8win gaming In a Year of Anxiety Onscreen, Here’s Who Portrayed It Best

Anxiety is nothing new, but in 2024 it was a star character in several of the films and TV shows that caught my interest. Sometimes anxiety was literally its own character, like the orange tuft in “Inside Out.” Sometimes it was the state in which we find a character, like Rishi in “Industry.” Sometimes it’s openly named, and other times it’s just implied. Below I take a look at the most affecting portrayals of anxiety I found onscreen this year.

‘Inside Out 2’

I’ve already written about the effect that “Inside Out 2” had on me when I saw it in theaters, and yet it’s worth repeating that this film, featuring a new host of personified emotions like Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke), is worth watching not just for the usual bright and cheery Pixar charms, but also for its honest portrayal of anxiety. Streaming on Disney+.

lele247 slot‘The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy’

This clever, imaginative and viscerally odd Amazon series, in the same vein as “Tuca & Bertie,” is about two young alien doctors and best friends, Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) and Klak (Keke Palmer), who work in a futuristic space-hospital where their patients are aliens of various shapes and sizes who have strange and unpredictable ailments. When Sleech and Klak discover a parasite that feeds on anxiety, they secretly attempt to use it to discover a cure for the affliction. Klak, who has struggled with anxiety her whole life, experiments with the parasite to the point of endangering herself because she is tired of getting lost in her obsessive thoughts and brooding over her failures. Alongside “Inside Out 2,” Klak’s journey in the first season of “The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” is the most effective portrayal of anxiety in entertainment this year. Streaming on Amazon Prime.

‘The Bear'

“The Bear” is widely accepted as the anxiety-inducing show on TV right now, and for good reason. The restaurant world is already fast-paced and stressful without all the pressure Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) places on himself and his co-workers in the opening weeks of his restaurant’s rebrand and glow-up. And though Carmy’s anxiety is often at the forefront of the drama, the final episode of Season 3 shows Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) meeting her limit as well. Agonizing over a decision to become a partner of The Bear with Carmy the control freak or take a head chef position at another restaurant with better benefits and (likely) less drama, Sydney breaks down in the middle of a party at her new home. She steps outside and has an anxiety attack; she hunches over, hyperventilating, overwhelmed by the decision she has to make. Streaming on Hulu.

The W.N.B.A.’s ratings did soar, but the additional attention also magnified intense conversations on television shows, podcasts and social media. Pundits passionately clashed with colleagues, players described racism they had experienced, and the players’ union openly rebuked the league’s commissioner.

‘Turtles All the Way Down’

In an early scene in this YA-friendly adaptation of the John Green novel, a high schooler named Aya sits distracted as her friends around her converse. A voice-over reveals her nervous parade of thoughts about threatening microorganisms and diseases, and she runs off to the bathroom to obsessively wash and re-bandage a sore on her finger. Green is notorious for a certain brand of weepy adolescent fiction, but here he dives into an honest depiction of a teen with debilitating anxiety and O.C.D. Streaming on Max.

ImageJesse Eisenberg (left) and Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain.”Credit...Searchlight Pictures

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