Rachel Brosnahan (pictured) coughing on her golden arm, complying with World Health Organization guidelines concerning coronavirus, before demanding to be buried with it. (Screen captures via Twitter)
It’s safe to say that Quibi, the platform aimed at providing viewers with “quick bites” of content, launched last week at the exact right time, but one show starring Rachel Brosnahan obsessing over her golden arm has, urm, won the gold medal for going viral.
As millions of Americans hunker down at home for yet another week of social separation, Quibi landed with a refreshing amount of queer content to boot.
There’s Sasha Velour’s NightGowns, Dishmantled with Titus Burgess, the Gayme Show and Singled Out, to name but a few.
Oh, and, uh, the one with Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan as a woman obsessed with her golden arm.
The absolutely surreal show 50 States Of Fright features a three-part story dubbed “The Golden Arm”, with episodes lasting between five to 10 minutes each.
But a clip tallying more than one million views in less than a day of snippets from the show has gone understandably viral.
Losing my fucking MIND at this Quibi show where actual Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan plays a woman obsessed with her golden arm pic.twitter.com/rSfqCv75SG
— Zach Raffio (@zachraffio) April 15, 2020
The entire world is now obsessed with Quibi and Rachel Brosnahan’s golden arm.
The episode of filmmaker Sam Raimi’s horror anthology shows The Marvelous Mrs Maisel actor playing Heather, who has what can only be described as a discount outlet Infinity Gauntlet on her right arm.
In the fan footage, it then shows a worried doctor tell her with an owlish deadpan that “the tests are in” after she was mysteriously sickened.
“It is pulmonary gold disease.”
Of course a male doctor thinks you can just “take off” a golden arm
— Alexis De Wokeville (@MrAlexisPereira) April 15, 2020
(In case you didn’t know, but there have been cases of gold-induced pulmonary disease.)
And with that, reader, we are truly ready to ascend into the astral plane with an accordion-style wheeze.
But not yet! The clip continues as the doctor urges, neigh, pleads Heather to take off her gold-ladened prosthetic, uh, arm.
“You’ve got to take off that prosthetic,” the medic, in a serious tone, says.
“No,” Heather says, clenching her golden arm, “I can’t take off my golden arm, ever.”
Did you know she’s wearing an arm made of gold?
Anyway, it then hurtles us into a hospital bed, where Heather is literally dying because of her – what else – golden arm. We imagine a platinum arm was out of stock.
This is their horror anthology show lmao
— bobby (@capitalnotgood) April 15, 2020
She struggles to breathe with a lithe green hospital gown covering her. Heather jolts suddenly awake to see her husband caressing her non-golden arm.
“Promise me something,” she splutters, gasping for breath, the finitude of life and the inescapability of mortality both bearing down on her.
Her husband gazes back. Eyes shimmering at what might be his wife’s dying words.
“When I die,” Heather says, “bury me with my golden arm.
“Promise,” she urges in-between gargled, strained breaths, before making him repeat it.
“I will bury you with your golden arm,” he dutifully says, all sense of meaning vacating the dull, dead void of what was once his pupils. Dramatic acting done right.
SAY IT
— chad (@freebrightideas) April 15, 2020
But really, burying a golden arm, in this economy? Wow.
Between the soapy acting and the weird, wooden dialogue, the entire scene plunged the public into absolute madness.
But the, well, golden question here is why is Heather do damn obsessed with her golden arm? And how many times must we be reminded that her arm is, indeed, golden?
It’s Raimi’s re-telling of the folk tale which sees a man covet his wife’s arm and swiped it on her deathbed, only to be visited by a vengeful spirit.
Nevertheless, we hope this wins a Golden Globe, somehow.