Brand New Cherry Flavor - General Discussion

[AnimeMania]

Set in the mid 1990s. Lisa N. Nova (Rosa Salazar) comes to LA dead set on directing her first movie. But when she trusts the wrong person and gets stabbed in the back, everything goes sideways and a dream project turns into a nightmare. This particular nightmare has zombies, hit men, supernatural kittens, and a mysterious tattoo artist who likes to put curses on people. And Lisa’s going to have to figure out some secrets from her own past in order to get out alive.

This 8 episode limited series is based on a novel of the same name by Todd Grimson. The series stars Rosa Salazar, Catherine Keener, Eric Lange, Manny Jacinto and Jeff Ward. 

Brand New Cherry Flavor” premieres Aug. 13 on Netflix.

[bilgistic]

We binged this in two days this weekend. I really liked it but it was so weird. I had a really weird dream after watching the first five episodes. I'm still kind of processing it all.

[Nicmar]

I am going to have this.

[AnimeMania]

Article with lots of spoilers about how the show was made

Spoiler

‘Brand New Cherry Flavor’: Rosa Salazar Really Threw Up That Kitten, Plus More Nightmarish Facts

 

[Nordly Beaumont]

I really enjoyed it. The ending wasn't strong, and there wasn't enough Manny Jacinto (there's never enough Manny Jacinto) but it was a fun watch.

[AnimeMania]

Jeff Ward on ‘Brand New Cherry Flavor,’ Not Going Half-Way With Material Like This, and Being Inspired by 'Mulholland Drive'

[laprin]

Love it or hate it, it wasn’t boring! I enjoyed it! The first six episodes were stronger than the last two. It was a tame ending to a wild ride. Rosa Salazar, Catherine Keener and Eric Lange gave stellar performances. 

[SlovakPrincess]

So I binge watched this last night because a) insomnia, and b) I was in the mood for something spooky because Halloween is around the corner.  But seriously, what the hell was this??  LMAO.

The only good thing here is the acting - notably, by Rosa Salazar (who is uniquely appealing even when simply staring in horror), and by Eric Lange (who gave Lou just the right combination of phony laid-back LA guy and seething insecure rage).  I like Catherine Keener a lot, but Borro was basically her evil Get Out character with terrible clothing, disgusting nails, and a bunch of crazy magical powers.  My only laugh during this whole mess (which was supposed to have some quirky humor in it ... I guess) were at Jeff Ward's perfect, deadpan delivery of the line "so you've been ... producing ... kittens?", when Lisa explains to love interest Ray she's been magically barfing up live kittens as part of freakish witch Borro's curse.  

This was just a lot of grotesque, stomach-churning imagery and weirdness in service to some pretty overdone and conventional themes: Hollywood is sleazy and predatory (Lou sexually harasses and then steals a film idea from indie director Lisa) and revenge can be dangerous and usually isn't worth it (Lisa turns to witch Borro for revenge on Lou, which leads to a bunch of gruesome deaths for a bunch of other people and nasty things happening to Lisa herself).  Don't even get me started on the grossness of the "sex" scene - I can't conceive of any way in which that advanced the plot, or made any sense for the characters of otherwise relatively normal Lisa and Ray.  Witches, magical revenge curses, terrifying spirits ... ok, fine, but it's eye-roll-inducing when you then throw in zombies and body-switching and copious amounts of body horror, and the plot relies on "it's just magic!" to address fairly compelling questions (like the horrifying, painful open wound in Lisa's side causes no other problems to her, it just conveniently closes by the next morning - because Borro's magical, did we mention??  No need to have internal logic or anything!).  

Spoiler

In the end, Ray is the umpteenth character to die (a shame, I actually liked only him by the end), and Lisa gives up on Hollywood and goes home to Brazil, because, gosh darn it, the movie she was absolutely homicidal over and which started this insane mess was only ever about trying to somehow reach out to her long-missing and probably dead mother, and there's no place like home.  Another conventional and trite theme.  Why she thought her bizarre film of a woman gouging out her own eye would make her mom remember and be proud of her is ... puzzling.  

I dozed through part of this and honestly probably missed important plot points.  I seriously didn't care by the end because whatever point was being made here was lost in all the madness.  

 

[SlovakPrincess]

Days later this is still annoying me, so I have to rant about it somewhere ... it bothered me that in a way the series was almost justifying Lou's point of view (that everyone is predatory in Hollywood and his initial treatment of Lisa wasn't that bad, relatively speaking), by repeatedly making the point that Lisa's revenge was getting innocents killed, she used people to help her own goals, and her own behavior before coming to LA was ... really quite bad.

Spoiler

I mean ... come on.  Her "film" was shit.  The reason people thought it was good was they thought she'd used amazing special effects to depict "Lucy" mutilating herself.  In reality she just ... recorded a woman (Mary, an actress Lisa supposedly cared about at one time) actually mutilating herself while out of her mind on hallucinogens.  It's adjacent to a snuff film.  And then Lisa walked around being proud of and protective of this awful recording, basically lying by letting people think she's this naturally talented director who pulled off an amazing scene, instead of feeling horrible about what happened to Mary.   

In addition to being monstrous, Lisa is also stupid.  What did she think would happen if Mary tracked her down and got wind of the fact that Lisa was trying to profit off of Mary's pain and suffering?    

 

[janie jones]

On 8/16/2021 at 10:05 AM, AnimeMania said:

This particular nightmare has zombies, hit men, supernatural kittens, and a mysterious tattoo artist who likes to put curses on people.

I don't normally comment when I am two years late to the party, but I would be remiss not to say that this sounds exactly like something Stefon would say on SNL.