The winter my Dad was diagnosed with his brain tumor, I’d just started watching the Matt Smith-led season of Doctor Who. With its time-traveling, space-exploring protagonist, the British sci-fi series couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect moment. So much of the Doctor Who experience involves the Doctor plucking his companions out of thin air, asking them to run away with him and save the galaxy, time, and space. As my Dad’s cancer worsened, I couldn’t help but long for a similar escape.
There’s an episode in this first Matt Smith run (it’s technically the show’s fifth season, but the hook of Who lies within the fact the Doctor can regenerate and thus allows for the role to be recast) called “Vincent and the Doctor.” In the wake of a tragedy that finds Amy Pond’s (Karen Gillan) fiancé, Rory (Arthur Darvill) erased from history — and thus leaving her with no memory of him — the Doctor (the aforementioned Matt Smith) takes Amy to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where they admire the work of the one and only Vincent van Gogh. The Doctor discovers a seemingly alien figure in a window of a painting and decides the two must travel back in time to speak to Vincent to uncover the mystery.
Upon meeting Vincent, it’s clear the legendary painter is staring down the tunnel of his final months, as he eventually confesses he feels the work he’s doing is of little value. After figuring out the mystery behind the monster in the painting, Amy insists — driven by her subconsciousness realizing she’s suffered a significant loss in Rory’s departure — on bringing Vincent to the modern day in an attempt to change the future. Upon returning to the d’Orsay, the painter is overwhelmed by the exhibit — and is shocked to hear curator Dr. Black (Bill Nighy, in an uncredited cameo) state van Gogh was both “the great painter of them all” and “one of the greatest men who ever lived.” Amy believes this is enough to change the fates.
It’s not. Vincent still commits suicide weeks later. Upon returning, the Doctor has a conversation with Amy in which he states, “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good thing don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.” After this, Amy runs to one of van Gogh’s infamous sunflowers and realizes the artist has inscribed it to her.
This bit of dialogue, courtesy of Four Wedding and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and About Time writer Richard Curtis, knocked me out when I watched it. I desperately clung to it in the days, weeks, and months after Dad’s passing as it a way to help orient myself during the darkness of grief. I tried, desperately, to remember the happy times instead of the moments where he was sick. It was complicated, in the way grief always is, to sort through; I was lucky to have those memories but devastated to realize those recollections were all I would have. There would be no more experiences. It felt like the scales of good things, and bad things weren’t necessarily balanced.
Sunflower iconography soon became a shorthand to remind me of this quote. When I went to England in 2014, I was obsessed with going to the National Gallery to see their copy. I got a button with the portrait. If I buy flowers for myself, they’re typically sunflowers. Something so cheery was a way to remind me of the good moments.
In December, I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and came across a brand selling this cardigan. It reminded me of a lot of things: a sweater you might see your grandmother wearing, a panting, and yes — of van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Amongst menswear circles, there’s a certain stigma with buying “timeline” brands. If they’ve got the money for any sort of robust digital marketing campaign, they’re too mainstream or popular to have anything worthy of purchasing. This wasn’t the case here; the cardigan felt like such a perfect representation of that good feeling. It’s so bright and cheery that I can’t help but be reminded of those good moments just looking at it.
The cardigan arrived last week. I think back to where I was in February of 2011 when we were still in the early days of Dad’s diagnosis. I wanted to escape — to run away with a mad man in a box and avoid the future I anticipated was coming. I cherish and revere the time I did end up having with him. They’re woven into the tapestry of my life. All I have to do is think back — and he’ll blossom back to life.
Thanks for hanging in there while I took last week off. I think I’ve got a few more installments of this first season left before I take a longer break to gear up for what’s next. I have a pretty good idea that I’m really excited about — but it will certainly take a bit more prep time to execute.
For Complex this week, I reviewed the WandaVision finale. I think the series mostly succeeded in its overall goal, but like all Marvel projects, kind of suffers when it’s time to wrap things up. Save it for after you watch the finale.
I also wrote an explainer on what you’ll need to know about the launch of Paramount+, which is basically just an updated version of CBS All Access but with a new, “mountain of content.”
Finally, I reviewed the upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation of Cherry. Despite a fantastic performance from Tom Holland, it all just doesn’t quite hang together.
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