself what your priority is.
Loads of games call themselves open world, but are actually quite on rails. One trigger at the beginning of the game aside, Outer Wilds really is open world. One reason why watching other people play it is so much fun is that everybody really does have a completely different experience while playing it. One person will do something as the first thing they do, then someone else will do the same thing when they’re 80% of the way through. And the game is so well-designed that both ways is equally rewarding.
Sorry, I tend to evangelise for this game a lot because it is, as I said above, a genuinely profound and moving experience.
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Nier: Automata has a special place in my heart and I’m seriously considering getting a tattoo of Pascal because of that story thread.
Nier Replicant hit me even harder. Well, Gestalt at the time :p
Over the Garden Wall
Peacemaker
Tribal Trails.
Zoeys Extraordinary Playlist. The way it shows the characters most intimate thoughts that they try to conceal from the world.
Not a show, but a book and a movie adaptation: Interview with A Vampire is actually about Anne Rice’s daughter.
I was a sad, broken and despairing atheist when I wrote ‘Interview with the Vampire’ [in 1973, after the death of her daughter from leukaemia]. I pitched myself into writing and made up a story about vampires. I didn’t know it at the time but it was all about my daughter, the loss of her and the need to go on living when faith is shattered. But the lights do come back on, no matter how dark it seems, and I’m sensitive now, more than ever, to the beauty of the world – and more resigned to living with cosmic uncertainty.
Vampires are the best metaphor for the human condition Here you have a monster with a soul that’s immortal, yet in a biological body. It’s a metaphor for us, as it’s very difficult to realise that we are going to die, and day to day we have to think and move as though we are immortal. A vampire like Lestat in Interview… is perfect for that because he transcends time – yet he can be destroyed, go mad and suffer; it’s intensely about the human dilemma.
Mmm… Berserk (1997) was the first thing that came to mind.
I think you’re asking for someone to say a particular thing so I take the bait and say: The Leftovers.
