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Love Story Recap: Reality Bites
Love Story
I Love You
Season 1
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
Carolyn Bessette’s worst nightmare officially hits the front page of the Post this week.
Photo: FX
It has been widely reported that streamers — particularly Netflix — approach television as a “second screen,” something to play in the background while viewers scroll on their phones. As a result, dialogue increasingly serves the function of explaining the story so the audience can know what’s going on without looking up. An attendant tendency is that characters often describe exactly how they feel, eliminating subtext and the necessity for attuned, clever acting. Unfortunately, this strategy is on display in Love Story. The relentless articulation of how characters see themselves and each other undermines stronger behavior-driven moments.
Besides, the fact that the characters can articulate with clarity their own needs, desires, shortcomings, and successes creates an illusion of perfect self-awareness. For characters to read as human, they have to act against their better instincts or judgments; no one wants to watch a show about someone who makes all the right decisions. Carolyn, a better-written character than John, is a good case in point. She has always conducted her love life according to the principle that she should not get involved, yet her feelings for John are undeniable. But, at least until the very last scene of this episode, she doesn’t go around saying, “I am a guarded woman with a fear of getting hurt.” Instead, she screens John’s calls, refuses to be seen with him in public, and changes the subject when he asks about her life.
John, on the other hand, goes around saying things like, “Not sure I did [so great last night]. I didn’t tell Caroline I was bringing someone [to her party], and forgot to mention to Carolyn it was Caroline’s birthday or that it was a dinner.” When Anthony replies that’s “classic [John] shit,” John affirms,“I don’t think it works for her, and I don’t think it really works for me either, anymore.” John is smitten with Carolyn in large part because she is not interested in fame, and while this is the thing that makes her great, it exposes his own vulnerabilities — he hardly knows what to do with a woman so sure of herself. After consciously acknowledging all of this, he almost irrevocably screws things up by accusing Carolyn of thirsting for attention. He is so frustrating.
When we pick up this week, some time has passed since Jackie’s death. Carolyn and John play cat and mouse at a Calvin Klein event at Indochine, avoiding each other at the restaurant and kissing in alleys, where the paparazzi can’t see them. They seem to be having fun, but it’s the kind of game that quickly wears thin. In the morning, John tries to persuade Carolyn to leave his apartment with him, damn the paps, but she insists on preserving their privacy. At work, she tells Calvin that she “kind of feels” for Kate Moss’s struggle to keep up with her overnight fame. Who would want to be thrown into the spotlight so suddenly? Not Carolyn, who shrinks even from Calvin’s attempt to document her elegant outfit — John’s button-down shirt tucked into a black skirt, a CBK classic — with a Polaroid.
Meanwhile, John and Caroline go through Jackie’s possessions that are being put up for auction. John groans about the exposure a public auction will bring about, but levelheaded Caroline reminds him that they need the money to cover their $34 million inheritance tax. It seems like Caroline, who deserves better as a character, will substitute Jackie as the Pontificating Lady in charge of telling John how to be a person in the world. She pushes him slightly by saying that Jackie held on until she knew John was “ready to make a life of [his] own as [he] sees fit.” From literally everything that Jackie said to John in the preceding three episodes, it seems more like Jackie was determined to lay out a specific plan for him, which he inconveniently ignored. But that’s not Grace Gummer’s fault.
One way Carolyn demonstrates to John that she doesn’t intend to marry him at the first opportunity is by playing hard to get. While the designer Narciso Rodriguez (Tonatiuh) uses Carolyn as a model to work on a dress, she screens John’s calls. Narciso goes ballistic at the prospect of JFK Jr. chasing after his friend, but Carolyn, as ever, downplays it — in fact, things are going “too fast” for her. But she’s only human, so when John shows up outside her apartment to take her on a spontaneous day trip to Breezy Point, she can’t help but be excited. A photographer snaps a picture of John helping Carolyn into her skirt on his boat, but they don’t know that just yet — for now, they are concerned with getting to know each other. Over a beer and a burger, Carolyn persuades John that his friend and business partner, Michael J. Berman, is right about George having a sexy cover and a smart interior. When John presses her to tell him more about her dad and her upbringing, she dodges his questions.
Later, at the Odeon, Berman is pleased that Carolyn agrees with him about the sexy covers. Carolyn arrives late, much to the pleasure of his friends, particularly Santina, the only woman present, who relishes the fact that John himself is getting “the John treatment.” Another friend tells John that “Trey from Tunnel” sees Carolyn “out, a lot,” not that John makes anything of that for now — he knows that Trey is just “a random drug dealer.” When Carolyn gets there, she jokes that she hopes no one there is friends with Trey, given his reputation. Carolyn charms everyone with her effortless teasing and joking around. When she sees a random woman approach John at the bar, one of the guys assures her that John routinely takes a woman’s number just to be polite. Knowing to make herself scarce, Carolyn leaves before dinner to meet with her mother and sister. She doesn’t let John come with her, but agrees to go to his sister’s party the next day.
