Tell Me You Love Me Concludes for First Season

A very satisfying finale to Tell Me You Love Me on HBO On Demand last night...

1. Jaime and Hugo's getting back together and married was entirely motivated. I also liked the realistic way this episode built up to their happy ending. They meet in a gas station mart. Next have dinner, but don't sleep together. Instead, they talk later that night on the phone... and seal the deal. There surely were more people with broken hearts in the world before Alexander Graham Bell.

2. Palek walks out, Carolyn loses their baby, Palek comes back. A harsh arc, but it's about the only way the couple could have proceeded. What's not entirely clear is whether Carolyn will ever completely forgive Palek (I would say not - but there was no clear indication one way or another on the show).

3. Katie and David come this close to splitting, but - at last - make passionate love. This was predictable - but nonetheless satisfying.

And let me say here that Ally Walker's acting as Katie was really exceptional - last night and on the entire series. She had just the right mix of vulnerability, hope, and fatigue. All the acting on the series was excellent - the women (Michelle Borth as Jaime and Sonya Walger as Carolyn) standing out maybe a little more than the men (Tim DeKay as David and Adam Scott as Palek) (and Ian Somerhalder as Nick and Luke Farrell Kirby as Hugo with less screen time as Jaime's guys) - but it was all fine, and Ally Walker was the best of the best.

Along with Jane Alexander, who was superb as Dr. May Foster, and as I've said before, has never put in anything less than a great performance in anything I've ever seen.

As I also said in my preview review of the first show, Tell Me You Love Me wasn't really about the nudity, though that certainly made for some nice scenes.

But the show was about relationships, and I'm looking forward to Season Two. Will we be seeing these three couples again? I'd say probably not, but I have no information about this. Surely May Foster will be back - with David Selby as her husband Arthur - and you can be sure I'll be posting reviews right here on Infinite Regress.

Hey, it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it...

See also Tell Me You Love Me on HBO and Tell Me You Love Seven Times ... and Episode 8 ...


5-minute podcast about Tell Me You Love Me

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Tell Me You Love Me on Tell Me You Love Me (Episode 8)

There is a moment in some movies - maybe some novels, too, I'm not sure - which can either be tacky and obvious or good and locking-it-in. I don't think I've ever seen in a television series. It happens when a character in the movie says the name of the movie. I know I've seen this a bunch of times - readers, let me know if you have any examples...

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

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Tell Me You Love Me Seven Times

Well, I've now seen seven episodes of Tell Me You Love Me on HBO, and thought I'd report back to you, your dedicated correspondent, about how I think the series is progressing.

First, the sex continues to be explicit and good. Episode 7, still fresh in my mind, had some especially good scenes with Jamie and Hugo, and Carolyn and Palek (separately, that is).

And what about the four ongoing relationship stories? Let's take them in chronological order, starting with the youngest.

Jamie (Michelle Borth) and Hugo (Luke Farrell Kirby): are no longer a couple, even though they were together last night, and who knows what might happen next. Turns out that Jamie, who in the first episode was obsessing about Hugo's wandering eyes, has a history herself. This is one of the signatures of the series: With each couple, we start out thinking that just one of the partners is causing the problem. But we soon learn that both are responsible, in their own ways. Jamie has now slept with two other guys since Hugo left her, and may (though I doubt it) be falling in love with Nick (Ian Somerhalder - Lost's Boone! - he never met Penny on Lost, but it's good to see both of them on Tell Me You Love Me, anyway).

Carolyn (Sonya Walger - Lost's Penny) and Palek (Adam Scott): have for the most part been trying to have a baby (or, at least, Carolyn's been trying), and there are some good surprises in this story that I won't tell you about in case you haven't yet seen
them. I don't see much hope for this couple, mainly because Palek is, I don't know, such a pretty-boy cold fish.

