Room 104 – 1×05 – The Internet
Room 104 is an HBO anthology series with each episode set in a hotel room. Ep 5 is set in 1997 and aspiring writer Anish realizes he’s forgotten his laptop at his mother’s and needs the book on it for a meeting with a publisher. He attempts to try to talk her through the process of getting it and sending it to him, despite her being completely computer illiterate and originally not even realizing his laptop was a computer: “Why would you bring your whole computer to my apartment?”
It starts off as a comedy and I know a lot of us had to deal with our parents and teach them things that seemed so obvious and the frustration and impatience are so familiar, and the smugness and arrogance especially for those of us who are the children of immigrants, but by the end I was actually sobbing. Great performances from Karan Soni and Poorna Jagannathan in particular, who is never more than a voice on the phone.