The Daily Beast
Season 2 of ‘Dickinson’: the wildest and strangest poet on TV is back and better than ever
“I don’t need my eyes to see it,” Dickinson’s titular poet tells the concerned family at the start of the second season of Apple’s comedy. All she needs, she says, is her soul. “That’s what I see the truth with.” It may seem strange to begin Emily Dickinson’s journey back to our TV screens with a visit to the ophthalmologist (who her father later decides is a charlatan). But as this season unfolds, it becomes clear that Emily’s iritis is a poetic device in itself – and this commentary on her spiritual vision is more than a fantasy proclamation of a young woman with a known talent for drama. This season finds Emily struggling with the issue of fame. Part of it, like any artist, desperately craves validation. But another part, somewhere deeper, sees that notoriety can destroy as much, or perhaps even more, than it nurtures. Hailee Steinfeld’s masterfully calibrated performance once again provides a gravitational center for the show’s many intertwined themes – questions of who can be seen, the power that the marginalized can grasp within their own invisibility and the liberation that can be found through of spiritual connection. And her fellow performers, particularly Ella Hunt as her love interest, sister-in-law, Sue, and Anna Baryshnikov as her eccentric and youthful sister Lavinia, do spectacular work with more fleshy materials. No one will be shocked to learn that Emily, a poet who certainly contains her crowds, is in love and terrified at the prospect of fame. This season, this internal conflict manifests itself as “Nobody” – a mysterious figure Emily continually bumping into the city, strangely familiar, but invisible to everyone else. “I am nobody,” he keeps repeating. “Who are you?” It’s a question Emily has been asking herself, in one way or another, since Season 1 – but this time, another character came on the scene to try to provide an answer. Sue, Emily’s longtime lover who is now also married to her brother Austin, has become a popular socialite. (“It’s so crazy! Sue is an influencer,” says Lavinia, keeping the show’s anachronistic dialogue alive.) A proud member of America’s burgeoning salon circuit, Sue introduces Emily to prominent real-life newspaper editor Samuel Bowles (brought to former Game of Thrones student Finn Jones). Sam, contrary to the sexist tradition, insists on publishing women in the Springfield Republican. The second season, which opens on Friday with three new episodes, takes place in 1859 – a time that Dickinson’s creator and playwright, Alena Smith, notes was not so different from our own. An information boom, fueled by America’s feverishly growing printing landscape, flourished along with innovations in printing technology – flooding society with more news than ever before. Along with this media frenzy comes a wave of new opportunities for writers like Emily. Under idiosyncratic dialogue and ironic needles falling, Smith says Dickinson’s goal has always been to use history, as well as Dickinson’s work and the literary theory that emerged when he lived, to reflect on our lives today. And fame, as she notes and fans know, “is a biographically complicated issue for Emily Dickinson.” “Obviously, we know that she would vehemently deny that she wanted fame,” said Smith. “She portrayed herself as someone who actively disparaged the impact that fame could have on an artist. But at the same time, you kind of ask yourself, ‘If you keep bringing this up so much, why are you so fascinated by it?’ Just as important to Emily’s relationship with fame this season is the exploration of those who can really ask themselves these questions. A civil war is coming, although not everyone in the Dickinson circle is ready to admit yet – and Henry (Chinaza Uche), a black man who works as a servant for the family, is running his own clandestine publication, one that aims to support and finance black Americans in their quest for liberation. Henry and his fellow authors – including Hattie, played in charming and irreverent humor by Ayo Edebiri of Big Mouth – must publish anonymously for their own safety. Henry’s story, and that of the writers he publishes, provide a counterpoint to the anguish of Samuel and Emily. “I was … trying to ask this season about visibility and invisibility, and who can be seen, and what is the power of not being seen,” said Smith. “It’s interesting because the whole story about Henry is fictional, but … “even if it were real, we wouldn’t necessarily know why the stories are intentionally erased. The work of black radicals throughout American history has been erased and continues today.” Smith notes that