16 Rachels | Episode 5
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Keaton Smith
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic
Rachel gives herself a buzz cut and tries to quit vaping.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Buzz cut plus a vape-quit attempt. That's a logline a network exec would hand back with notes — which is precisely what makes it worth twelve minutes of my attention.
A self-administered buzz cut and a nicotine taper as the load-bearing events is the kind of dramatic compression I respect when it's earned. Whether it's earned at this scale is the question only the watching answers.
Self-administered buzz cut + nicotine taper as the load-bearing events of an episode is a real character-study commitment. Two minor crises treated with full weight is the series' thesis in miniature.