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Chapter 1: What is the overview of the 'Love Story' finale?
Hello, welcome back to Prestige TV Podcast Meet. I'm Joanna Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney.
Chapter 2: How did Constance Zimmer's performance impact the finale?
We're here to wrap up a love story.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Grace Gummer face with her dialogue?
That is the JFK Jr. Carolyn Bessette story. The finale has aired. The plane has gone down. We have mourned and we'll be mourning the series.
Chapter 4: What are the issues with Caroline Kennedy as a character?
So we're just going to wrap up the finale. Rob Mahoney, how are you feeling?
Okay, it's hard to know how to feel after a finale like this, where, I mean, to be honest with you, just given the source material and the real life people involved, I don't know that there's like a great way to make an episode like this. It's just like a really tall order to begin with. I also don't think that this delivers on everything that it could have been in the case of this episode.
Chapter 5: How does the restaurant scene relate to the overall narrative?
And this is the impossible conundrum.
Chapter 6: What happens during the crash in the finale?
It's like, I don't know how to make this episode. And at the same time, this is the one you have to nail.
I was reading this great interview with Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, who are the producers behind this. They also worked on American Crime Story. I'm like a huge fan of the way that they think about television. They did an interview with Chris Murphy at Vanity Fair where they were talking about the challenges of this episode.
Obviously, there are a million challenges, but one of them that they talked about in the finales of all of these kinds of shows they've done is like... This is a quote from Brad Simpson. He said, the last episode is always a challenge because you're telling what is usually the most known part of the story, right?
Chapter 7: How do the hosts handle difficult celebrity moments onscreen?
This is, you know, like all the details of how Carolyn and JFK met or all that sort of stuff like that, that is like fertile playground for them. But this is a plane crash that we all know that the plane is going to go down. So there's no suspense inside of that. So, you know, not that I would want them to try for that. So what story do you tell?
And they talked about how it was always their plan to put the plane crash at the exact moment And it is the like precise midway point of this episode. And I'm curious if you were surprised about how much episode there was before the crash or how did you feel about how they split that up?
I think pleasantly surprised about how much there was before, just because I was a little worried we weren't going to get much of John and Carolyn together, which to me has just been the charge of the whole show, other than getting on the plane and ultimately meeting their demise.
So the idea that, you know, some of it works for me and some of it doesn't, like them in marriage counseling is like a little on the nose at times, but then post marriage counseling, I think is like fun and evocative and like digging into the parts of their relationship that are interesting to me. So I'm really glad we got that time.
And I'm glad in part because I think one of the flaws of this season that really came to roost in this episode is that I don't know that Love Story ever built out the architecture around John and Carolyn to be like a fully-fledged, realized show. And so then when you take them out of it and you have everyone else mourning them and trying to make sense of what happened...
You understandably feel the absence in the way that you're supposed to, but you also are just like, so what is this show now? What am I supposed to be waiting for?
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Chapter 8: What are the best and worst moments of the season?
What am I supposed to be paying attention to? Am I invested in these side characters who to this point have shown up mostly to like dump exposition? It's a tough spot.
You and I had talked about that last week when we talked about how sometimes it feels like they forget these side characters are there until they need to bring them forward to something. I... Kind of largely agree with you on that point that I think the foundation around these two has been pretty shaky.
But I actually disagree in that the back half of this episode, which was a constant Zimmer as Carolyn's mom showcase. Oh, my God. made me cry, which I have not been that emotionally invested in this show thus far. And that's that performance.
And those, you know, the trio of scenes, her Ed Schlossberg scene, her Caroline Kennedy scene, and then the eulogy, the poetry reading at the funeral, really, really got to me. And so we're going to talk a bit about Constance Zimmer and sort of like that kind of performance, but it really unlocked something for me for this season, which is that
I think the writing is not tremendously great for this season. I think it is quite overblown, and we've talked about that a bit.
But I think it's sort of... It's weird for me to compare it to Shakespeare, but I'm about to compare it to Shakespeare in that if you go to a Shakespeare play and you are watching actors who really understand the emotional truth of what they're saying, you can understand the Shakespeare dialogue even if you are not versed in the vocabulary. Right.
And if you are watching an actor who is just sort of like hitting the AIM pentameter beats, then you're just sort of like at sea with like, what are we talking about here? So for me, like in an ideal world, Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy, like this is her episode, right? Like in an ideal world and an ideal performance.
And she has so much, she's carrying so much of the back half of this episode. That is a performance that like didn't really fully click for me. And I think she has a tough... job here because Caroline Kennedy is a very reserved person. So she is, like, playing a very reserved person, whereas, like, the role of Anne Freeman, Caroline's mom, is, like, allowed to be as emotional as possible. Right.
But, like, in that scene and... you know, I'm going to sort of want to zig and zag around Constance Zimmer, this thing that really worked for me. But like inside that one-on-one scene, that lengthy one-on-one scene that they have inside of Carolyn and JFK's apartment, you know, Constance has to lift some really clunker lines.
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