Just as I promised in this title, I’m going to describe the thrill of diving from Love Life to Normal People on STAN, just at the end of Covid-19 (first wave) lockdown, here in Australia.
Perhaps I make the point of the times within which I’m writing this, because - it is extraordinary times. It’s times unprecedented and it’s more confusing than ever. It’s a time when I am drawn to making sense of my world, my life, my history and I’m finally old enough now to see the patterns of it. It could be for this reason, I’m really drawn to these two programs I want to write about tonight, because they too are about young people trying to make their way in the world and trying to cross over, but clearly written from the view of old enough to understand and make meaning for the audience.
We don’t know where we cross over to, but in the case of Love Life featuring Anna Kendrick (et al - I’m going to research this a bit further in a subsequent edit, because the rest of the cast are outstanding, but for now, I’m just happy to get the point down) - where were we?
Yes, in the case of Love Life featuring Anna Kendrick - her character is hoping she might do the thing perhaps many of us hope for- that we find someone we love and maybe get to love them so much we have children. It would seem that getting to that moment would be the crossing over.
In the case of Love Life, it’s whistful striving because the hope is that it would mean we heal. That a crossing over into another place beyond young person ness to a kind of adulthood where we no longer live it with the attitude that it’s all about us (it’s really not). *
Indeed we have to ideally, somewhat get our shit together and parent, on the other side. Or what really actually happens is that, it happens, it delivers new fodder, so in truth we’ll just have to juggle those two ideas really - with one keeping the other honest. The kind of perfect antagonist which I’ve not seen fully sketched enough - perhaps the Australian drama Tangle explored it a bit. But back to Love Life….
For an American drama, that stands on the shoulders of Sex and the City and Girls - Love Life, I think holds its own and is somewhat freed of the necessity of trailing blazing expressions required in the previous two. Sex and the. City made iconic the Womens journey - the meaning of friendship, women and yes sex, in the city and on tv. Girls took it to the next level. Made it grittier, made it divinely warts and all, a narcissistic confrontation that was exciting and honest but also exhibitionist. In retrospect Lena Dunham is the master of fusing television with performance art for that matter. Yes we most definitely are indebted to you. Thank you.
Anna Kendrick pulls it back. The artifice isn’t in control here - that has been necessarily done. Love Life with Anna Kendrick s simplified back to the telling of a character with pathos, who due to a difficult childhood she is struggling to navigate the adventures of her experience of sex and love and work and friendship… in a city. As we shuffle back and forth between parts of her life - towards a bit of a cause effect narrative map, we are assisted by a voice of ‘goddess’ navigation to accompany and direct us, as to why we are learning about which part of Darby’s life when. It’sa sort of BBC documentary voice over narration, tenderly and with the perfect mix of ‘pay attention students’ authority, which innovates the genre and within the show functions to frame the lessons of ‘relationship’.
The study of relationship or love/life is catalogued into single episodes of meaning for Anna’s character Darby - that we as the audience get to learn. Actually, simply we do learn. We learn how each experience can frame the next, until we break free. If we don’t actively confront it, we’ll simply carry it into the next part, until we are lucky enough to have life deliver the fatal blow that enables us to cross over, whether we chose it or not.
What’s refreshing about Love Life is that, while we can list into the relationships that shape us, even into young adulthood that along with that first guy we fell in love with in the city, or the one that went away for work, or the other one in between, the show here Narratively delivers equal footing to relationships with the mother and the best friend in their own stand alone episodes - the figures in our life who make our heart fucking break just as much as any of the lovers.
So, in this 360 view of formative relationships, we get to see Darby find her self, and find her self on the other side of the line, as she awakes into parenthood. What’s delicious is that in episode 1 it’s promised. The narration says “Don’t worry, it’s all going to happen for Darby…” but the show is the journey to that place.
The good news is that it is going into season 2. I would have been just as happy to see this beautiful show be complete but alas and honestly thank goodness for the business of television, in this one glorious case - deserving does matter and it deserves more air. So they are going again and I think if it can stay away from being iconic and stay the quality middle of the road sketch that it could be, in that - brilliance could be achieved.
So anyway, I was primed, no pun intended. The Stan algorithm may have delivered it - but thanks to a dear friend with whom shares my binging television is not just for fun but a means of necessity in unwrapping life - Thanks Holly - I was recommended - try Normal People.
Holly’s promise was, get through the first episode and you will be rewarded. It’s in the same zone, but Irish. What might that mean? What we get from this genius piece of Irish storytelling is this soulful, European cinema version of great television, that breaks your heart again and again each episode.
I feel almost like Normal People is an experience so sacred that to reduce to review will spoil the experience for you if you haven’t seen. So if you haven’t - stop reading now and watch Love Life, then get across to Normal People.
It’s sacred because the vulnerability of the two characters and without the star casting (or perhaps they are, or will be now anyways) but the joy of discovering a show without a Nomination is just the way that the story can creep up next to you and delivery an immersive meditation on what it’s actually trying to be about.
This show I think takes the whole 13 eps to unravel why it was called Normal People. I think it’s because we see two people need each other and be to themselves both their only safe harbour and at once their greatest risk - to be thwarted at every turn by the conventions of ‘normal people’.
We learn of course, no one is normal. So stop living by this perception that anyone else doesn’t have a deep dive of their own story that represses or fucks them up any better or worse than anyone else. And so the drama is fueled by these two people Mary-Anne and Connor who are continuously boxed in by their class, their friends, their homes and the pull back to the familiar.
These two characters are brave and by the end of series 1 they deliver a truly loving gift to each other (don’t worry that’s not a saccharine code for - they have a baby/ as we don’t know this of them yet) but the long march from high school to about the final year of College at Trinity in Dublin sees a pause worthy of actual documentary.
So, get yee to Normal People - to incredible to actually write about without reducing it to fodder. Go via Love Life just to prime yourself, because if you watch it in reverse you may risk resenting how much you enjoyed Love Life, before really feeling deeply moved but in a different way by Normal People. It’s a kind of sober we’ll earnt experience that matches rather than escapes the confusion of this Covid-19 moment.
If you are wondering whether watching programs that explores love and relationships is important right now, it is. It’s never been more important to see it all coming. To notice why the grooves in your brain are looping the way they are.These two brilliantly written pieces are a gift to a time when we will have to up the stay at home and watch, of if you are like me - need a 2am distraction from laying awake at night, wondering what the fuck is going on in the world.
Both accounts will return you to gratitude for the chance to have loved in this life.
Amy Weidlich 2020
additional notes:
*oh the luxury and privilege** of space, the space*** to have those final years before parenting where it is down to you. The arrival is not necessarily in any mastery but that we just do get propelled forward in our life anyway.
** if we need a reality check, it is a privilege to be a young person able to study. There’s a lot of nod to diversity in both of these shows. In Normal People, class, poverty and money are key themes necessarily explored. So we can recall that as Tiny Turner sang ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, what we can really ponder is that sometimes Love isn’t enough. It’s not always down to love, and then hopefully we regather that ridiculousness and discover, yes, love is where it is at.
*** and by the way, too much space can be just as detrimental as any alternative. Another theme terrifically explored by Darby’s best friend in Love Life. And the very tyranny of ambiguity from the discourse style of Maryanne and Connell in Normal People.
What it now lets read the book.
