By Georgia Grellier | Illustration by Xixi Qin
Welcome back to Story Time with Georgia, where I relay various stories from members of the CC community, and also sometimes just me. Stay inside, wash your germy little hands, and tell People magazine to make Dr. Fauci this year’s sexiest man alive, please.
Who: Definitely not me
When: Last week
What:
I’m just going to cut to the chase here: there is almost nothing more consistently uncomfortable than the experience of watching a movie or show with your parents and sitting through a sex scene that is longer than 30 seconds. You’re simply watching a movie with your parents or other parent-like figure, and then all of a sudden two characters just have to start hooking up on camera and, depending on your family dynamic, the vibe inevitably becomes at least some level of awkward.
With this pretty relatable scenario in mind, pretend that instead of this happening with your own parents, you’re sitting on the couch across from your new boyfriend’s parents. Also pretend that because of a global pandemic, you are suddenly straight up living with said new boyfriend and his aforementioned parents. As you might have guessed from that excessively specific hypothetical, a Colorado College senior was, in fact, in this very situation at least thrice in the past seven days.
Now, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is a cringy show, but normally it is not too explicit to watch with parents — that is, until you quarantine binge watch all the way to season eight and watch an episode alone with your boyfriend’s father, which is what this student did. The episode started out somewhat benignly, and even the turn it took when there was a scene of Larry David having sex with some random character was tolerable. By the 10-minute mark, though, during which yet another (and this time longer) sex scene took place, things felt considerably more uncomfortable.
At around 10 minutes and 30 seconds, the father did the only thing that could have made everything so much less and simultaneously more awkward, which was to turn off the TV, say, “We can’t watch this,” and leave the room as if nothing had ever happened. The CC senior was, of course, more than happy to do the latter as well.
One sex scene with people who are parents but not your own parents was weird for this student, but knowing that they were just as uncomfortable as she was, the second time it happened was somehow actually weirder. No spoilers here, but the first episode of “Little Fires Everywhere” does end with Reese Witherspoon’s character having sex with her husband for at least two minutes, which is normally ‘whatever’ unless you are watching such content alone with your boyfriend’s parents for the second time in two days. Definitely-not-me was like, “God of streaming services, can you please cut me a break.”
Also, last night at the moment not-me happened to walk by the TV there was a sex scene again, which was fine because not-me just kept walking, but really? Again? I don’t even think I’m being dramatic when I say that it was super awkward and during a global pandemic we all deserve to be spared such moments. Larry David, if you’re reading this, you’re super funny but please mail not-me a handwritten apology note. Thanks.
Takeaway: “Little Fires Everywhere” is basically a slightly inferior “Big Little Lies” but everyone should still watch it; it’s super good.