A small plane rises into the sky at the end of the first full moment of Connor Hines’ Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. After a quick, bickering exchange, there’s an apology before America’s uncrowned prince, his wife, and her sister board the aircraft and they disappear into the light blue distance. A lot of dramas about figures in the headlines begin with the end, but Hines’ series feels different from the very first frame. This is not just about the courtship between two of the most famous people in the world, but it’s also about how we, as the world who watches, came to love them; how we misunderstood them and how our prying eyes must have felt in the course of familial and public duty. Hines has created something so tender, surprisingly languid and sexy. With its romantic tension, Love Story feels like finding true love–the kind that rocks your world.
There is a moment in the first episode of Hines’ series where we see how differently Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. enter a party and, ultimately, move through the world. She sneaks in the back since it’s being hosted by her boss, Calvin Klein, and he walks the red carpet with flashbulbs illuminating his presence. Carolyn is stealth and quick since she is trying to avoid her immediate superior and make her way inside while Kennedy gives the press what they want. When Klein introduces them (something that he will bring up over and over again throughout the season), Kennedy asks for her number but Carolyn tells him to meet her at the show room where she works.
Love Story luxuriates in its own patience. One might assume that these two would be drawn together like magnets, and, to be sure, the attraction is there from their first date–which Kennedy is late to. There are comments from various characters about how desired Kennedy is–from his family, friends, and strangers who don’t quite enter his orbit–but Carolyn isn’t interested in being a routine flame for him. She is the one who keeps him on his toes, and the writing subverts our expectations about who these two are as the season progresses. In their quieter moments, they can open themselves up without fuss or the relentless eye from the public.
On their first date, Carolyn asks Kennedy what he would do if he wasn’t the son of a president, and he expounds on his confusion of what is a real memory versus what the media has exposed him to in terms of his family’s image. This intimacy is strung throughout the beginnings of their relationship, and it hints at how the makings of a love story can be held in such a precious way. When Kennedy watches Carolyn walk away in the late hours after a meeting, she almost looks like a mirage–the steam from the street wafting out of the ground like the makings of a romantic magic trick. When she watches Kennedy on television during a funeral, she cries as she watches him and sees a side of him without him knowing. Hines holds these moments with such fleeting delicacy. When Carolyn and Kennedy finally do come together, their lips meet in near silence–no music and almost no sound, as if the sense of touch is the only language that exists.
Love Story‘s pacing is absolutely perfect. The arc of the season never feels stretched out because the actors do such a phenomenal job of convincing us why they are so tentative in certain aspects of the relationship. There is each persona separately and then how they exist as a couple–so much is at stake. In this pre-9/11, pre-Y2K New York City, the world of the magazine and the supermodel never feel like a bygone era but exciting horizons. The launch of Kennedy’s George, with that bold, sexy cover of Cindy Crawford, makes you yearn for that time you waited for the cover of a magazine to snatch your attention.
There is an elusiveness that Sarah Pidgeon brings to Carolyn Bessette that lures you in. She embodies her ferocious intelligence but keeps it handy like a flirtatious weapon, and you feel like she can handle just about any man that crosses her path. Pidgeon manages to make her beguiling but approachable at the same time, and her physicality is fascinating–arching or stretching her spine to shrink or extend her posture. The way she walks through the hallways of Calvin Klein is entirely different than when she is put on the spot in a later episode when she accompanies Kennedy to his family’s home and she has to confront the legacy of the name of Kennedy. Pidgeon is a performer who makes you understand how she inhabits a character’s body like she did as the younger version of Kathryn Hahn’s wired, confused character in Tiny Beautiful Things. Before she and Kennedy are married, she lights her cigarettes in a different way almost every time, and she runs her fingers through her hair to do something with her hands. Pidgeon delivers a landmark, absorbing performance.
How does one put themselves in the shoes of a Kennedy without showing us the pressure? Many characters express that John F. Kennedy Jr. is a nice person (as they compliment his good looks and his money and his access), and Paul Anthony Kelly walks that wire beautifully. In some moments, dare I say that he is even better than the actual man he is playing? There is a goodness to his John-John that some actors wouldn’t be able to get a firm handle on but Kelly grounds his performance because Carolyn shakes this Kennedy awake. Could he give into his on-again-off-again relationship with Daryl Hannah or any model that crosses his path? Of course he could, but he’s not interested in that. Kelly shows us how this Kennedy is reckoning with legacy, family, and his own individuality.
There is something wistful in Hines’ restraint as we watch this first season against the backdrop of so many troubling things in the world. This is, of course, before the age of social media and almost before the paparazzi because entirely threatning in their starving pursuit of the perfect, lucrative picture. This is a love story about people who are collectively anointed and the personal price that comes with that. There is a stark difference between this tale of careful consideration when it comes to love and the public persona of those that we see in our daily lives–it makes you appreciate this pair even more.
This love story is elegant, sophisticated, sexy, and romantic. How lucky that we all came close to a second Camelot.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette debuts new episodes every Thursday on FX before dropping the next day on Hulu.
