Nathan Fielder Releases the ‘Flipanthropy’ Pilot From ‘The Curse’

The comedy series, also starring Emma Stone, is currently airing on Showtime.

the-curse-showtime — Image via Collider Staff, Showtime/Paramount

Table of Contents

The Big Picture

The Curse is a twisted take on flipping houses, showing the fake nature of the main characters Asher and Whitney.
The uneasy nature of the in-universe series Flipanthropy reflects Nathan Fielder’s signature style of comedy that often makes audiences uncomfortable.
The show exposes the real-life existence of people like Asher and Whitney who exploit others for their own benefit.

The Curse, airing now on Showtime, brings us Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie‘s latest twisted look at the world, this time taking on the world of flipping houses. Now, Fielder released a look at the original pilot for Flipanthropy, the in-universe series that Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Emma Stone) are filming when we met them on the series, when Asher makes some mistakes in an interview that nearly costs them the entire thing, and he has to do some work to cover it. What we see in the video Fielder tweeted out, is just how uneasy the pilot really is.

Asher and Whitney are all about flipping houses and making them more eco-friendly, but the houses they take over have people already living in them. We see in the series when Abshir’s (Barkhad Abdi) family is found in one of Asher’s homes, he ends up just letting them live there for free out of fear that he’s been cursed by Abshir’s daughter, and it sends the entire idea of what Asher and Whitney are doing in Española into a tailspin.

What we get to see in this “pilot” for their HGTV special is just how fake and evil Asher and Whitney truly are and how that comes across on camera. Their fake act is made clear to us as the audience time and time again in the behind the scenes looks at them but we haven’t really seen much of their on-screen personas, so the newly-released pilot shows just why Flipanthropy wouldn’t work. At least if you were watching this and were aware of what people like Asher and Whitney truly are.

Fielder’s Brand of Uneasy Comedy

The two main characters of Showtime's The Curse, from left to right: Nathan Fielder as Asher and Emma Stone as Whitney.

There is an uneasy nature to this in-univeerse pilot episode that connects to that same feeling that Fielder’s comedy often has. His work in shows like Nathan For You and The Rehearsal often makes you stop and think about what makes you so uncomfortable in what he’s saying to people. What makes The Curse work is that you know people like Asher and Whitney exist, and often do this in places like Española by taking people out of their own homes and making a show of them for their own benefit. How this will play into the rest of Asher and Whitney’s journey on The Curse remains to be seen.

The Curse airs new episodes Sundays on Showtime in the U.S.