No matter the medium or genre, you will always run into scenes with two people talking. Sometimes the talking serves a purpose, other times it’s a slog you have to get through to get to the more exciting bits. In writer-director Mike Flanagan’s stories, sometimes characters do nothing but talk—to the point that it’s become its own subset of memes.

Across The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor, characters often give deeper ruminations to a simple “how are you?” They give you their whole life story in an anecdote or drop some philosophical kernels to chew on for the rest of the season. This might make Flanagan’s latest, Midnight Mass, sound pompous and long-winded. But, to jump on Flanagan’s wavelength for a minute, don’t we all ponder our purpose in life? Aren’t we all searching for meaning in the vastness of the cosmos?