On what is their first date in
the first episode of Love Story Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) asked
John F. Kennedy Jr (Paul Kelly) a
question that stops him in his tracks: "When did you first realize you
were the son of a President?" He's stunned because its first the time he's
ever been asked that.
The thing it’s the first time
I've ever considered a similar question having been reading and to an extent
writing about the Presidency for quite some time: "What's it like to
be the child of a President?" I know that for many of them they manage to
hold up to it and get into politics themselves: the most successful by far
being John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush. Others are overshadowed by it their
entire lives: neither Theodore nor Franklin's children ever truly carried the
burden that well and all struggled with controversy and often disgrace. Others like Robert Todd Lincoln had tragedy
follow their entire lives in public service. But for John F. Kennedy Jr, it has
to have been the biggest burden of all.
My memories of him while he was
alive are rather vague even though the series makes it clear it will cover all
of them: his courtship of Carolyn, the launching of the magazine George, the
premature death of Jackie Kennedy (played by Naomi Watts with the same
precision we saw her play Babe Paley a few years ago on Capote With The
Swans) how the wedding became the biggest event in during the 1990s and of
course the tragic fate that met him and his wife in a private plane off
Martha's Vineyard in July of 1999. When it happened it was put under the same
net of all the tragedies that have followed that family to the point that it
almost seemed inevitable and the mythos around the son became very much like
that of the father and indeed many of his brothers and sisters. The fact that
John met his fate in a similar fashion to Joe Junior and Kathleen Kennedy just
made it seem more symmetrical.
And because of that America put
them in color photography and never wanted to talk about them. Perhaps it is
fitting that Ryan Murphy, who in recent years has never shied away from telling
the stories of the living and never ducked from the controversy, chose to have
his most recent production in relation with FX Love Story choose to focus on the
relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. Perhaps it because the
passage of time has done much to take the luster off the Kennedy name (even
before the 2024 election took place) that Connor Hines was allowed to write the
story much less have FX produce it. As it Caroline Schlossberg is not
particularly wild about seeing this project airing on TV.
But unlike almost every project
I've come to associate with Murphy's team since the end of Glee and
certainly with every true story he's told the chronicle since American Crime
Story debuted, Love Story is
a different beast, at least having viewed the first three episodes. For once,
the object is not to pull back the curtain on an ugly side of American life but
rather to try and see the humanity behind it and the actual people who were so
briefly American's couple. This is unique particularly considering the underlying
darkness and cynicism that fills even the best TV in the 21st
century. This isn't Feud where we see the unpleasantness of New York
society or American Crime Story where were looking at great societal
problems using famous crimes as a metaphor. Murphy and his creators just want
to tell a real life love story that was tragically cut short. That's almost as
revolutionary as asking what it's like to be the son of a President.
This begins with the two performers
playing the title roles. Rather then try to get famous names Murphy and Hines
auditioned hundreds of performers for each role before landing on the
relatively unknown Pidgeon and Kelly. Perhaps it was a test: if they could
survive the audition process they could be prepared for playing one of the most
famous and photographed couples of the 1990s. The closest comparison is The Crown
when it came to casting the young Charles and Diana during Seasons 3 and 4
and Peter Morgan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with the casting of Josh
O'Connor and Emma Corrin.
The critical difference is that
while we learned very quickly that every aspect of that fairy tale was a
complete fiction almost from the start Pidgeon and Kelly have a slightly
different challenge. The Kennedys are as close to America has gotten in terms
to royalty something that Jackie herself points out in the third episode.
"We were raised on television," she tells her son. "The public
thinks they know us and when we fail they hold it against us." This is
clear throughout every episode as John spends every moment being shadowed by cameras.
Because the Kennedys are not royalty or movie stars they don't have quite the
same entourage that everyone else gets – at least not at the start.
Most of what we know about the
lies of Camelot comes from Jackie herself. In scenes with Caroline (Grace Gummer
adds to her increasingly brilliant list of performances) her daughter asks if
she ever wished she'd married another man.
