The Five Spot: I Need Dylan From Severance To Push His Glasses Up His Nose

ALSO: White Lotus fever dreams and a profane little cooking segment

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The opening section is free but the rest is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: You’re killing me, champ

There are bigger things going on in Severance. There are thrills and mysteries and goats and diabolical corporations and mustachioed men on motorcycles and terrifying children and Christopher Walken sometimes. The show is a funhouse, but the trippy kind, with distorted mirrors and hidden rooms and maybe a door that is like one-third the size of a regular door. It’s great television. It can also, at times, be very stressful.

Most of the stress is plot-related, the way things keep burrowing deeper into a conspiracy that seemingly has no bottom. Some of the stress is built-in through camera angles and editing, messing with the pace and your equilibrium to teeter you off-center just enough to unsettle you on a subconscious level. But some of the stress is straightforward, a little thing that’s right in front of you and pushes you to your edge, even if it’s not terribly consequential to the rest of thOH MY GOD DYLAN PUSH YOUR GLASSES UP YOUR FACE.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. It’s just been driving me crazy for so long and I was due to explode at some point. Dylan, played by Zach Cherry, is one of the main characters on the show and I like him very much but as a fellow glasses-wearer myself it simply makes me insane to see a dozen close-ups of his face every week where his glasses have slid down to the middle of his nose.

You gotta push those glasses up, man.

For you and your vision, sure, but mostly for me.

Look at this guy.

PUSH EM UP, DYLAN

INDEX OR MIDDLE FINGER ON THE BRIDGE AND SLIDE THOSE SUCKERS BACK INTO PLACE

THEY’RE GOING TO FALL OFF IF YOU LEAN FORWARD

LOOK

This screencap is from the season two premiere. It was during a very emotional scene between him and John Turturro’s character, Irving. I was supposed to be listening to the words they were saying. I was supposed to be feeling things. But the main thing I was feeling was “I want to reach into that screen and push those goddamn glasses ALL THE WAY UP TO HIS EYEBALLS.” Moments later, as the scene ended, Irving reached forward tenderly and adjusted the glasses for him. It was the most satisfying moment of television I have seen in months.

Strangely, this isn’t the first time a television character’s glasses have driven me insane. It’s not even the first time it happened on an Apple TV show. Sometimes Harrison Ford’s character in Shrinking puts his glasses on his forehead like this…

… and I lose my entire focus because I sit there staring at them wondering how the laws of gravity allow them to stay in place without honking down onto his nose the instant he moves. The lessons here, as far as I can tell, are as follows:

• Severance is a good show

• I need to speak to Zach Cherry and Harrison Ford about their eyeglasses as soon as possible

• I am fine

Thank you.

FOUR: Some things John Mulaney said about his new Netflix talk show that debuts in March