An accidental tale about pursuing misery

"Somebody I Used to Know" argues in favor of putting family on the back burner

Scott Patrick Green and Amazon Prime

Thanks for checking out Nuclear Meltdown. If you haven’t already, consider subscribing.

In my last post, I wrote about emulating the decisions of happy people, rather than following unhappy people and hoping for different outcomes.

Then, not long after writing that post, I watched the new movie Somebody I Used to Know¹, which stars Alison Brie as an unhappy careerist who returns to her hometown amid a professional setback².

But the movie also serves as a counter argument to the one I made in my last post. The movie sides with the unhappy characters and presents their work, and workism, as the way to happiness. The thesis is that life is about chasing individualistic fulfilment. And if that isn’t working — and for most of the movie it isn’t — it means you aren’t sufficiently committed and should double down. Family is also a major part of the movie, but ultimately takes a backseat to self-focused careerism.

I saw in the movie’s characters a bit of myself and many people I’ve known.

But I think it’s worth interrogating this message because in the real world, if you make a series of choices that lead to misery it doesn’t make much sense to double down and assume you’ll somehow end up happy.

In other words, the characters in Somebody I Used to Know make the wrong choices. They needed much bigger course corrections — which in this case would have involved centering family in their lives. As it is, though, the movie offers an accidental case study in the pursuit of misery. And while yes, I get that this is just a movie, the argument it makes is so pervasive in film, TV shows, news articles, and social media that I want to push back a bit against the idea that this is a good way to live a life.

(Spoilers ahead)

The choice between work and family

Somebody I Used to Know tells the story of Ally, a 30-something TV producer who has been running a low-brow reality show. In act one, Ally’s show gets canceled and she returns to her mom’s home in picturesque Leavenworth, Washington. Almost as soon as she arrives, she runs into an old boyfriend.

Eventually, we learn that Ally walked away from the relationship with the boyfriend to focus on her career in Los Angeles. But, having compromised on her desire to be a serious filmmaker and now without even her realty show, Ally expresses regret about her choices and wonders aloud if she made the wrong decision.

That piques her ex-boyfriend’s interest. But in a surprise twist, Ally’s visit coincidentally happens on the same weekend her ex was supposed to get married. Much of the rest of the movie follows Ally’s awkward attempts to insert herself into the wedding, break up the couple, and rekindle her romance.

This sounds like the set up to a classic romantic comedy, and it could’ve been. But because this is a millennial dramedy, the characters are more complex than cartoonish, and eventually Ally actually befriends the bride-to-be, Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons). And it turns out Cassidy is having second thoughts about the marriage because it’ll mean giving up touring with her band. She’s basically at the same crossroads Ally reached when she left for LA.

Where things get weird is when Ally — who by her own admission is anchor-less and disappointed with her life — suggests the bride-to-be stay true to her dream and not sacrifice her passions for the sake of a conventional relationship. It’s jarring advice because that’s exactly the decision Ally made, and at this point in the movie she has already admitted that she’s not thrilled with the way things turned out³.

Despite how questionable that advice is in light of Ally’s life, I see this all the time. It’s exactly what I was talking about in my last post when I mentioned that many of us find ourselves emulating unhappy people. I can’t even count the number of times when I was younger that unhappy shmucks suggested I do something that either didn’t work for them professionally, or did but nevertheless made them miserable.

It’s easy to end up emulating miserable people

No one wants to emulate unhappy people. But Somebody I Used to Know offers a really good illustration of how many of us end up doing it anyway because that’s who is willing to give advice, or because we want to believe that the fulfillment of our desires is the way to happiness.

In any case, in the movie Ally does ultimately admit to the bride that her professional life isn’t all she hoped for. But rather than have an epiphany and make a major change, Ally concludes that she simply didn’t commit hard enough. So she abandons her schlocky realty TV show and the movie ends by showing her happily working on a passion-project documentary about nudists (lol).

This is of course a change for her. But Ally’s focus on career, and on seeing her work as the most significant part of her identity, remains constant. The flavor of her work changes, but her workism stays intact⁴. She's still focused on individual fulfilment, even though that focus previously made her unhappy.

Significantly, the end of the movie also shows that Cassidy has chosen not to give up touring with her band. She’s married and pregnant, but gets to have her cake and eat it too.

For famous and wealthy celebrities such as Dave Franco and Alison Brie — the movie’s director and star, respectively, who are also married in real life — this message probably sounds realistic. I have no idea if they are happy, but they did make it professionally and through that profession ended up finding marriage partners.

