The Fall of the House of Usher’s lemon speech is embarrassingly out of touch

polygon.com:

Monologues are Mike Flanagan’s specialty. From his earliest movies, he’s loved to let characters wax poetic about their motivations, the supernatural, or honestly just about anything. Of course, when he turned his focus to television and started making miniseries, he got even more room to let his penchant for speeches run wild, and for the most part he’s made the best of it, especially in Midnight Massand The Haunting of Hill House. But his latest series for Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, contains his worst-ever monologue (and perhaps one of the worst monologues ever committed to paper) and shows that he, and the series, aren’t great at writing about wealth.

The monologue in question, which happens in the middle of the show’s third episode, belongs to the story’s de facto narrator, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood). About halfway through confessing all of his many crimes and the secrets behind his children’s deaths to Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), Roderick launches into a long and winding description of everything wrong with the idiom “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Roderick answers at length:

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade? No. First you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce, which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply, then a media blitz. Lemon is the only way to say “I love you,” the must-have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she won’t have sex with you unless you got lemons. You cut De Beers in on it. Limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops. You get Apple to call their new operating system OS-Lemón. A little accent over the “o.” You