[Genera+ion Review with Joe Lipsett] "Click Whirr" and "L'Amour" Plays With Structure to Tell Heart-Wrenching Stories

Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episodes of HBO Max’s Genera+ion, alternating between our respective sites. 

Spoilers follow for Season 1, Episodes 14-15, “Click Whirr” and “L’Amour”.

TERRY

You mentioned earlier in our recaps of the back half of Genera+ion season one that you were worried for Riley (Chase Sui Wonders) and her mental health, Joe. Well, “Click Whirr” is fully devoted to her state of mind and the crushing anxiety she’s dealing with. It was painful to watch, helped along by the title cards proclaiming the number of hours she’s been awake after receiving news that her father and his girlfriend Janelle (Kelley Missal) are planning to move to Reno, Nevada. Not only that, though, but also that Riley’s mother Carol (Alicia Coppola) doesn’t want to take care of Riley. Carol’s too busy regressing to a childlike state, talking about life being “a prison of needs” and filling her room with rainbow unicorns and children’s toys, including a Furby whose vocal nonsense she has been carefully translating in a diary. 

It’s a lot. 

So Genera+ion does what it does best: gives us a day in the life of Riley as she quite visibly implodes through a mix of alcohol, undiagnosed anxiety and pressure coming from all angles. What’s worse is that Chester (Justice Smith), her rock of a friend, hasn’t replied to any of her texts. When she meets up with the group, they tell her he’s been with Bo (Marwan Salama) nonstop since the whole Nathan (Uly Schlesigner) fake dating fiasco that blew up in “There’s Something about Hamburger Mary’s”. 

The issue of trust rears its ugly head as guidance counselor Sam (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) notices her odd behavior and the fact she’s missed tests and classes, so he calls her mother. Who tells him she’s been staying with Greta (Haley Sanchez)’s mother...who tells him, no, she’s actually been staying with Ana (Nava Mau). And Ana tells him that Riley wasn’t just sleeping there temporarily, but she’s moved in. “This is kind of your basic four alarm red flag moment,” Sam tells Riley...and of course that sends Riley on a warpath as she yells at Greta, then at Ana, as she packs up her things. 

Director Anu Valia and cinematographer Yaron Orbach capture Riley’s slow descent with slightly blurred lens that get increasingly worse the longer the title cards explain she’s been awake while making some sounds loud and others dampened. It creates a slightly disorienting viewing experience that matches Riley’s confusion and anxiety. Chase Sui Wonders, meanwhile, gives a fantastic performance that is, at times, incredibly subtle and never veers into melodrama. A moment towards the end of “Click Whirr” as Riley hides in a pantry, trying to shut out the world that’s become too much while dealing with a quickly escalating panic attack was incredibly hard to watch. 

I’m curious about your thoughts with this episode, Joe, and Genera+ion’s ability to continually play with structure and character beats. Did this episode give you as much anxiety as it did me? Did you laugh and then gasp at Naomi (Chloe East), her wisdom teeth removal, her panic and her surprise reveal? Moving into “L’Amour”, do you have thoughts about Megan (Martha Plimpton) and the subtle way the story builds sympathy for her? 

JOE

Oh boy, you can really feel the screws tightening in these last few episodes before the finale, can’t you, Terry? Between these two episodes, the secrets and lies that our characters have been telling (to themselves and to others) are starting to fall in quick succession.

“Click Whirr” once again confirms that Genera+ion is a completely unique show, in no small part because its willingness to blur the formal boundaries (in this case literally) sets it apart from pretty much everything else in YA. The show is so invested in the honest depiction of its characters, but it still wants to play around with the temporal and stylistic conventions of the category. 

I’m honestly just so into this show.

“Click Whirr” is impactful because - you’re right - it situates us inside Riley’s anxiety and panic in an almost experiential way. How can you watch this episode and not feel your pulse quicken? One aspect that I really appreciated is how her anxiety is a mixture of big moments intermixed with little moments. Sure the tipping point is her father’s news compounded by her mother’s confession, but Riley’s in such a heightened state of fight or flight that a conversation is enough to set her off. It’s fascinating that these larger moments are interspersed with opportunities for her to relax and almost lose herself, like when she realizes that the strange shirtless boy suddenly standing next to her at the beach just wants to eat her donut or the delight she takes in taking a pervy dude’s convertible for a joyride.

One aspect that makes this episode slightly easier to handle is the fact that adults are keeping tabs on her. Between Sam, Ana and yes, even Megan, there are adults in Riley’s life who at least know that she’s going through a world of pain (this is often a bad trope of YA properties: adults are either wholly absent or disengaged from teens’ lives, as we’ve seen in some stretches of Genera+ion). 

I also like the way that “Click Whirr” uses the artificiality of pictures as a visual signifier of how Riley keeps the world at arm’s length. When she’s at the beach, she takes a polaroid, then takes a picture of the polaroid to post on socials, like she’s living her life two steps removed. We see this again when she takes a picture of herself on the surveillance camera at the car wash, and it helps to clarify her later statement to Nathan in “L’Amour” when she claims she wishes she could just live without emotion. Her art is a personification of her desperation not to feel her feelings, but the reality is that she can’t stop them or her anxiety, regardless of how much vodka she guzzles or gummi edibles she consumes.

