Panhandle and the Problem of Other People
The moral case for understanding that you can't get away from other people, no matter how much we might want to.
Other people suck.
Anyone who’s spent any time with someone else knows how incredibly infuriating they can be. Which is to say everyone, since you can’t really get away from people in any meaningful sense. Human beings can be petty and cruel and they are likely to do something that you have a problem with. It can be as simple as looking at you the wrong way or as painful as betrayal and in the worst cases violence of some kind.
This is something that can make you want to get away from them. To try and limit your contact with other people as much as possible. At least if you can get away from them, you’re not likely to have them do or say things that hurt you. Or that’s the idea anyway. People often dream of this as an end goal. Going out into the woods somewhere and living entirely off the land. Unfortunately, the reality is that you can’t actually get away from other people. You need them for the most basic things, like food and water and electricity.
All of these things are provided to you by other people in one way or another. Unless you’re willing to go out of your way to hunt for yourself and generate your own energy while living near some body of water, you need others to help you. Very few people have it in them to really completely cut themselves off from the rest of the world and the people around them. Even those who do will at some point meet someone else. There’s just no way to actually get other people out of your life entirely. So you’re stuck with other people whether you like it or not.
Panhandle is fundamentally about how difficult it is trying to get away from other people. Bell Prescott, as played by Luke Kirby, has decided to do everything he can to get away from other people. In part because something terrible happened to someone he cares about. The horrible aspects of other people have been revealed to him in the worst way possible.
Despite the money and power he’s got that allows him to try and cut himself off from the world, he can’t. He lives with his mother who often tries to keep him from going too far in his isolation but at the same time reinforces the idea that going out could get him hurt. Not to mention some of the people he employs to keep his property safe and do the upkeep. Thanks in large part to his personal unwillingness to do the work. He still has need for other people on some level. Most importantly in figuring out what happened to the person he loves the most.
It’s a problem that can’t be fixed, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try.
Do yourself a favour and explore the reality of having to deal with the problem of other people and check out Panhandle as soon as you can.
You can check out Panhandle on Roku in the United States Crave and CTV in Canada.