Jackie looks at her and tells her that she was forced to live her
mother's dream: "I was supposed to be the most famous accessory to the
most powerful men." She admits she created the myth of her husband which
she could have punctured but chose not to. In what is a powerful but almost
certainly fictionalized sequence when she is taking her last rites she tells her
confessor she wanted to die that day, that she knew of her husband's
indiscretions and a part of her has hated him ever since. We've gotten a sense
of this in a scene earlier in the episode when she takes down a portrait of JFK
and to the tune of the Broadway recording of 'Camelot' does a mocking waltz
with it.
But the show doesn't make Jackie
the saint the world framed her as. In family dinners before this we see that
she has judgment over her sons relationship with Darryl Hannah. She turns the
car around rather than have a family event with Hannah's presence and won't
show her face at a dinner at the Kennedy apartment. Hannah is hurt by it and is smart enough to
know whether this relationship is about something Oedipal. "You show up at
your mother's dating a blonde actress?" she shouts during a fight.
Pidgeon has a different kind of
challenge: to make Carolyn Bissette to seem like a woman in her own right. Carolyn
was very much her own woman in the world of Calvin Klein as Love Story makes
very clear. She was extremely gifted as a buyer, had roles in putting Kate Moss
front and center, and clearly is confident in her sexuality in a way few women
were. In her relationship with her model she makes it clear that she is pulling
the strings when it comes to sex.
When they meet for the first time
JFK, Jr. is clearly attracted to a woman who not only isn't in awe of his
famous name but actually seems annoyed by it. The newly minted 'Sexiest Man
Alive' has clearly never had to pursue a woman in his life and it’s a challenge.
But Hannah comes back into his life at the wrong time and Carolyn goes back
with her boyfriend. Indeed when he ends showing up at a diner where she's
having lunch she's clearly uncomfortable: in her mind he's off the market and
finds her a distraction.
Pigeon and Kelly are superb in
the scenes they share and just as brilliant when they're on their own. It's
only when Jackie's cancer becomes worse that the two meet in private and he
bears his soul more. When she comes with insight he's impressed: "How do
you have more insight into my family then my family?" Then she points out how
difficult it is to be a single mother under normal circumstances and Jackie
Kennedy was the most famous single mother of all time. It's a burden that
Jackie acknowledges - she fears she will
be forever known as 'America's Widow' – and its as close as she comes to
sharing her insecurities with anyone.
Love Story, I should mention, is another in a
line of recent TV series that are erotic in their love scenes rather than pornographic.
Because this is a collaboration with streaming the writers could be more
graphic and indeed they test the boundaries of basic cable when they're shown,
but just as with Three Women I don't think the nudity and sex is there
just because its cable. As most of the scenes have Caroline in them (so far) I
suspect its to show her as something of the aggressor.
And if that's impressive the show
completes another neat trick: it creates sexual tension between a couple we
know is going to get married eventually. This should be the ultimate spoiler
and yet it isn't. When John finally shows up at Carolyn's apartment after his
mother's funeral, it is one of the most romantic sequences I've seen on
television in I don't know how long. Done almost in silence when John shows up
at her apartment soaked, we hear no dialogue between the two of them. We watch
the two of them motion towards each other in silence with not a word exchanged.
When they finally kiss for the first time we are actually surprised how it
plays out and who's in control. Shonda Rhimes could take lessons in how simple
and elegant these love scenes play out.
Make no mistake: the writers
don't hide where this story is going. The opening teaser shows us July 16,
1999, make it clear where Carolyn and JFK Jr are emotionally in their marriage,
and show them getting on the plane without an instructor. (It's the day of, not
the night but same difference.) But that's the thing with so many of the
anthologies Murphy has been telling us on FX and Netflix for the last decade. But
even when the viewer believes they know the details Murphy and his production
team cut to the human emotion. In this case they have a greater burden then we
have learning the truths behind the killing of Gianni Versace or the crimes of
Erik and Lyle Menendez: they have to tell a simple story about how two unlikely
people fell in love, whether it was real and make us believe it before the
inevitable tragedy. That's a tough burden but Love Story more than meets
the task. And in a world of TV shows where even the best of them are dark
overwhelmingly cynical, sometimes we just need to be reminded that all you need
is love.
My score: 4.5 stars.