And that’s where the trouble comes from in this pair of episodes, right? Mark (Sam Trammell) humourously warns Riley and Nathan after Naomi’s dental surgery “And this is why you shouldn’t do drugs” and it’s a moment of comedy (in no small part because all of these kids are regularly hopped up already). But between Naomi’s drugged up confession to Cooper (Diego Josef) that Delilah is Panda Express Girl and Riley’s twin confessions to 1) Nathan, about sleeping with Lucia on the school trip and 2) Megan, about Nathan’s fauxlationship with Chester...the message of these episodes is pretty clearly “Don’t do drugs, kids!”

Obviously all of these secrets and lies had to come out eventually. Considering we’re on the cusp of the S1 finale, it makes sense that it’s now, but the experience of witnessing all of these big truths come out in quick succession is as anxiety-inducing for us as anything that Riley is going through. Not gonna lie: I felt like I was hyperventilating through a lot of these episodes.

“L’Amour” does feel like a different beast because although the show returns to its now-standard  three characters/time jump format, but there are some very deliberate gaps and mysteries left hanging, particularly WTF is going on with Chester and Bo. 

Savvy audiences will be able to infer that Bo’s inferiority complex is contributing to his unease. First, there’s the fact that he only asks Chester questions about whether he’s “good” enough - his fashion, his kissing - on their mystery date. Then there’s his passive aggressive unwillingness at the Smash Room to address his feelings about Chester’s fauxlationship with Nathan, which is also pretty telling. 

But there is a lack of distinct confirmation that relies on audiences reading between the lines. This combined with the fact that Cooper and Megan now know the truth about the baby and the fake relationship but Delilah, Nathan and Chester don’t know that they know? Basically Genera+ion has turned into an emotional ticking time bomb going into the finale.

But Terry, you asked about sympathy for Megan, and oh boy is that a minefield. The decision to give Mark (of all people!) a section in “L’Amour” is fascinating because he’s legit a character we know next to nothing about. Seeing his sexually disinterested, frustrated wife through his eyes is confirmation that she’s exactly the terrible harpy shrew that we believed her to be.

And yet, seeing her protective reaction to Chester’s appearance at the party and her repeated description of him as “the boy who broke her son’s heart” does make you feel for her. Megan does love Nathan...despite the fact that she continues to badger him with asides that his bisexuality is a mistake that he’ll grow to regret. 

It should be noted that Plimpton is doing stellar work (in the same way that Ana Ortiz did on Love, Victor S2). Kudos to the actress for making Megan a terrible mother who is also simultaneously a real person with flaws. Megan is very clearly an unhappy woman, and her inability to recognize that her pain and her worry is manifesting in a way that actively hurts the people she loves is both uncomfortable and distressing. But it’s also very human. 

Seeing her berate Mark about the Paris photo backdrop is a great way to highlight all of this complexity. The conflict is stupid and immaterial (like, it literally does not matter) aside from the fact that Megan considers it a gaudy blight on her “perfect” party. She’s projecting her inability to control/protect her son into this outrageous behaviour because party decorations are something that she can control, even though it makes her seem irritable, petty and irrational. 

Pity poor Mark, who just wants to make sure his son is ok!

But Terry, there’s still more to discuss about mothers and Megan. I’m interested in how you responded to that moment when Megan comforts Riley in the grass after her panic attack? How do you read the current state of Chester and Bo’s relationship? And do you think we’ve learned anything new about Mark or the other characters as a result of his POV chapter?

TERRY

Now that you mention it, Joe, this might be the best exploration of the parents’ lives Genera+ion has done. It does focus on the parents a bit more, but unlike some of the early season episodes, it is still intrinsically related to the kids’ stories. You mentioned the way the episode surprisingly gave us the Mark POV, and I was asking myself the same question in regards to us learning anything new. 

What this section does is give us the adult perspective of a father honestly grappling with the very different younger generation. We get to see the teens through his eyes, as a man who desperately wants to connect with his son. It’s also implied that he wants to be the cool dad; he corrects Megan when she thinks “sick” means terrible. And the silly Paris backdrop shows the difference between Mark and Megan, with Mark leaning into being cool and Megan wanting some pristine ideal of the party. 

It’d be easy to see Megan as the stuffy parent who doesn’t want to accept her kids’ sexualities. But the scene you mentioned above, with Megan stroking Riley’s hair and being the kind and caring parent Riley doesn’t have, complicates things. Megan shows a kindness to Riley and provides a comforting embrace at the moment she needs it the most. So it’s ironic that Megan comforts a kid that’s not hers while she consistently hurts her own kids’ feelings. 

As for Bo and Chester, Bo’s inferiority complex is going to cause problems as we crest into the finale. I’ve enjoyed the way Genera+ion has pitted their two different ways of being gay as the central conflict. Chester’s laissez faire attitude towards the fake relationship and his more garish dress contrasts with Bo’s more traditional clothing and desires for monogamy. “L’Amour” feels like a Rube Goldberg machine whose sole purpose is to bring the disparate plot threads weaved through this season and ultimately light the fuse as we go into the finale. Next episode is going to be the explosion. 

We’ll find out as we go back to QueerHorrorMovies for the finale on Thursday.