An issue with this Snapshot series is that for as much as I want to celebrate the best of any given year, I often feel the need to find something more personal than that. As my banner so aptly notes, this website is designed as “a look at life through the media that helped define it.” That is why finding something from TV proved to be difficult. For as much as Succession and Reservation Dogs were undeniably the best that I’ve seen this year, I didn’t exactly have an autobiographical hook. With Somebody Somewhere or The Bear, I was getting closer to something. However, it still didn’t feel like I could pull out a full essay from either that felt substantial.
After plenty of thinking, I eventually landed on a miniseries that’s been way too in my face for the past six months: Tiny Beautiful Things. Please don’t misconstrue what I mean when I say that it was everywhere. As a regular Hulu viewer, it felt like there was a push to make this Kathryn Hahn show a thing. No matter what I was watching, there was a guaranteed chance that I would see Hahn yelling, “Can you kindly delete that from the apps, all the apps?” It wasn’t a bad commercial by any means, but when I had seen it four months prior (and later than most), it felt like Hulu hadn’t been spying on me hard enough.
I think it’s why I wanted to reject the series when looking at significant TV of 2023. However, that would be to ignore a greater truth. Within those eight episodes is one of the most cathartic episodes I have seen all year. It was one of those moments where you felt called out because of how recognizable it was. Given that Hahn was paying Clare Pierce – a writer known for her dysfunctional relationships – and at one point was going to school, it felt especially prescient. It’s in recalling this that things began to click into place. The show was always about a screw-up finding redemption, but in “The Nose,” I found art that helped me process something difficult.
A lot of my obsession with mortality can be traced back to 2019. Within a few months of each other, I lost two grandparents. Not only that, but they were the ones who supported me. As a self-proclaimed screw-up until my Mid-20s, I was notorious for spending five years at a two-year college because I kept dropping out mid-semester from personal boredom. In hindsight, I wasted so much money on a career that I didn’t even have a degree for. Even then, these two grandparents were there giving advice and wishing me the best. Following a hiatus, I returned to school in 2016 with a more focused attitude and had it all worked out by 2019. I would complete an 11 year long arc to get my diploma. It hurts to this day that the ones I wanted to celebrate with most died mere months before the finish line. In fact, I skipped flying to Washington for one’s funeral because I believed she’d be happier if I completed my academic career.
Maybe that’s why when the time came to complete my bachelor’s, I was more focused and didn’t waste time. With only a few setbacks regarding unit count, I was there two years later completing graduation. As hollow as it still feels to not have them there, I was able to recontextualize the achievement as something personal. If I say that I got this degree “for me,” it’s more a way of convincing myself of self-worth. After spending my 20s essentially with no direction, having this much showed that I was capable of something greater. I’m not going for my master’s. This is the end of that road for me. Time to see where the fork goes.
While I feel like academia is not as celebrated by everyone younger than me, I think there’s still something that feels valuable to me. I had dreams of attending CSULB and at least giving it a try. Maybe it’s because my family has a history of academia, but I needed something out of this experience, and I got it for those two years. It helped me process things and build some self-worth that was otherwise lacking. I know it’s an expensive way to get that, but I like to think the people I met and the topics we discussed were for the better.
Going back to Tiny Beautiful Things, it was one of those shows I watched post-graduation. I had been a fan of Hahn on Mrs. Fletcher, which was about a woman learning to live independently following her son going to college. The HBO series was a raucous good time and I also appreciated depicting her as an unconventional college student. She may have been very much of her generation, but she still was able to engage with the student body around her. I wanted to believe that Tiny Beautiful Things would be in a similar vein, especially given that it focused on a dysfunctional family with its own plethora of problems. Also, did I mention she’s a writer who is much more candid than I would ever care to be?
On the one hand, I feel like the series is meticulously crafted to enhance the feel-good elements of the story. The humor is more prominent than the melancholic touches. There wouldn’t be anything that challenging because the viewer instinctively knew that everything would work out. It was a safe show even as it tackled Clare’s difficult life. The tiny, beautiful things that the title referred to were about slowing down to appreciate what makes life worthwhile. Given that I was in my own existential space, I felt like it was enough of a hook for this character study.
There’s no denying that I found myself cradled by the show. There was always something comforting about Hahn, and I think it made her struggles easier to digest. Even as she discussed the unwanted discomforts, I was able to root for her and believe that things would get better. It was there in every discussion while walking down a tree-laden pathway. The inspirational music would kick in and you’d feel that flutter in your chest. For a show about grappling with a complicated past, it was the most conflict-free way of handling it. There would be bad days, but I just had to stop and remember the tiny, beautiful things passing me by.
Enough prolonging. Why would I single out “The Nose” as an episode that absolutely walloped me? I’m sure those who can connect the pieces will already predict where things are going.
The catalyst for the story comes from Rae’s daughter telling Clare that she doesn’t want to go back to school. As someone very familiar with how younger generations feel about school, it’s a perspective that I was able to see from both sides. On the one hand, what are you going to do with a degree? When you’re younger and have decent social media networking skills, why do you need to focus on an archaic way of learning? The market is changing so radically that I am personally confused and scared about how to move forward. Clare only wanted the best for Rae, providing an opportunity that she didn’t get to achieve.
