Anyway, I'm sure I've never seen it in a television series - until last night, on Episode 8 of Tell Me You Love Me on HB0. In the very last scene, Nick (Ian Somerhalder) and Jamie (Michelle Borth) are evaluating their fledging relationship, Ian correctly feeling that he may want Jamie more than she wants him - which she of course denies - and Nick utters the magic words: "Tell me you love me."
I think it served last night to ratify the series, in some way - by finally making it crystal clear to everyone that that's each partner of each couple really most wants, whether by words or deeds. This is what the series is really most about, regardless of the specific stories.
And we learned other interesting things last night. Dr. Foster and husband didn't have kids because Dr. Foster didn't want to share her husband. Palek may have some of the stuff of good fatherhood in him, after all. And in a very tender scene with Katie and her daughter, becoming a woman, we learn that, whatever Katie's problems with her own sexuality, she's a good, loving mother in explaining some of solitary facts of life to her daughter.
Only two more episodes left. Tell Me You Love Me is doing very well for itself.
See also Tell Me You Love Me on HBO and Tell Me You Love Seven Times
5-minute podcast about Tell Me You Love Me
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
4 comments:
Hi, Paul,
Not going to say too much about this, as we're a few weeks behind you on TMYLM.
But the self-referential trope that you're talking about is one that interests me, and is possibly the one thing that I have in common with director John Waters. I remember reading an interview with him, once, where he said that he gets a little frisson of excitement that he can't explain whenever a character in a movie says the name of the movie, and I have to admit, so do I.
You're right, sometimes it doesn't pay off, textually, and at worst, it can break a little through the fourth wall, but it is a cute little meta-loop that always makes me tingle.
Having said that, we are about four episodes into the show, and I was thinking last night that it was odd that no-one had said the title, yet... it seems like it would be a key phrase in some of the conversations that are happening.
I may be about to repost something on my site that I said about Tell Me You Love Me in someone else's comments in the next couple of days, just FYI.
Ok - keep me posted.... :)
Do you know if this show is going to be strictly one season? I'm not sure it could last two seasons unless it was a new set of couples each time, but that would probably get stale as well.
It's definitely been renewed - and I'm glad. Don't know if it will be a new set of couplers - my guess is that it would be.
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