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The latest episode of Dickinson is called ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ which is a poem that’s all about questioning attention and fame, being a ‘Nobody’ ignored instead of a ‘Somebody’ that’s akin to a frog chirping for no audience at all:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
Naturally the theme of fame and being seen has been a big part of the season, which has extended from just Emily to the rest of her family and even others around them. The episode starts with Emily’s poem ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’ published under the nom de plume of ‘E. Dickinson’ — a bit of a departure from reality, as although the poem was published in that newspaper, it was entirely anonymously.
But mysteriously Emily seems to be invisible, or so she figures, unable to be seen or heard by anyone around her. This is never explained, but perhaps it doesn’t need to be — there’s a sort of metaphor there about the anonymous poem versus her potential fame and the magical reality of the show already introduced.
The poem uses a metaphor about drunkenness to comment on the intoxication of the natural world, but this is amusingly used to have first Lavinia and Ship, and then others, try to interpret what it means. Lavinia, who considers Emily her hero as we know, gets it naturally correct, but other people seem to struggle with it. Ship takes the seemingly obvious but completely wrong take that it’s just about getting drunk off alcohol.
This leads to a conclusion that’s been a long time coming: Ship and Lavinia breaking up. Neither is really seeing each other at all, not Lavinia with her spider dance, calling herself (delightfully) a twisted, witchy, creative woman, and Ship wanting a traditional wife. Because they had a strong physical attraction, they’d been putting aside their fundamental personality differences and actual desires for a partner.
Poor Austin isn’t seen by anyone, especially not his wife. After a bizarre conversation with Emily in which other people seem to think he’s talking to himself, he reveals in the moment that of course he can see her — Emily is the only thing he’s proud of, because she’s doing something ‘real’. And even the pretty things Austin has bought are empty and sometimes even fake, without anything beneath them.
As for Emily, she seems the mysterious Mr. Nobody again, but nothing about his reality is really answered, not exactly. The dude offers an interesting angle, that because she is invisible, Emily can listen in and find out what other people are saying about her poem. The sort of insight you crave and are terrified by as a creative person. Some people are complimentary but talk about wanting to masturbate over it, others dismiss its rhyming scheme, and others, like her friends, praise it without getting it at all.
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But all this conversation about being seen is thrown into a meeting between Henry and many free Black people about their newspaper — he asks the question explicitly, are they now being seen? The implication, of course, is seen as people instead of property or less than human. And we get some callbacks as Hattie argues with Henry ‘Box’ Brown about his act. Emily watches all this, invisible (it would seem) and enthralled, especially when they all decide to dance to the strains of ‘Gon’ Blow’ by Cakes da Killa.
Austin pulls her out of there, but the story isn’t over, as she sees the return of Death’s carriage led by ghostly steeds. Once she’s in the carriage, she’s wearing her fancy red dress again — the symbolism is certainly a bit confusing. Although she only wants a ride to Sue’s place, we dip a bit into more comedy with the appearance of Edgar Allen Poe (a hilarious Nick Kroll). Not sure about the accent Nick Kroll’s doing, but he’s quite funny, especially with his back and forth with Death.
Poe amusingly says that he died under mysterious circumstances which is very on brand (a callback to Emily discussing darkness as her brand a few episodes ago), although Death corrects him that he actually drank himself to death. The back and forth between him and Emily was quite interesting — I’m not sure they ever met in reality, and he died in 1849 so certainly they’re fudging the timeline here. Although Poe remarks about how ‘fame is an addiction’, an interesting contrast to the commentary about fame from the opera singer two episodes ago, his appearance is closed off with a naturally pitch perfect joke about missing his ‘cousin/child bride Virginia’.
But Emily muses that ‘Fame is a bee’, another poem that is good and short enough to put here:
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.
The poem echoes as we hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘You Want It Darker’ until Emily tries to find Sue. But again, nobody sees Emily and our suspicions are proven correct as Sam and Sue start to hook up. A betrayal on every front, and then while Sam gets to work, Sue seems to look at Emily, or see her — but does she? My mind is still shaken by it, and we get a banging song over the credits, ‘Strange Days (1999)’ by Health. I feel like the show is taking things in a few odd ways, but there’s certainly a metaphor that can be gleaned about Emily not being seen by Sue or Sam as a viable partner, except that perhaps it breaks when Sue sees her.
It’s a different sort of vibe than a lot of the episodes, but it was supremely entertaining and hard to interpret even thinking on it later. Really a great one overall.
What did you think of this episodes? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
New episodes of Dickinson are available Fridays on Apple TV+.
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