she, like the Big Mouth producers, hired Edebiri as a writer. Before long, however, she was “so captivated by her energy and her delicious sense of humor.” Smith already knew that she wanted to create a character like Hattie, and eventually decided to write it for Edebiri on her own. many overlaps between writers and performers; Darlene Hunt, who plays Dickinson’s Irish maid Maggie, is also a screenwriter on the show, as well as Brooklyn comedian Sophie Zucker, who plays the Di’s friend ckinson, Abby, and wrote for the second season (Smith noted that she also brought in the reigning comedy queen in 2020, Ziwe, as a season 3 screenwriter, and is working hard to figure out the best way to get her on the screen as well. ) But Dickinson is still Dickinson – so, alongside these serious and carefully constructed juxtapositions, looking at this time also brings a good dose of humor. Emily and Lavinia organize a session, with guests dressed in wreaths, while Vinnie piously instructs, “Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this room.” (Hattie, the Dickinson sisters’ favorite medium, says to them, “I don’t need to speak to any more dead white people” – until they offer to pay for their services.) A spa day serves a dual function as an exciting exploration and a hilarious display of old treatments, many of which look like torture. And the family’s stroll to a newly built opera house allows each Dickinson to react to the provocative way in his own way. (Emily, of course, is deeply moved; her parents, not so much.) That’s Dickinson’s genius. Where anachronisms in other series may seem forced, Smith and his fellow writers share sensibilities that are clearly in favor of the Internet. (Verses like “She passed out!” “So cool,” they look like they could have straight out of Kate Beaton’s Hark! Vagrant webcomics.) Instead of window dressing, these modern flourishes are the architecture Dickinson was built on, allowing show to emphasize common themes that span from centuries ago to now. Consider, for example, the episode of the show session, “The only ghost I have ever seen”. While researching for the episode, Smith said, she realized “how feminism and abolitionism were growing together and intersectionally with spiritualism and sessions”. A similar thread exists in today’s online liberation movements, Smith noted, as queer astrologers infuse social justice into their work. (Consider the work of Chani Nicholas, a queer astrologer with almost 400,000 followers on Instagram and a very popular blog.) The questions Emily, Lavinia and their friends ask are not all serious. While Emily wants answers to her spiritual distress about fame and relationships and Vinnie wonders if she really wants to marry traditionalist Henry “Ship” Shipley and become an obedient and quiet housewife, her friends are looking for guidance on her food allergies. and what is the best way to clear your houses. (Vinnie’s troubled relationship with Ship, it’s worth noting, is the show’s richest source of comedy this season – thanks to the impeccable performances of Baryhnikov and Pico Alexander, who plays the failed businessman.) But the session, like the spa day is significant as a safe space for exploration. As Smith put it, “Women ‘in a trance’ can say things that otherwise would not be allowed.” This is also the focus of this season – the spaces where women were able to safely explore their feelings about their lives and society without risk of retribution. Still, Emily’s spiritual exploration extends beyond the walls of her home or spa session. She also, once again, takes a ride in the “Death” coach, talking about the personification of her own mortality, played again by Wiz Khalifa, and this time, a late Edgar Allan Poe – brought to “life” by Nick Kroll. “We had to have the two halves of Oh, Hello,” said Smith of the Kroll cast, given John Mulaney’s appearance last season as Henry David Thoreau. “So that was just mandatory.” And over the course of the season, Emily’s interactions with “Nobody” began to turn into something like a dark and prophetic vision of the mortal years to come. It is only after Emily discovers the true meaning of this hallucination that the themes of the season really merge into something bigger – and it is at this point that this second season really surpasses its predecessor, illuminating what Emily’s story and the time she lived in can tell us about our own. As Smith puts it, “The past is the present. That’s the whole problem … We are trying to find our way into the future while we are absolutely chased and haunted by the past. ”Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top news in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.