Diksha Sundriyal
In Showtime’s ‘The Curse,’ we follow Whitney and Asher Siegel on a turbulent journey to get their HGTV show made. The couple are home renovators and remodel houses into ecologically sustainable places, while also trying to help the local communities. But that’s not the whole story. There is a difference between what the Siegels show to the world and who they actually are. The show tackles this issue, even if the Siegels themselves might be unaware of this duplicity in their own nature, with the existence of a curse. In the third episode of the show, the Siegels discover that there is another layer to the curse, and they have TikTok to thank for it. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Tiktok Trend Adds the Air of Mystery About the Curse
In the first episode of ‘The Curse,’ when Asher is cursed by a young girl named Nala, he struggles to take it seriously. He feels bad about taking back the money he gave to her and tries to make it up to her and her family, especially after Whitney urges him to, but even then, he doesn’t take it so seriously. He thinks it was just a thing the little girl had said, and it doesn’t really mean anything. Until it does. Just when Asher starts to think it might be real, he discovers that the girl cursed him because it was a trend on TikTok.
Nala reveals that kids these days are doing a thing called mini-curses, which they throw around for fun. The idea is to mess with the other person. So, you think about something silly, like a person having their shoelaces untied. You say, “I curse you,” while thinking about their shoes, and the next thing you know, the laces are untied. It’s a mini-curse because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is more of a prank than a way to ruin someone’s life.
Later, Asher scours Tiktok, looking at the “I curse you” videos, but that’s what they all appear to be: videos edited to make it look like the curse is real. All the videos have kids doing something silly to each other, and it’s clear that it’s just another trend the kids are doing, and it would die down when something new comes up. While it might be trendy to mini-curse people in the world of ‘The Curse,’ there is no such trend as of yet in the real world. Who knows, people might be inspired to do it after watching ‘The Curse,’ which would be quite weird and, in some eerie ways, sit well with the theme of the show. But for now, it remains a fictional thing.
While the trend might not have been plucked from real life, its presence on TikTok on the show makes the audience wonder if the curse was just a part of the trend or if it was real. Nala says that she wished that Asher wouldn’t have chicken in his chicken spaghetti when she cursed him, and that’s exactly what happens in the first episode, where Asher spends a lot of time talking to the restaurant from where he got the food, telling them about the missing chicken.
With the talk of the trend, both Asher and the audience are forced to give more thought to the curse and what it being real or fake would mean for the Siegels going forward. Perhaps the missing chicken was just a coincidence. Perhaps it really was a silly mini-curse. But then, what if it wasn’t? It wouldn’t be the first time a kid believed something they saw on TikTok. So, if Nala believed in the curse, how potent could it be? This is where the TikTok trend comes into play, making the audience question the nature of Asher’s reality.
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