However, the reason that Clare didn’t get a diploma is much more complicated than simply being a dumb college student. She wasn’t the most focused student. At different times she’s seen hooking up in the library and enjoying the more frivolous activities that come with Greek life. It’s the trap that a lot of us fall into, especially when there’s no parental supervision. Those early months are so cathartic because everything feels freer. Clare definitely took advantage of that, and it’s easy to see her shift from the studious person into the bigger trainwreck she would be known as. With that said, she wasn’t yet at her worst nor were certain decisions driven by a necessarily evil catalyst.
Watching this episode, I was prepared to think that Clare’s turning point was driven by personal failures. Maybe she would become pregnant or hospitalized from an accident. Could addiction get ahold of her at a young age? All of these were plausible options.
This isn’t to say that I related to the episode because of Clare’s personal actions. I was more connected to her sense of indecision following high school. While I had wanted to be a journalism student, the year was 2010 and print media was dying. There was no certainty of what my future in the field could’ve been. Also, I think when you’re that age, you feel immortal and like everything will stay this wonderful forever. Sure, you might wake up once or twice with a headache, but it wasn’t anything you couldn’t walk off. Didn’t pass your math class? There’s always next semester. Just copy your old notes and maybe it would all make sense.
The only issue is that at a certain point, you realize that everyone around you is passing you by. They graduated and you’re still taking the same math class next semester. It’s not exactly easy to return home to your family and be like, “Maybe this will be the one” because part of you knows that it can’t be true. You don’t have the aptitude to survive in college. I’ve had teachers privately tell me that I should drop the class because my grades were that bad. For something that I felt would validate me, it felt frustrating how unable I was to grasp it while my friends were snapping up that paper in a cap and gown.
I don’t know how much better my life would be had I been a more focused student. I think there’s a part of Clare that also ponders. She has gotten older and hasn’t straightened her life out. Would life have played out differently had college been more about the books? Maybe it would be less interesting, but it’s the woe of growing older and having little to show for yourself. Even the advice column she runs is facetious because whatever she’s spewing isn’t what she’s practicing.
But again, that’s not what “The Nose” is about in the greater sense. It’s about understanding why she didn’t graduate school. In a time where media is obsessed with endless “What if?” plots, I watch Tiny Beautiful Things and I see my own path starting to unravel. It’s there in a complicated parental relationship. It’s in choosing immediate joy over the long game. You’re naïve and want to believe that everything will fix itself. Everything will be as it always was… until one day, it isn’t.
Much like Rae, Clare tells her mother that she doesn’t want to go to school. She convinces her daughter to go, but it proves to be a tumultuous road. The episode title refers to a Nikolai Gogol story “The Nose” that Clare must write a paper on. By being incapable of doing this simple analysis, she fails to graduate. Then, there’s the kicker. After years of struggling to connect with her mom, Clare learns that she has passed weeks before graduation. It’s the type of mistake that everyone will put too much weight on. They’ll think of the cosmic forces that aligned to have someone you love last see you at your worst. No matter what success Clare could achieve, her mother had only seen her as a failure. While everything else was merely fun, the spiraling that followed was a coping mechanism that numbed everything out.
It was here that I ultimately related to “The Nose.” It’s not because anything drove me to alcoholism or reckless behavior, but there’s still the reality that some things just hurt. If you lose someone meaningful before they see you thrive, it will hurt you. For me, graduating in 2019 was triumphant, but it was also a lot of reckoning with the irrational thought that I waited too long. It took me 11 years to achieve an associate’s. I’m an idiot. The people who believed in me would never see me finally reach my goal. The only ones left were a lot of indifferent family members. They’re nice and all, but they were not there on my worst days. They cared about my semester-to-semester progress, not how much money I was making. It’s why 2019 was so difficult. I had waited too long to make people proud.
I’m sure there have been more examples of this explored in media, but Tiny Beautiful Things was the first that I felt depicted in a way that made sense. We forget that people are young, naïve, and need to screw up to learn. There’s too much desire to come out swinging, and I think it’s stunted how I see my own successes. While my bachelor’s has brought me less grief, I still wonder how much prouder my grandparents would’ve been if they were here to see it.
So yes, Tiny Beautiful Things is an odd “What if?” for me because it feels like a commentary on what if I had been a perpetual screw-up beyond my early 20s? As difficult as it is to imagine myself being an alcoholic, I could imagine myself adopting other harmful behaviors to cope and essentially grow up a failure. Even then, Clare is not as much of a failure as she thinks. She still is a writer. Some people love her. So much of her life may not be ideal, but there are moments in the series that equate to a sigh of relief.
I’m happy to start the next phase of my life and hopefully build on my own recent success. I think it’ll be difficult because I feel older and less equipped to deal with a youth-oriented world. Even then, I have a lot to offer this world. It’s the one thing this series taught me through the most warm-hug ways possible. As those endless Hulu commercials would tell me for the rest of 2023, the most important thing that I needed to do was stop and appreciate the tiny, beautiful things in my life. If I could understand that, then maybe I can appreciate so much more.
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