David (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker): As I mentioned in my review last month, I find this relationship the most far-fetched: a couple sleeping together in the same bed, but haven't had sex in a year. I mean ... sooner or later, they're close together, half asleep, something should lead to something more ... but, ok, leaving that aside and suspending my disbelief ... Theirs is indeed a complex story, and more than it seemed at first. Katie is contributing to the problem. She confided last night that, when she and David were having sex, she sometimes faked her orgasms... And maybe more than sometimes. I predict that by the end of this season, we'll see this couple making love again, but it will be interesting to see how they get there.

Dr. May Foster (Jane Alexander) and Arthur (David Selby): are clearly a fourth couple, which is a nice touch, since Dr. Foster is also the couples' therapist treating each of the other three couples. We see May and David having some pretty passionate sex - though not as explicit as the first two couples - and I give Tell Me You Love Me credit for going into that largely uncharted territory of hot sex in your seventies. (Hey, it's always good to see a rosy future.) Their problem as a couple is probably the most mundane - a lifelong love of May's, played by Ronnie Cox, comes back into her life when his wife dies. But the story is well rendered.

All said, then, Tell Me You Love Me is keeping the promise it made in the first episode: a portrayal of sex and relationships in diverse walks of life in the 21st century, with not much left covered. The acting is really excellent throughout, and if some of the stories seem a bit strained, the passion of the players more than makes up for it.


5-minute podcast of this review


See also Tell Me You Love Me on HBO and Tell Me You Love Me on Tell Me You Love Me: Episode 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Tell Me You Love Me on HBO

I saw the first episode of Tell Me You Love Me on HBO On Demand last night.

It begins this Sunday, and I was going to wait until then to see it, like a normal person, but (a) who says I'm normal and (b) reporters from the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Sun called in the past week to interview me about whether I thought Californication and Tell Me You Love Me represent a new leap forward in sexuality on television.

They do. Network television was and to some extent still is the old maid of media when it comes to sexuality. NYPD Blue made a little bit of progress in the 1990s, but it was HBO on cable which made the big breakthrough in the Bada Bing on The Sopranos, and went even further with Atia and Brutus (separately) in Rome.

Now even that has been surpassed by Hank and his continuous escapades in Californication, and the three couples we see in imperfect and intriguingly difficult relationships, in and out of beds and cars and clothes, in Tell Me You Love Me.

My favorite is the youngest couple - Hugo and Jamie, played very well by Luke Farrell Kirby and sizzling Michelle Borth. Their problem is the most common - they have great sex but Hugo has wandering eyes. Carolyn and Palek - also well played by Lost's Penny (Sonya Walger) (did she give up looking for Desmond?) and Adam Scott - are having trouble conceiving, which is making their sex into clinical baby making motions. And David and Katie - also well acted by Tim DeKay and Ally Walker - are in their 40s, and haven't had sex in a year.

All three couples are or will be headed to couples' therapist Dr. May Foster - Jane Alexander - who has been giving great performances since the Great White Hope in 1970. Dr. Foster may have the best sexual relationship, with her husband Arthur (David Selby), of any couple on the show, but you never know...

So ... three, actually, four couples, all trying to get the most of their physical and emotional relationships, with varying degrees of success. Lots of explicit sex, lots of nudity - yeah, front and back, women and men - and, yeah, if you must know, even more than in Californication.

There will be no doubt be lots of informed and uniformed discussions about whether what we're seeing is real or prosthetic.

Doesn't really matter, I'd say. The stories are real and captivating, even when a litte far-fetched (like David and Katie), and I'm looking forward to more Tell Me You Love Me.

Likely under the influence of the more libertine Internet, which is increasingly a form of television, the screens in our living rooms are growing up, and that's a good thing.

See also Tell You Love Me Seven Times and Tell Me You Love Me on Tell Me You Love Me: Episode 8

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See also:

The Sopranos As A Nuts-And-Bolts Triumph of Non-Network TV

Good Sex on Rome, Bad FCC in Washington

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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