Many of Us Remember This Love Story. Ryan Murphy and His Writers Actually Put Us Inside It

 

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 21^st 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.