Parts Unknown, The Last Dance, and comfort in ‘knowing the ending’
In the fourth season of Parts Unknown, a trip to Paraguay sees Anthony Bourdain at his most introspective as he attempts to unearth a piece of his family history.
“You know, my father died at 57. His father in, I think, 20 — in his 20s, I believe,” he says.
“I’ll be 58 in June. I think I am the longest living male Bourdain in possibly ever.”
The moment is notable not just for its poignancy in retrospect, though that also plays a part, but for its rarity: in a show known for its re-examining of accepted pasts, it’s a look towards and acknowledgement of a future to be written.
The chef and presenter died by suicide in June 2018, weeks before his 62nd birthday, ensuring moments like the reflection in South America take on new meaning when they’re rewatched. And they’re rewatched a lot more now, with Netflix UK adding the entire Parts Unknown back catalogue — all 12 seasons — at the start of June.
And now, at a moment where it’s easy to get the feeling that each day brings new woes and new uncertainty, there’s some comfort to be taken in being able to delve into something more finite: something whose ending is certain, for good or bad, and cannot be tarnished while the outside world burns.
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“Through his books and documentaries, Bourdain seemed to learn just as much as he taught,” writes Joe Baiamonte in this fantastic essay.
“What he believed in ‘Kitchen Confidential’ was not what he necessarily believed by ‘Medium Raw’ and the man we witnessed finding his feet among the wider world in ‘A Cook’s Tour’ was almost an infant in comparison to the towering explorer who guided us through ‘Parts Unknown’. As he grew, so did we.”
Bourdain’s death gave us that endpoint, reminding us we’re now on our own. The training wheels have come off the bike and he’s stopped pushing us. And when the world turns into a steep downhill, it’s comforting to be able to return to that gentle ascent.
This wouldn’t work, though, without Bourdain’s complexity. The belief that his arc, while defined, leaves gaps in our knowledge which are filled with each return journey. And this, too, is at the heart of another Netflix arrival which has given us comfort in what we’re by this stage contractually obliged to refer to as “uncertain times”.
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While we rewatch scripted shows to seek out hints we missed on the way to their denouements, our second look at those which are grounded in reality carries a different purpose.
If we know the ending, it can be possible for us to consume the same episode a second time with little variation. However, these return journeys are often different because we are different; because we’re watching with a new set of eyes belonging to a different version of ourselves. Things are opening up, but remaining within the same confines they were always in.
Which takes us onto The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan documentary which arrived on Netflix in May.
Those who watched the series with some knowledge of Jordan’s Chicago Bulls career didn’t go into it expecting to be stunned by the conclusion; instead, the intrigue was related to how certain flashpoints would be framed, and which narratives would be given airtime over others. Everything is a choice, of course, but there are at least some fixed limits.
“After his retirement, something seemed to flip, and the intimate identification Jordan inspired during his career soured into something weirder and sadder,” writes Brian Phillips for The Ringer.
“So the most enjoyable thing about The Last Dance, to me, has been the chance to go back to the original sunburst, to remember what it felt like to watch him before watching him started to feel bad.”
Here lies the counterpoint between Bourdain and Jordan, and how the respective shows can help override the most obvious of contrasts. Bourdain has been left suspended in time by his death, while for Jordan there has been an ‘after’. And yet, in both cases, the concept of a ‘next chapter’ — either life without the former or life with a different version of the latter — is parked. It ends when it ends, and we can dictate the timing of the final shot by the speed with which we ourselves move from start to finish.
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“Jordan’s story was so simple and charismatic that it convinced us to overlook all the places where it wasn’t actually his story,” Phillips writes, and this reminds us how much space The Last Dance leaves for our own framing.
We can look out for incidents as we reconsume events or arcs we’ve already witnessed, looking out for those moments which reinforce what we felt the first time around, or we can wait to be shocked; to have our ‘knowledge’ tested by new revelations. When there’s security in our own lives, we’ll be more inclined to seek out these tests, but when living through unprecedented times — from once unthinkable numbers of excess coronavirus deaths to levels of political change which feel possible for the first time and the horrors which made such change essential — it’s understandable that we’ll cling to those elements which we know are set in stone.
As for Bourdain, Baiamonte asserts that “As an advocate for travel and tolerance, it’s impossible to picture [him] anywhere else but on the frontlines of the battles against systemic racism and Covid-19.” Again, there’s comfort to be taken from the fact that, by controlling the narrative, we don’t have to guess.
