Better Late Than Never: Lessons in Chemistry

 

Every writer has a series of works that they think about doing but never complete. For me I once considered a series title in the spirit of Allan Ginsburg: “I Saw The Best Actors of My Generation Cut Down By Marvel.”

I have made little secret that I care very little for the Marvel Cinematic Universe for many reasons, and one of them is how it has taken some of the greatest performers of my generation and essentially forced them to spend years, sometimes a decade, in the midst of movies that I find, to put it mildly, beneath them. No matter how good the work of Samuel L. Jackson or Robert Downey Jr. has been in the various films, I am often reminded of what we have lose by these movies. Scarlett Johansen had, at an impressive age, built up a resume of superb performances that had earned her four consecutive Golden Globes nominations in such masterpieces as Lost in Translation and Match Point. Ever since she became the Black Widow, that’s all she’s had time for and I don’t think it’s a coincidence she got her first two Oscar nominations after Endgame. Jeremy Renner had gotten two consecutive Academy Award nominations for The Hurt Locker and The Town before he was cast as Hawkeye. With few exceptions he has rarely moved outside the world of the action film, and it is only now that he is beginning to return to form in Mayor of Kingstown. And for all the awe that Tom Hiddleston has earned for his work as Loki over more than a decade, part of me truly mourns the great Shakespearean actor we lost and the subtleties he displayed in what was his last ‘serious role’ the title character in The Night Manager.

But of all the performers whose work has suffered the most it has to be Brie Larson, which is doubly unfair because she was cursed even before she appeared onscreen. A child actress, she had made her breakthrough in the Emmy winning United States of Tara, had delivered superb supporting performance in The Spectacular Now and Short Term 12 before she got her first leading role in the exceptional film Room. She won the Oscar for Best Actress and the sky seemed to be the limit.

 Then she was cast as Captain Marvel and became the subject of the culture wars. One side excoriated her for being cast as a character that had originated been male. Another side celebrated her to the rafters for ‘finally’ being the first actress to be the lead in a Marvel movie, as if that was something an actress had wanted when she began her career. I saw Captain Marvel in the theater (reluctantly, as I’ve said the MCU has never appealed to me)  and thought it no better or worse than any comic book movie. It was at best a mediocrity, hardly worth all the invective that has been spewed at it.

For the better part of the next four years Larson has been held prisoner by the Marvel Machine. The movies and shows she has done are among the worst reviewed in the MCU, hated by one side, defending regardless of their quality by the other. Larson, who can’t exactly have loved that she was the subject of so much loathing, has remained stoic and took it. I admit, if I were in her shoes, I would have begged to have my character killed off, no matter how implausible if only to be free to do something, anything else.

So I was overjoyed back in the fall of 2023 to finally see that Larson has returned to her roots in the Apple TV limited series Lessons in Chemistry. The early reviews have been superb and award nominations have been coming at a rapid pace, not just for Larson but the entire series. She has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice award for Best Actress in a Limited Series (she lost both to Ali Wong in the understandable awards throng to Beef) and it looks very much like the series will be among the contenders for Best Limited Series this coming fall. Earlier this year, the show received three nominations from the Directors Guild for Television in Limited Series and took the prize. I’ve been meaning to get around to it for the last several months, and I have finally managed to get through the first three episodes. And it is as impressive as its pedigree and reputations suggests.

As many of you no doubt already know Lessons in Chemistry is based on a best selling novel by Bonnie Garmus. I didn’t know that and have yet to read the book it is based on (those of you who follow my column know that is something I don’t do in these reviews, so as not to have a bias) but the summary and Larson’s presence were enough to intrigue me. Larson plays Elizabeth Zott a chemistry PhD, who as we see in the opening minutes of the series has become the star of a 1960s cooking show where she applies science to food. I have yet to learn how she got to that point but just having watched the first three episodes, even without the series opening in media res I’d still have wanted to watch.

The series opens with Elizabeth working as a lab tech at a university known as Hastings in the mid-1950s. Elizabeth is understandably subject to the sexism of her male colleagues but just as much from her female ones who can’t understand why she isn’t interesting in finding a husband or appearing in the Miss Hastings pageant with all the other women who work as secretaries. Elizabeth is brusque with everyone she deals with and a lot of it has to do with a sexual assault she suffered when she was in the process of passing her fellowship. This is shown, with a trigger warning in the second episode, and as traumatic as it to watch, I found it all the more appalling the next day when Elizabeth talks with her faculty advisor and is told that she must apologize to the man who tried to rape her for stabbing him. The advisor, for the record, is a woman and has no sympathy for Elizabeth, calling it a misunderstanding. We realize very quickly why Elizabeth is only a lab tech and how so many of her problems have been amplified by living in this world.

Early in the first episode she meets Calvin, the brilliant physicist who won a Remsen Grant two years ago and who has barely been seen since. Lewis Pullman is superb as Calvin, a man who is as eccentric as Elizabeth and who is the only person at Hastings who realizes what a genius she is. They begin to share lab space together and their relationship is at first a meeting of the minds more than anything else. Calvin clearly recognizes a kindred spirit; Elizabeth is as much an exile from society as he is, only he is tolerated because he brings in money for the university. He knows if it were not for that, he would be discarded.

Naturally, when the two begin working together its makes both of them look worse. When Cal doesn’t show up for a meeting, the head of the university tells him that if he doesn’t come up with a project, he will start firing people – the women, of course, and he will tell them Elizabeth is responsible. Cal and Elizabeth then begin to bond more than before, and the fact the two of them fall in love comes as a surprise to these two intelligent people but not to the audience: the ‘chemistry’ is palpable.

