32 | New Scientist | 9 November 2019
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ARE two Paul Rudds better than
one? We find out in Living With
Yourself, a Netflix comedy in which
Rudd plays Miles Elliot, a burnt-
out, middle-class suburbanite. His
marriage is strained after years of
unsuccessful attempts to have a
child and the normal decay that
can set in with routine. He has
hit a roadblock at the advertising
agency where he works, coming
up empty when he needs ideas.
Then, he gets a chance to hit
the refresh button. A colleague
has recommended a nondescript
spa where he is offered a deal that
sounds too good to be true. For
$50,000, he can undergo a
procedure – mysteriously
described as to do with DNA
restructuring and microsynaptic
memory transfer – and voila, he
will be a better version of himself.
It is no spoiler to explain that
instead of waking up feeling
fantastic, Miles comes to in a
shallow grave in a forest. He finds
his way home to see an identical
Miles living in his home, talking to
his wife and living his life. It turns
out the procedure he underwent
was cloning and his original selfwasn’t supposed to wake up at all.
You can imagine the hijinks
that ensue. They may not tread
any new ground, but it is a joy to
see Rudd inhabit very different
versions of the same person. He
can manage to look a decade older
or younger through a single
posture or expression.
When the two Miles confront
each other, it reminds me of a
conversation my friends and Ihave had about teleportation. The
person who comes out the other
end of a hypothetical teleportation
machine may look like you and
have your memories, but even if
every single atom is in the same
position in your body, is it you?
A lot of the show deals with
the idea of the “best self ”: what if
you were kinder, more thoughtful,
more creative, funnier and more
respected? It becomes clear thatThe best you can be Living With Yourself plays with the idea of creating a clone
that’s better than the original, exploring ideas about human perfectibility and
what might happen if we could edit out our flaws, says Chelsea Whyte“ A lot is lost if we try to
edit ourselves: what
we like in people isn’t
always about perfection,
flaws can be endearing”TV
Living With Yourself
Creator Timothy Greenberg
NetflixChelsea also
recommends...Film
Multiplicity (1996)
Director Harold Ramis
In this cloning comedy,
things go awry – several
iterations of Michael
Keaton’s character get
dumber and dumber as they
make copies of themselveswhile such change seems
appealing, a lot gets lost if we can
edit ourselves this way. What we
like in people isn’t always about
perfection. Flaws are endearing, an
angry flare-up can lead to humour,
and smoothing down those edges
makes for a flat imitation of life.
The first few episodes employ
the well-worn trope of identical
men swapping places and trying
not to get caught. So it is a relief
when the series changes tack
(warning: spoilers ahead) and they
out themselves to Miles’s wife,
Kate (Aisling Bea). Understandably,
she is horrified, but also finds
herself falling for her husband’s
clone, only to realise that this
perfect, Ken doll version of Miles
isn’t what she really wants.
In the end, the show poses an
interesting scientific conundrum.
Kate has sex with both versions of
her husband and gets pregnant.
The series ends with ambiguity
about the father. But if the DNA
reconstruction created a new
Miles with younger-looking
skin and more energy, it seems
plausible that his biological age is
somehow different. The spa staff
mentioned telomere length in the
hand-waving explanation of the
procedure, which made me check
how that might affect a child.
Telomeres are DNA sequences at
the ends of our chromosomes that
shorten with age, and a child’s
telomere length has been shown
to correspond to the age at which
their father conceived them. So
Kate and the two Miles might be
able to work out who was the
father. But could they live with it?
Maybe living with yourself is
only possible when you accept
some ambiguity, or gloss over the
bad to focus on the good. ❚NETFLIXPaul Rudd is Miles Elliot,
who accidentally acquires
a more perfect cloned selfThe TV column
Chelsea Whyte is a reporter
for New Scientist, based in
Boston, Massachusetts.
Follow her on Twitter
@ chelswhyte