Despite the challenges of adapting to the new dog, Eric, a filmmaker who has been suffering from writer's block, then becomes inspired to start writing a new screenplay about a couple adopting a dog, with metafictional elements then starting to enter into the story as Eric begins "directing" the film in his head in real time.
[2] The cast also includes Matt Johnson as a veterinarian, and Leah Doz as his veterinary technician.
Petrie allows Eric’s new obsession to spill into sequences that feel genuinely Kaufmanesque (an overused word, granted, but a distinction well-earned here).
Whether these repeats are real or imagined is never explicated, though it’s fevered enough to appear like a figment of Eric’s lockdown brain.
In a later scene, a boom mic operator crosses the shot without disturbing the character’s flow, a jarring intrusion during a moment of real vulnerability––and a sharp directorial choice that both douses the tension and accentuates its source.