The two of them come across the possibility of a scientific breakthrough that involves a theory known as ‘abiogenesis’. Cal lets Elizabeth present and before she can even get started, her theory is dismissed as junk. It is phrased in the fact that she is ‘a lab tech’ but its clear that Hastings doesn’t want a woman involved. The two of them decide to work alone if necessary, and they have just about formed a true bond – when Cal is hit by a bus and killed.

Elizabeth’s situation, if anything, gets worse. There is no sympathy for the loss she has suffered and she is not allowed to be part of the scientific community. Her research is the property of Hastings and it is very clear that the suits intend to carry on with and not give either Cal or Elizabeth any credit for it. In the midst of this Elizabeth finds out she is pregnant and does everything in her power to conceal. When it is discovered, the head of the university says he intends to fire her because she is pregnant and unwed. When she asks if they’d do the same if the man had been in the situation, he tells her: ‘it’s not the same thing.” Elizabeth is determined to find a way to carry on.

I have not yet begun to touch on all the bits and pieces of what makes Lessons so wonderful. I’ve seen examples of sexism in the workplace in so many period dramas from Mad Men to Masters of Sex, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where its just so accepted not only by the men but by the women. I’m not necessarily saying this is a metaphor for so much of today’s politics but it’s a clear message to those who argue somehow the 1950s were ‘the good old days.” Elizabeth, Calvin and Harriet Sloan (I’ll get to her in a minute) are among the few people in Lessons who refuse to accept the status quo and who are being nailed down at every chance.

The third prominent character is Harriet. I have seen Aja Naomi King in How to Get Away with Murder and like everyone else among the Keating Five, I dismissed her as being wasted in Shondaland. She had appeared in a leading role in Emily Owens, M.D and Black Box but none of her work as Michaela seemed of any real value. So her work as Harriet is a revelation, at least to me. Calvin lives in what is essentially an all-black neighborhood and Harriet lives across from him; at the start of the series, you get the sense she is his only other human contact. Harriet spends much of the first two episodes trying to work to stop a freeway that California is trying to build and drive out her neighbors and in the second episode, makes her voice very loud at a public meeting. But when Calvin doesn’t show up for it because he was busy, she has a cold exchange with him – the last before he is killed.

Harriet takes Calvin’s death more emotionally than Elizabeth does. When his obituary is published, she is enraged by it and hammers on Elizabeth’s door demanding she go with her to have it retracted. Elizabeth, numb with grief, barely interacts. Harriet then goes to the paper and demands the reporter retract it, but he tells her gently: “that’s not how news works.” She manages to persuade him to come to a board meeting where she discusses in great detail the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to the council.

The third episode, which is as far as I have gotten, shows the two women finally interacting. Elizabeth hasn’t talked with anyone since Cal died (and she doesn’t really talk with many people before) so Harriet may very well be the first female friend she’s ever had. Their bond is initially over Cal, but she is the first person she tells of her pregnancy. Harriet also tells her that Elizabeth has to grieve – and its not longer after she does that she finally allows it.

Lessons clearly shows a deal of intellect that we see in so many series – discussion of science is critical to it – but it also shows a heart that is lacking from many of them. At one point Elizabeth adopts a dog that she names Six Thirty because that’s when he wakes her to rummage through the trash. Six Thirty becomes a prominent figure in the relationship of Elizabeth and Cal – in fact, Cal is running with him when he is hit by the bus. The third episode is narrated by Six Thirty (BJ Novak does the voice) and it is as heartbreaking as anything as I’ve seen in Peak TV. We learn of Six Thirty’s origin, how he thought he could keep his family safe, and how he failed. We see how Elizabeth grieved after Cal’s death through his eyes  and how he knew about the baby before she did. Six Thirty has resolved in this episode ‘to protect his family’ and that is what he will do. I’ve seen some moving things in my years of watching television but this was as heartwarming and heartbreaking as I’ve ever seen.

I haven’t seen how the show will progress and how Elizabeth Zott the chemist becomes a TV chef (though there have been hints along the early episodes). But I am more than along for the journey. Lessons in Chemistry is a marvelous piece of worm, for many reasons, not the least of which it has a heart that even the best Limited series don’t have and compassion that has been lacking. (In all honesty, the last one I can remember with a soul at the center of it was Maid.) And it represents a brilliant return to form for Larson who gets to show a range  she hasn’t had a chance to since she took on the role of Carol Danvers. Elizabeth Zott is as much a superhero as Captain Marvel is but she’s infinitely more relatable.

Perhaps the demise of the MCU (at least the financial one) may give a chance for some of the other brilliant performers in that world to have more creative freedom. Mark Ruffalo, who was never quite as locked in as the rest, received his third Oscar nomination for Poor Things but he will almost certainly lose to Robert Downey Jr. for his masterclass in Oppenheimer. Next month we’ll get to see another sign of Downey’s return as he plays four different roles in HBO’s The Sympathizer. Angela Bassett is back at work on 9-1-1 where we need her and Renner, after managing to escape death, has returned to filming another season of Mayor of Kingstown, which now airs on Showtime. I realize that there will be many who are mourning the death of Marvel as we know it and some who argue it hasn’t been good for a while. For my part, as long as the end result is that allows performers like Larson to do the kind of work like Lessons in Chemistry, well, maybe it’s better for the viewer over all.

My score: 4.5 stars.