The disturbing jubilation of “The Baldwins”

At the beginning of “Mulholland Drive”, the late, great David Lynch’s surreal masterpiece of the American aspiration and degeneration from 2001, the young innocent Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) from Los Angeles from Kleinstadt Ontario arrives in order to follow her dream of becoming an actress. On the way to La, Betty becomes friends with a sweet couple seniors with whom she then takes part in the airport. “It’s time to say goodbye, Betty. It was so nice to travel with you, ”says the older woman, her eyes dye friendly. “Remember I will look for you on the big screen!” “Ok, Irene. It won’t be the day! “Betty answers, hugs the woman and shakes the hand of the man who wants her” all the luck in the world “. When Betty comes into a taxi, the couple also enters a car to probably make themselves in town. But when Lynch’s camera grasps her in the back seat, the healthy mood suddenly shifts. And to question their earlier sincerity.

I kept thinking about this scene when I “The Baldwins”, a new reality show on TLC, with the former star of “30 Rock” and the frequent “SNL” host Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria, a yoga teacher, twenty -five years, and their seven children, whose ages range from two to eleven, on TLC and the frequent “SNL” host moderator viewed. It is not the case that “the Baldwins” Lynchian could also be named-it is a fairly conventional reality TV program that hardly participates in the crazy dream logic of “Mulholland Drive”. And yet the emphasis on the threat and despair by the director, who is behind the forced smile of a boring, optimistic conviviality – as David Foster Wallace Lynch described “strange irony of banal” – made me to the Baldwin clan show, which follows the family members when they try to achieve an extended moment of crisis through an expanded crisis.

In 2021, when in New Mexico, on the set of western “Rust”, Alec Baldwin fired a prop -weapon that, without being known, was loaded with a round of living ammunition. The ball beat and killed the film’s cameraman, Halyna Hutchins – who left a husband and a little son – and Baldwin was later charged with involuntary homicide in a chain of events that were closely covered by the media. “The Baldwins” documents the family in the days of Alec’s legal proceedings in the summer of 2024, and how the case is rejected in a courtroom in Santa Fe after the prosecution has held back evidence. However, the focus of the show is not on the legal advantages and disadvantages of the procedure, still Hutchin’s’ tragic death, but the effects of these occurrences on the life of the Baldwin family and in particular on the challenges that Alec and Hilaria are confronted with when they try to successfully educate their many children through the tumult. “When something bad happens,” says Hilaria of the camera, “and you have to look at the children and you have to say, you know:” I will put a smile on my face and we will pretend it! “”

As a parent, it is sometimes necessary to wear a mask of happiness to protect his children not only from inner fear, but also from harsh outdoor realities. But the strange and uncomfortable thing to “The Baldwins” is that the attitude that Hilaria indicates as mother tactic also seems to serve as a way for the family to present itself more generally in the show, perhaps trying to make a picture rehabilitation according to the “rust” Schroing. “I have to fill the days of my children with positive energy,” says Hilaria. “It does not mean that we ignore bad things, but you have to see a smile on my face, you have to see that I am crazy and silly.” “The Baldwins” treats the audience as if they were children too. While they withdraw the curtain and reveal the real life that happens behind the scrim of scandal and celebrity – to find out in Hilaria: “Where do you go from a tragedy” – the show mainly ends in a frozen Rictus Grin, the dark underside of which only attracts insights.

Before the trial, the Baldwins were no strangers for the negative attention of the media. When he met Hilaria: “Then I sucked her into this dirty, disgusting world in which I was.” A public excitement that the family experienced had to do with the question of the Spanish heritage of Hilaria, which many should claim to her, even though she was born under the name Hillary and partly grew up in Boston. Her Spanish accent still appears occasionally on the show. (“The Baldwins” or at least the three episodes that have been broadcast so far only briefly deals with Spaniards: “We are a mixture of all these different things,” says Hilaria Vague, of her affinity of Picasso and Cervantes’ motherland, in which she has a lot to do. Tacificable hot temperament of your buddies. to deal with alec.

In a way, “The Baldwins” is a relapse: When I watched, my mind turned to early and medium two thousands of reality shows such as “Branyweds” with the then loved ones of America, Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, or “The Osbournes”, that Osbourn-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häckel-Häcking-Hätza families to be seen. Even “Jon & Kate Plus 8”, which followed a couple Pennsylvania and their eight wildly wagging children in Pennsylvania. Like this series, “The Baldwins” is an at least half-bound chronicle of an eccentric but loving family unit that carries out its banal activities, which is garnished with many high-jinks manufactured and an unforgettable happy soundtrack and lands somewhere between the topics “Benny Hill Show” and “Rosa Panther”. We follow the family to a hairdresser shop, or when they bake a cake and mess with it, or if they take far too long to stack in two cars that drive home to Baldwin East Hamptons for summer. (From time to time, a silent nanny appears on the edge of the frame, a child in a car seat or sprays another with sunscreen.) Even Alecs fear, which is enlarged after the experiment, and the form of obsessive compulsive disorders absorbs, occasionally for lighter how he is peeling the family, in the peeling of the family, in the peeling, the pages, in the peeling in the guests Strip, in the peel. (The Hilaria says that the father of seven children is a “strange decision” that her husband hit in the face of his mental problems.)

However, all of these forced jubilation grows on an essentially tragic structure, like so much treacherous Kudzu. Of course, there is the terrible fact of Hutchin’s death (which is recognized by both Baldwins several times). But also the second -order trauma and the suffering of the couple and especially from Alec after shooting, which we occasionally see under the family gimmicks. “There were times when I was lying in bed and I would go Wow, I can’t get up“, He says the camera and looks like hell. It is undoubtedly something insensitive to make this show after Hutchins’ death. And it is probably no less not to see a show about still unresolved agony and grief that corralates his family into an extended act of performance. “The stress and pressure of public life in my age are not good for my mental health,” Alec told a therapist whom he and Hilaria decide to learn how to be quiet. The fact that the session from the public ALEC claim to want to avoid is shot for consumption seems to be in the cross-purple with his express request. Nevertheless, the show has to go on. At least the production is a way for us to continue to look after the Baldwins, if not on the big screen, then on the little one. ♦