Lousy Carter (2024)

The guy from Numbers, now rounder and more young John Goodman-y, is a professor who exclusively teaches an 8-person graduate-level class on The Great Gatsby over a soundtrack of very gentle synthesizer beeps and boops.

Everything in his life is more-or-less terrible, which he handles by sighing and looking around disappointedly. He finds out he's dying in 6 months, which is presumably the plot setup, but it doesn't really affect anything that anybody does.

He hangs out with generally smart people who are generally calmly disinterested in each other and everything, who sarcastically quip at each other about their first-world problems. It's quite possible that they've all recently watched The Dead Don't Die (2019) and liked what they saw.

Bill Haverchuck, the nerdy kid from Freaks And Geeks, is his best friend(ish).

"The book glorifies the banal," says one of his students, in reference to The Great Gatsby, but clearly presenting the obvious parallel with the film itself. She then continues smashing that metaphor in with a metaphorical sledgehammer of metaphors.

He's sleeping with his best friend's wife, but none of them really like each other that much. The wife nonchalantly tells her husband about the affair, and they're all a bit extra sarcastic with each other for a while.

He's vaguely trying to sleep with another one of his students, but he's not very committed to it. Nor is she. She follows him around and makes fun of him, and drinks beer in his class.

He is not trying to sleep with his ex-girlfriend and/or wife, but she's very often around. She also makes fun of him.

Stephen Root, his shrink, puts on an Austrian accent and refuses to interpret his dreams.

The camera has a stylistic lens flare in a very high percentage of the scenes, and it is rare that two people are on screen at the same time. Even when they are right next to each other, the cameraman ensures they do not share a frame. This is probably some visual representation of "surrounded by people, but all alone."

His doctor is about as competent as the one from Arrested Development, and it turns out he just had a hernia. Surviving means he has to pay his American healthcare bills, a fate worse than death. Luckily, he doesn't survive the day. His acquaintances give calm, disinterested, sarcastic speeches at his wake.