Ryan Murphy is right, we are all part of the Carolyn Bessette religion
And other thoughts I had while watching Love Story so far.
If you could see into my living room on any Friday night for the past four weeks you’d see me sat legs crossed for the better part of an hour, eyes glued to a screen showing Love Story.
This is very unusual for me. By that time of the week not a lot is keeping my attention other than what appears on my phone, but I think Ryan Murphy knows this about us. That we cannot, and have not, stopped watching.
Murphy himself called it a religion during the press tour. “Carolyn Bessette is clearly a religious figure and it’s a religion of her own.” He said this before the show even aired, and at a point when the internet was already losing its mind about whether Sarah Pidgeon’s hair colour was accurate enough that someone on the show had to track down and consult Carolyn's former colourist. Of course they did. Ryan Murphy didn’t create the Carolyn Bessette religion. He just built the church, and every Friday we fill every pew. Consider these thirty thoughts my offering.
I am immediately aware that I am watching two people who have no idea they are running out of time and it hurts.
This feeling does not go away.
She was a sales associate at the mall and now she is correcting Calvin Klein in his own showroom. Noted.
Do we still consider making a guy chase us romantic or have we moved on?
Carolyn has borrowed John’s shirt to wear to work one morning and looks extraordinary. Some people really do just have it.
Carolyn Bessette has made me want to throw out everything I own and start again with one perfect white shirt.
Did they really have matching tattoos?!
I’m going to need to see receipts on that apartment interior.
The lip biting. Was this real. I need a source.
A man who shows up late and still has the audacity to be that charming. Frustrating. Effective.
Can’t help but notice even the paparazzi are trying to emulate John’s style now.
I’m going to need a whole separate documentary about the Sex and the City creator not liking Carolyn and I need this immediately.
The arguments feel real in a way that is uncomfortable. These are two people who love each other and cannot get out of their own way.
They have really done John dirty here. They have made him look like the co-founder from hell.
The show has made me go down a George magazine rabbit hole at midnight.
Just looked up “what happened to George magazine after” and will immediately be closing that tab.
I have paused this show four times to look at coats online. This is not a criticism it is a confession!
Every scene with Lauren and Carolyn together feels so warm like the only place where Carolyn gets to just be herself.
Carolyn’s mother is in the back of a Jeep on a dirt road next to Ethel Kennedy and the look on her face is sending me.
Candlelit wedding venues are about to have a very good quarter.
Caroline Kennedy tells John that Carolyn’s relationship with the press won’t change until John’s does. The most useful thing anyone says to anyone across seven episodes.
The show makes you understand viscerally why she stopped going outside.
Carolyn’s nana reading the tabloids and too intimidated to call her own granddaughter broke something in me.
The mannequin in the shop window in a wedding dress next to a cardboard cutout of John that says “it could have been you.” Carolyn does not find this funny and Carolyn is right.
This show has given me complicated feelings about the nineties.
I am watching Carolyn try and deal with being the most photographed person in New York while actively not wanting to be and I feel complicit in a way.
Sarah Pidgeon plays Carolyn and she is very good. But we also don’t really have much to compare it to.
I have paused the show and am looking for real footage of Carolyn on YouTube. There are some grainy videos where you catch her voice and her laugh.
Thinking about how little Sarah Pidgeon had to build a performance on it’s extraordinary this show works at all.
So we’ve taken a woman who guarded her privacy like it was the only thing she owned and we’ve given her nine episodes on FX. Is that right?