March and April were mostly chilly and gray here in New York. Staying home in quarantine meant not having to go outside in the cold winds, rain, and snow except for the essential food shopping and take-out meals. It meant crawling into bed early with a hearty soup or Thai food, and a few glasses of wine. It felt like life just came to a halt. All plans to go out and do things with other people were immediately cancelled, indefinitely.
What better way pass the time than to watch all the movies and television shows available, with new releases still being rolled-out on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, On-Demand, CBS All Access, Disney+, Roku, and the newly launched services of HBO Max, Peacock, Quibi, etc..
In those late winter / early spring weathered months, I barely saw any comedies. I was mourning my routine, not seeing family and friends’ faces in-person, scared of contracting the virus myself or if anyone I cared about would. Dramatic stories of the human experience best fit my mood.
Tales from the Loop was released on Amazon Prime Video, April 3rd. Even though all eight episodes were available on that single day, its quiet contemplative tone created calmness and can only be absorbed one-at-a-time; like a lullaby in visual form that can put you to sleep each night. The show is an allegorical anthology taking inspiration from the retro-futurist paintings of Simon Stalenhag, whose characters live in a bubble-like town effected by whatever possible physics experiments may be going on in the under-ground scientific facility. Rather than making The Loop a villainous organization shrouded in secrecy to be cracked-open by vigilantes wanting answers and revenge, its mysteriousness is built into the townsfolk’s every-day lives, accepted without loathing even when its unexplained existence gives them heart-breaking losses.
Less than three weeks into lockdown, but mistakenly sensing more time had passed, Tales from the Loop was exactly what I needed to see. Each episode felt like a comforting hour to turn to when the day’s news and difficulties were almost too much to comprehend; each episode’s conclusion a salve for my own nerves. The scenes’ muted colors, actors’ low decibel inside voices, the classically composed theme and score with a meditative undercurrent, and especially the camera’s position of stillness like an observer looking into the frame, all made me feel as if I’d been wandering through a museum’s impressionist exhibit.
Episodes explore themes of love, death, curiosity, longevity, friendship, fear, bravery, desire, family, belonging, and uncertainty.
Episode 4, “Echo Sphere” is the show’s summit episode. From which those before it have steadily climbed up to and which those after winddown from (in philosophy not quality). Russ, played by Jonathan Pryce, is the inventor of The Loop. Though with seemingly still decades more worth of brainpower left, he learns he actually has less than a year to live. Russ is given a terminal prognosis by a doctor he and his wife knew as a child – a metaphor for aging. To best explain death to his grandson Cole, Russ shows him. By having Cole call-out into a rusted hollow spherical structure, the voice that echoes back deepens and ages with each count; one for each decade of life. Cole’s initial “hello” receives 6 back. He has a long life ahead of him. But for Russ’ turn, it barely makes a natural vibration, and Cole asks if it’s “broken”.
With a high-pitched violin playing over Russ’ explanation, we don’t hear the words, only see Cole’s internal processing. At the family meeting later that evening, again we don’t hear the details of what Russ is dying from, only his matter-of-fact acceptance. Russ’ own son George has trouble verbally expressing his feelings except questioning how Russ “can be so calm”? He’s held back by his wife Loretta (with whom Russ shares a more collegiate bond to). Her immediate offering him a glass of water, and understanding with a heartfelt “what can we do?” (to make his time left more comfortable or easier) shows her relationship and communication with Russ has surpassed that between father and son but in no way undermines it.
Death is the one “impossible” thing that Russ can’t make “possible”.
The conversation between Russ and Cole about whether or not there is an afterlife, leaves the young boy and viewer realizing that in its simplest argument, there’s no logical reason for there being one: what would he look like, be young or old, having a body or being without one. Yet without an afterlife, Russ again finds a better way to show Cole that “you can always find light in the dark” even if it’s not a physical hereafter. For Russ, science means answers that still hold beauty and a little mystery in life like a winding journey with a final resolution. And though he knows death is certain, as he has a good cry about it in the dark, life can still be missed and mourned.
With Russ in the hospital, Cole uses a secret entrance down into The Loop to try to save him – but as he reaches to touch its surface, is stopped by his mom. Loretta uses her mothering yet realistic sensibility to tell Cole that “The Loop was built to do many things but what (Cole) wants (to keep his grandfather alive and well) is not one of them. We may not like it but dying is just part of life, the very last part. I’m sorry”.
Every scene in this episode is designed to be reminiscent of the life cycle. Cole’s jar of lightening bugs died overnight because he didn’t put holes at the top – but found the next morning to be replaced with pennies. Cole mindlessly rolls back-and-forth the jar, listening to the coins’ sounds against the glass; like a timekeeper. Along Cole’s classroom windowsill are a row of plants – sprouted but not yet bloomed. In Russ’ and Klara’s living room bookcase, the open space foreshadowed to be where Russ’ urn will sit. That something like a toilet tank chain can be easily replaced to flush properly, but Russ’ body is beyond surgery or medication. And of course, Klara’s black & white home-developed photos she took of Cole, compared to a black & white photo taken of a 25-year old Russ, when The Loop was still in his imagination. And the decomposing deer in the woods – of natural “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.
When Cole is finally allowed to visit Russ in the hospital, but before entering the room, his father asks Cole to remember his grandfather “how he was, not as he is.” Standing in that hallway, shot with them at medium distance from the camera, they are in silhouette, representing any adult parent having to pass along his own wisdom to any child about to have a very grown-up yet entirely common human experience – saying a final goodbye.
It’s at this scene in the episode I’ve had to pause and reflect on not only losing my own grandparents at different points in my life but also taking in the sad realization that in the time of covid, families could not visit their dying relatives or friends in the hospital.
In a fit of confusion, Russ is not aware of his visitors, but is rather enveloped in a memory with his wife from when they were still young adults. It’s too much for Cole, and he quickly leaves, having to cover his ears, sitting outside the room. From personal experience, trying to remember a loved one as they were not as they are after seeing them in such an altered state without being old enough to truly understand their condition can take its toll on the good memories. It takes time to recover them.
At the end, Russ is tossing-and-turning in his sleep, dreaming. He visits The Loop: his own creation, his life’s work. Its steady heartbeat calling Russ closer, and taking him in.
The empty hospital bed he passed in, the empty desk chair he worked in, the empty bench he sat at, and all the other spaces he once occupied, empty without him. Followed by the service attended by people who mourn him.
When Cole returns to the Echo Sphere, calling out “Hello”, we see a moment from each echoed reply: Cole as a teenager, a young adult, a father with a son of his own, and then sitting at the head of the table opposite from his baby grandson.
This is the most poignant hour of television I’ve seen (more
than once) in the last eight months. No one in the production would have known
how deeply it could resonate with the audience: a universal tale for such an
unprecedented time.
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