He Can’t Get Started

Normal People a Hulu Original Series by Lenny Abramson and Hettie Macdonald.  With Daisy Edgar-Jones, Paul Mescal, Desmond Eastwood, Sarah Greene.  ***

I thought this series would be right up my alley.  It’s a coming of age story about a young Irishman who wants to be a writer; we see one year of high school and several of college.  It’s based on a novel which won high acclaim, whose author is supposed to be the next big thing (though she has her detractors; it’s fascinating how vociferously people disagree).[1]  It’s set in Ireland, a country that has always intrigued me (and has produced some great writers).  And it’s loaded with sex, which has been an attraction for me in the past.

We meet Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) when they’re high school seniors.  He’s a popular serious guy who seems to have everything going for him, as a high-achieving student and star on the rugby team.  She’s also a high achiever, perhaps smarter than he, but also has an edge; she displays arrogance toward a teacher who berated her that I found shocking (and I hasten to add, at the risk of sounding like an old fart, that no student would have said such a thing in my day).  Both Marianne and Connell are attractive people.  The one possible fly in the ointment is class difference: his mother cleans house for Marianne’s family, who live in a posh place.  But of course class differences have made for great romances, in various works of art.[2]

Sure enough, within one or two episodes they’re sleeping together (and this is a twelve-part series).  They make an immediate sexual connection that seems effortless, even though they’re just eighteen years old.  They’re intellectual equals, and he’s as interested in her mind as in her body.  What could possibly go wrong?  (How can this series go on for twelve episodes?)

The problem is that they keep the relationship secret.  At first I thought class difference was the problem, but there may be a more subtle one.  Marianne, because of her arrogance, is not popular at school; that may be because she’s smart, or perhaps because she’s wealthy; I had the feeling that a lot of her detractors envied her.  Connell, on the other hand, is one of the most popular guys there.  It seems obvious—at least to me—that if Connell let people know Marianne was his girlfriend, they would like her more; they’d almost have to, because of his seal of approval.  When he fails to invite her to what amounts to the senior prom (they have another name for it), it seems to be a willfully cruel act by someone who is not normally cruel.  It seems way out of character.  Even as I write it I can’t understand it.

So the way this simple story becomes a twelve-part series is that these two people, who seem made for each other, keep finding ways not to be together, then to be together again, then not to be together.  As they do that, they’re coming of age: they head to Trinity College, Dublin, where their old reputations won’t follow them.  They can become whoever they want.

I have a feeling that the subtleties of their relationship, and of their burgeoning characters, may be easier to convey in a book than on the screen.  A lot of what’s happening is interior, and it’s a problem to convey that to a viewer.  We see many scenes, as the series goes on, of Connell standing somewhere looking puzzled.  Paul Mescal does that well, but it only tells us so much.

We eventually realize that Marianne has an edge not because she’s rich and smart, but as a protective mechanism because she has one of the weirdest families on the face of the earth.  Her older brother is abusive to an extent that is almost beyond belief, and her weird mother does nothing to interfere.  There’s no father in evidence, but we suspect he may be the root of the problem.  Connell—despite the fact that his mother worked for these people—only gradually discovers Marianne’s problem.  He reacts appropriately when he does.

I’ll now say the thing I never expected to say: I found the sex boring.  Apparently I’m officially an old fart, although I’ve seen a lot of sex on the screen and would happily see more like it.[3]  I would refer to the sex in this series as softcore porn.  Beautiful bodies and a lot of heavy breathing.  A little of that goes a long way.  But there’s more than a little here.  As I said to my wife at the end, without the sex this would have been a ten-part series.

I would also say—and I realize this is Ireland—that I couldn’t believe how much these people drank.  I realize they’re under stress, and they are in college, but I would say both of them have a drinking problem, along with most of their friends, but nobody says a word about it.  It’s taken to be normal behavior.

The other thing that’s interesting is the ending, which of course I won’t reveal.  That was my wife’s favorite part; she thought it was entirely appropriate, and she convinced me when she explained herself.  A lot of people are talking about Sally Rooney as a millennial writer, and I think the ending marks her as one.  My generation’s story (another case where I only saw the movie, never read the book) was The Graduate, where Benjamin kidnaps his girlfriend from her wedding and they run off together, wind up on a bus going who knows where with no idea what comes next.  That was my generation to a T.  Sarah Rooney’s story is almost the opposite.  It’s much healthier.

But I’m a person of my generation.  I like our story better.

Our sex was better too.

[1] When I’m thinking of buying a book, I check the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, but trust Goodreads more.  I think of the Goodreads people as real readers; they’re opinionated, and say exactly what they think.  The bad reviews of Normal People are something else.  And they’re not all by men.

[2] “Dawn, go away I’m no good for you” immediately comes to mind.

[3] The other night we began watching a new series, The Money Heist, and there was sex in that.  I liked it just fine.  Found it exciting.