You know that when a series kicks off with an ALF parody, things are going to get weird. But even by those standards, Julio Torres’s latest HBO project, Fantasmas, goes above and beyond the bizarre call of duty. Scene after scene, the dreamlike comedy weaves its way through surreal sketches, and in its second episode, it debuts the funniest of them all—a kinky exchange in which Euphoria star Alexa Demie and the iconic interviewer extraordinaire Ziwe Fumudoh play customer service reps who derive untold amounts of pleasure from following the rules and being categorically unhelpful to their “valued customers.”
The strangeness begins when Torres’s character (also named Julio) calls his health insurance company to resolve a frustrating discrepancy in his paperwork. That’s when he encounters a special kind of villain named Becca, played by Demie. Her cubicle is decorated with photos of herself sitting at her desk, and its walls feature a cut-out square so that she can reach her hand through for an automatic squirt of hand sanitizer. She’s got huge shoulder pads, a cinched waist, and terrifying posture. In a word, she is The System incarnate.
As she steadfastly refuses to help Julio, Becca’s internal monologue starts purring. “There’s nothing that excites me more than when a valued customer gets… agitated,” she says. “… I am a soldier for the company. A defender of the rules. Assembly Plan Insurance is the company, and I am his sword.”
Although Becca might sound like a craven void where affection goes to die, she actually loves a lot of things—like banks, credit cards, the military, law and order, and undressed iceberg lettuce salads. And yet, her adoration for “the rules” comes crashing down when she realizes that in spite of her many years of hard work, the company has just promoted her less experienced colleague—the president’s daughter—to manager instead of her.
Suddenly, all of that lawfulness flies out the window. In a shocking ne’er-do-well move, Becca decides to use the computer for personal use and books a vacation for next year. Scandalously, she decides to alert her supervisor only 10 months before she takes her trip. The horror!
But then, as often happens when we make rash decisions, panic sets in—and the only way to cancel her flight is to call, you guessed it, the airline’s customer service agency. Suddenly, she’s got Ziwe standing over her in a headset, asking for her unique customer ID number. This new corporate shill seems to take even more pleasure in the work than Becca does, whispering “yes” with every digit Becca shares from her unique customer ID and slapping her in the face. Ultimately, however, she says she can’t help because Becca booked her trip through a third party.
“That’s nasty,” Becca groans.
“My hands are tied,” the airline rep replies with a grin. But Becca insists that she “say it.”
“Say what?”
“What am I?”
The words sound utterly dirty, and Ziwe hits the “cu–” hard as she tells Becca, “You are a valued customer.”
In the context of Fantasmas, the moment feels like just another ridiculous vignette. But it also mirrors a moment from Torres’s feature debut, Problemista, which premiered earlier this year.
In that film, Torres’s character finds himself on the phone with a bank rep who explains that his account has a negative balance because he’s overdrawn after the bank flagged his previous deposit as fraudulent for his “protection.” Torres dramatizes the interaction by cutting to a fantasy scene in which he’s half-buried in the sand wearing a broken knight costume and a be-suited bank rep stands over him while he asks, “Do I seem protected right now?”
Then comes the pleading we’ve all done with one stubborn rep or another. “Please,” he says. “At this point, I’m not even asking for my money back. I’m just asking for you to tell me that you agree with me because I know that you do. I know there’s still a person in there, and I know that she can hear me. Please!”
When the rep turns around, it seems for a moment like he might’ve won her over. Alas, then she holds up a gun and declares, “I stand with Bank of America” before shooting him.
Scenes like these are quickly becoming a distinguishing feature of Torres’s work; his unique ability to animate the mundane, frustrating moments of life under capitalism could easily become a calling card. That said, it’ll be hard to find anyone funnier to bring that struggle to life than Demie and Ziwe.
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