Carolyn’s mom, Ann Messina Freeman, is not thrilled that she is seeing John again, given the Daryl Hannah fiasco. Lauren, being a sister, offers details of their relationship to their mother on a platter. Ann worries that the glitz of John’s life will blind Carolyn to her own ways; she’s already changing into the kind of woman who says things like, “It’s different this time.” Harsh, but it makes you understand why Carolyn is the way she is. It’s also why it felt out of character for Carolyn not to make a bigger deal out of being embarrassed at Caroline Kennedy’s birthday dinner. John told her it was just a party, but when they get there, Carolyn learns that she has arrived empty-handed at a birthday dinner. And Caroline wasn’t expecting her. And this is the first time they’re meeting. Caroline is mad at John for putting both her and Carolyn in this awkward position. She’s gracious toward Carolyn, but Carolyn is out of place, unable to find her way into conversation.
This was one of the best character moments we have gotten from John yet — in his entitlement and carelessness, he was inconsiderate toward both his sister and girlfriend. It works out for him, though, because he gets to have Carolyn with him and to avoid the conversation with Caroline that would precede the necessary invite. As he himself will put it later, the world “winks and waves [him] through” any pickle, so Carolyn isn’t even mad. In fact, she’s mostly happy, if a little scared, about how things are developing. Gushing about how happy she is for her, Kelly Klein articulates all of Carolyn’s worst fears: their relationship is in “good timing” because John, into his 30s, will “have to” settle down soon; Carolyn will only have to work another couple of years before retiring into a glamorous Kennedy life. Carolyn gives Kelly a look of sheer terror. She doesn’t want anyone thinking these things, as if she has a grand plan.
Here, the episode takes a dramatic turn. Carolyn misses John’s touch-football game to attend a meeting with Kelly — it is 3 p.m. on a weekday — which allows an anonymous malefactor to slip into John’s duffel bag a letter detailing sordid information about Carolyn, like past relationships, “drugs, shady friends,” and that she was “fixated on [John]” before meeting him. The whole thing is extremely vague. When Carolyn gets to John’s apartment, he gives her the cold shoulder before asking if it was her or Calvin’s idea to introduce them. Carolyn reminds John that he has chased her from day one — she refused to give him her number at first! When she reads the letter, she shoves it on him and pushes him with both hands. If their relationship is only as strong as this cynical character assassination, it’s not what she thought it was. Amazingly, even though he’s the one who brought it up and apparently believed the contents of the letter, John starts pleading with Carolyn to forgive him the minute she’s upset. What did he expect? If he can be so easily persuaded that the letter is all wrong, why did he even believe it in the first place?
When they make up, the core tension of their relationship emerges as a push and pull of carefulness (Carolyn) and recklessness (John), but I think it’s more like fickleness on his part. Perhaps in the effort to do a “warts and all” depiction, Love Story makes John’s character thin and spineless. If all of their notoriously violent fights are going to be like this, the show is going to struggle to sustain the tumultuousness of their romance. Carolyn needs someone to fight back, but it’s almost like a thought has never occurred to this guy. What motivates him, besides the discerning women who exist to spoon-feed him the harsh truths of life? This is the subtext of his later conversation with Caroline, who encourages him to accept once and for all that his life isn’t “normal” and reminds him he can’t just trust anyone in order to come off like a nice guy. On the way out, John swipes his mother’s “swim ring,” which she wore in lieu of her engagement ring when swimming, from the catalogued items.
We know Carolyn is upset because her hair is in a messy bun. When she gets home from work one afternoon, John is waiting for her (he was let in by the super, whom Carolyn vows to get fired). Having absorbed what his sister told him, John tells Carolyn that his whole life is “unreal,” except for their relationship, which is decidedly “real,” the only “real” thing he has (I think most people would agree that having an enormous fortune is definitely real). Carolyn finally answers John’s question from the beginning of the episode — she wears her father’s wedding band in a necklace, not because she “loves him,” but because she wants to remember that men who seem great often are not, and that she has to tread carefully. The nicest thing that comes out of this sequence is when John tells Carolyn, “This is where I begin, if you’ll let me.” Sappy, sure, but better than this faux-Kantian debate about what’s real or not real. John tells Carolyn he loves her and she reciprocates. Everything is great for a minute — until Carolyn gets to work and finds out that a picture of her being helped into a skirt on a boat with John is printed on the front page of the New York Post. The headline reads, “J.F.K. Jr.’s New Bottomless Blonde.” She instantly freaks out.
• At the touch-football game, we conspicuously learn that Anthony has a cough — could he be ill?
• It seems implied that the friend who told John that “Trey” saw Carolyn a lot put the defaming letter in John’s bag, though we only get a slight glimpse of his presence at the touch-football game — the episode doesn’t make a point of it. Maybe they are carving an opportunity for John to demonstrate he has a spine by confronting him next week? Given that John was quick to dismiss the accusations thrown at Carolyn before she got to the Odeon, it seems strange he would’ve so readily believed the contents of the letter — especially when they had all agreed that Trey, supposedly the source of the “drugs” accusation, is a disreputable character.
• After being sorely disappointed by John, Carolyn ignores his calls and calls Michael — sexy doorman, Calvin Klein underwear model — instead. She hangs up as soon as he picks up, though he knows it’s her before she says a word. Maybe that means that she is in the habit of self-sabotaging.
• I appreciate that the show finds ways to foreground Carolyn’s fashion genius, as when, in the very beginning of the episode, she borrows John’s shirt to wear to work and manages to look incredible. This is the kind of thing that fills out a character, the kind of thing that is missing from John’s depiction.