But it’s hard to imagine how the choices of Ally or Cassidy are either sustainable over the long term or likely to produce any new degree of happiness. Ally is working on a new film project, but what happens when that ends or gets canceled? Cassidy is depicted as being happy as a touring musician, but what happens when she has her baby? Also, almost no local punk bands make any money touring (I have known quite a few people who have tried), which means that you can’t really do it forever. What then?

The point is that the happy ending of the movie is premised on the fact that both characters have merely kicked the can down the road. A sequel to the movie could theoretically show them facing the exact same struggles.

That’s all fine. I personally kicked the can down the road many times before I attempted anything serious in my own life. I don’t mean to suggest that people should all give up their passions or immediately settle into domestic life when they turn 21.

Instead what rings false is the argument that people should double down on choices that make them unhappy, and that by doing so they can have it all. In reality, stepping through one door means others close. One choice forecloses another. And repeatedly choosing misery probably means missing out on happiness.

The movie shows an alternative, then ignores it

Ironically, the side characters in Somebody I Used to Know mostly offer a counter point to the story’s thesis. The movie depicts a large multi-generational tribe of family and friends, most of whom seem quite happy. But the only person who seems to notice this is Ally’s ex, Sean (Jay Ellis), who very understandably would like to follow in the footsteps of his family.

Obviously most of these side characters aren’t as thoroughly developed as the story’s leads. But it’s deeply strange that the movie shows a town of people who became happy by prioritizing their community of family and friends, but then argues in favor of rejecting that life. It’s like the movie had a better idea right under its nose, but missed it.

Of course this is just a movie. But this tug-o-war between careerist individualism and other options, such as a life centered on family, plays out in real life too. And while Somebody I Used to Know comes down on the side of the individualists, it’s much less certain that real life will deliver happy endings to those who follow miserable people. Ultimately, when I watched the movie the characters I most admired and wanted to emulate were not the protagonists, but the side characters who seemed to be living their best lives.

Thanks for reading to the end of this post. I would be eternally grateful if you shared it with someone.

Headlines to read this week:

Moms Need Allies: A Review of 'Screaming on the Inside'

“Individualism has undermined support for moms—if having a baby is primarily an individual lifestyle choice then so, too, is the responsibility of the baby’s care—and the historical arc of motherhood is bending towards isolation. Early humans lived and parented in tribes, and men and women in medieval times shared in the economic life of home-based industry, but the post-Industrial Revolution saw the separating of the domestic and public spheres in a way that siloed the formerly shared work of the home. More recently, the breakdown of marriage and weakening of the extended family, the erosion of neighborly ties, along with the overscheduling of children, and the growing importance of career as a marker to identity, have left moms more susceptible to loneliness.

[…]

Yet I question if it is possible to simultaneously strengthen social ties and reduce societal expectations? I imagine that strengthening multigenerational ties—as in, becoming neighbors with your mother-in-law—might increase the pressures and judgments moms feel, moving from a vague sense of social media pressure to the context of a specific relationship. For better and worse, if others are helping raise your children, they’ll also have more of a say in how things are done.”

The Self-Destructive Effects of Progressive Sadness

“For many, America’s problems came to seem endemic: The American dream is a sham, climate change is so unstoppable, systemic racism is eternal. Making catastrophic pronouncements became a way to display that you were woke to the brutalities of American life. The problem, Matthew Yglesias recently wrote on his Substack, is that catastrophizing doesn’t usually help you solve problems. People who provide therapy to depressive people try to break the cycle of catastrophic thinking so they can more calmly locate and deal with the problems they actually have control over.”

1. Inexplicably, the movie doesn’t include the Gotye song “Somebody That I Used to Know” despite having almost the same title.

2. This isn’t a film review, but I thought everyone involved did a fine job. Last I checked, it had a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems about right. If you like Alison Brie or Dave Franco (who directed), you’ll probably like this movie.

3. In a different kind of movie, Ally might have been offering bad advice as an underhanded way to sabotage the bride. But that’s not really how it’s played in this movie. Ally seems to want to genuinely help.

4. Another element here is that Ally is actually very successful. I know people who want to work in TV and would kill to produce three seasons of a reality TV show, even if that wasn’t their lifelong dream. Part of Ally’s problem is that she made choices that led to unhappiness, but another part is that she’s unable find joy in a life that is less than perfect. I don’t know anyone who is doing exactly what they’d like with absolutely no compromises. But I do know many people who have managed to achieve some degree of happiness even while making professional compromises.