Over the last few weeks, I watched a show called Slip. (This show seems to have originally aired on Roku, I watched it on Peacock.) It’s weird and quirky – if I were to describe it here, you could only infer that I really loved it. It is everything I look for in art, a new perspective that is challenging and deep and speaks to my own life. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100%. It must have been awesome. But I’m not sure I did love it.

There’s a married woman, Mae, who “slips” into parallel worlds (I guess it’s not that weird to us, we understand this from the MCU and it’s multiversal phase), where she has different lives, different marriages, partners, habits and values. The woman (Zoe Lister-Jones, who created, wrote, directed & starred) has something to learn (about life, in general, maybe, but certainly about her life) and she does. Lister-Jones is wildly talented. In episode 7, she even sings a version of “Every Breath You Take” that will stop you and bring you to tears. It still sounds like I loved it. I wonder if I did.

A website called Den of Geek writes, “Essentially, the mystery points back to the exhibit in the pilot, where Mae tells us about the Hungry Ghost. She says they are beings living in six different realms of existence in a state of chronic deprivation and longing. They crave nourishment (both literally and figuratively), but they’re incapable of digesting it. This perfectly symbolizes Mae’s journey: no matter what alternate reality she’s in (with multiple different versions of who she could be), she’s unequipped to find peace and acceptance without looking for a solution within herself. She has to face and address her own struggles and internal suffering head-on to find the kind of life that can make her happy.”

Maybe our culture makes sure we’re all always in a state of chronic deprivation and longing? What do we do when what we crave doesn’t provide the peace and acceptance we’re searching for, and we’re left with our own struggles and internal suffering? We don’t like to face things, especially our own emptiness and sense of meaninglessness – what if the “new” and “more” don’t fulfill? Then what? Probably, we keep walking the same paths “new” and “more,” keeping the noise loud and fast so we can’t hear our hearts break.

I may spoil it here, so beware…Her original, episode 1 life was simple and what can look like what we are sometimes told is the boring monotony of commitment. But it was that relationship that she sought the rest of the journey, and to which she eventually returned. This was fairly surprising. Hollywood has a very hard time showing the beauty of a connected marriage, after the peaks and above the valleys, once we settle into real life. Maybe Lister-Jones isn’t married, but I’m guessing she is, and I suspect she might be very happy and full. She says to her husband, “we weren’t perfect, but we were a team and there was a lot of love and support.” That’s every marriage. It’s a lie that passion and spontaneity and surprise doesn’t happen in long, loving marriages. The passion is deeper and weighs so much more without any superficiality. And as we each grow and change, we are never without surprise, it’s just that we stop looking, listening, and learning. “More” and “new” might seem cool, but we end up just looking to slip into something more substantial.

Still, it sounds like I loved it, and I keep thinking that might not be accurate. Why? Why can’t I just say it? I want to say “it’s complicated,” but the more I consider, it’s not too complicated at all. I watched a show that was interesting – I thought about BIG spiritual concepts, about meaning and purpose, it made me think of The Angel, and a million other things. This show has me thinking about it the next day and might for a while. Of course, I loved it.