Love Story: A Deeply Moving Docudrama

My wife and I have watched all but the final, 9th episode of Love Story -- the romance of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette -- on Hulu.  I decided to review it now.

First of all, I've felt for a long time that the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon were the most significant public events in my lifetime  -- other than landing on the Moon --not to mention heartbreaking, in different ways.  And given that JFK Jr was the son of JFK, and the nephew of RFK, I was bound to be very interested in any television series about him.

At the same time, I've been telling my students and writing for years that docudramas are inevitably very different from the realities they retell in their stories.  I realized that many years ago, when my wife and I were watching Ike, a docudrama about Dwight Eisenhower starring Robert Duvall in the title role.  As we were watching it, I began thinking, and said to my wife, that, you know, maybe Eisenhower had more charisma than I'd realized, watching his boring public statements and speeches when I was a kid.  And then I realized that of course I was thinking that, watching Duvall's performance as Ike, because of Duvall's charisma not the real Ike's.

The fact of the matter is that even a documentary inevitably commits lies of omission.  You can't put everything, not even every significant thing, in a movie, or even a TV series.  But the docudrama takes this to an extreme, inventing not only conversations but often even characters to tell its story.   And knowing that as I watched Love Story, I was nonetheless moved to tears, because it accurately portrayed the burden that JFK Jr, along with Carolyn Bessette, bore.   And though I get that Daryl Hannah was very upset with the way she was portrayed -- and I wish her well -- that didn't affect the impact Love Story has had on me.  Because it reminded me how much we lost with the assassinations of JFK and RFK, and might well have lost with the tragic deaths of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr, Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette, and Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy brought these real-life characters admirably to life, as did Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy and Jessica Harper as Ethel Kennedy.  And the writing was sharp, funny and tragic when it needed to be. And if many conversations were products of the writers -- Episode 8 (co-written by Juli Weiner and series creator Connor Hines) was 100% John and Carolyn talking, with no one else in their Tribeca apartment -- well, I don't care, that's more than fine with me.  Because those conversations provide a reasonable enough take on what those conversations most likely were.  I'm not saying Love Story is Shakespearean -- though it does have elements and echoes of that -- but I don't recall anyone attacking his ten history plays because he made up conversations among his characters.

So thank you Hulu and everyone involved for giving us a plausible not literally factual story of one of America's and the world's tragedies, for giving us a convincing glimpse through tear-drenched windows.  And as for reality -- well, if I lived in his district, I'd 100% vote for Jack Schlossberg (who criticized this docudrama as "a grotesque display") in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Note added March 27, 2026:  My wife and I just saw the 9th, final episode of Love Story.  I stand by everything I said in the above review, and indeed feel even more strongly that this is a docudrama eminently worth seeing.

This final episode leaves an indelible impression of what the Kennedys, those they loved, and those who loved them have gone through.  The conversation between Caroline and Ethel verbalized what I've been thinking since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, the awful price that the Kennedys had paid, and would continue to pay, for their service to our country, and the wider of goals of democracy and freedom, goals and ideals which have only become more important in our country and world today.  And the cap of Carolyn's mother reciting some lines from "Death Is Nothing At All," the poem by Henry Scott Holland, captured the tenuous hope we all need to have.

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Note added June 6, 2026:  Check out this excellent piece in the Hollywood Reporter about Grace Gummer's portrayal of Caroline Kennedy in Love Story.

Boss Level: The Re-Livings in this Time-Loop Movie Get Better and Better

Back as promised, threatened, with a review of the second time-loop movie I saw tonight on Hulu -- Boss Level.  It was surprisingly good.

Surprising, because it started off as almost a parody, and a ridiculous one, of both action movies and time-loop movies. But Boss Level is one of these movies that gets better and better as it goes along -- in this case, no small feat, because it's a time-loop story after all, with the same scenes over and over again -- and in the end, we have one impressive, excellent movie, packed with all sorts of goodies.

First, Boss Level is a science fiction not a fantasy time-loop narrative (see my review earlier this evening of Palm Springs for more on that).  Second, or maybe part of the first point, the hero Roy actually makes a hard-won progress as he lives and dies and lives and dies again, day after day.  His opponent, the evil Colonel Ventor played by Mel Gibson, sends all manner of master assassins against Roy.  And every time or two he gets killed, he learns how to combat the assassin and move ever closes to winning the life-and-death game. If this sounds like video game, Boss Level in a sense is, and in any case video games play an important role in the movie.

Mel Gibson isn't the only star in Boss Level. Naomi Watts, Annabelle Wallis, and Michelle Yeoh also put in good appearances, and after all is said and done, I liked  Frank Grillo's performance as Roy more and more as the movie progressed, just like the movie itself.

There still was a lot over the top in Boss Level, like the end of the world itself being at stake.  But the movie left us with some pretty good lines like "yesterday was months ago," and ended on an appropriately ambiguous note, which leaves room for a sequel.  Count me in for a view and a review.

The Loudest Voice 1.5: Was Ailes Really All That Powerful?

The fifth episode of The Loudest Voice makes clear what the series has been more than hinting at all along: it was Ailes more than anyone else who put Trump in the White House.  Or, at least, the coming attractions do, after we see Ailes do his utmost to get Obama to lose in 2012.  Ailes blames his failure on that score to the lameness of Romney as a candidate.

I should point out that I'm not a particular believer in any single reason for Trump's winning in the Electoral College. Not the Russians, not Facebook, not Ailes.  All of those contributed in one way or another, but none was decisive, and even all together, those reasons, and those kinds of reasons, don't add up to a factor that was much more important: there were enough racist people in the country, along with people who see their futures eclipsed by what I and others see as progress, like health care for all, that they put Trump over the top.  Because they just happened to be in the right places to do this, given the oddities of our electoral system.

So Ailes, who played a role, was not quite the king maker he's made out to be in The Loudest Voice, and Ailes himself apparently and presumably believed.  A genius for understanding what a significant segment of the American public wanted in its news, yes.  A paranoid conservative with boundless confidence, willing to always act on those beliefs, yes.  A womanizer, yes.   But if he was responsible for Trump, he shares that awful distinction with millions of other Americans.

Back to tonight's episode, it was another powerhouse of docu-drama.   His firing of Brian Lewis, his near destruction of Joe, his groping of Gretchen - all parts strongly played by their actors (Seth MacFarlane, Emory Cohen, Naomi Watts) - not to mention the searing off-the-charts performance of Russell Crowe as Ailes - make The Loudest Voice a show to behold.

See also:  The Loudest Voice 1.1: Fox Launch ... The Loudest Voice 1.2: September 11 and After ... The Loudest Voice 1.3: Prelude to Trump ... The Loudest Voice 1.4: "We Create the News"

Gypsy: Beyond Treatment

Binge-watch Gypsy on Netflix in you're in the mood for a highly original, riveting, erotic, New York-based, not quite a thriller in the conventional sense but it has a a lot of that too, and a tour-de-force performance by Naomi Watts.

It was especially good to see Watts after her necessarily gonzo, unidimensional performance in the alter-dimensional Twin Peaks: The Return, which was excellent in a very different way.  In Gypsy, she plays psychologist Jean Holloway, who has at least two identities and numerous looks and attitudes.  Watts plays them all to perfection.

The set-up is she's a shrink who crosses the line and gets involved - literally, in at least one case - with the close relations of her patients.   Though her motives could be magnanimous, i.e., born of a desire to better help her patients, we soon learn, at least in one case, that Holloway is doing this much more for her own gratification.  Further, she doesn't even struggle with this - it's as natural to her as stopping by the coffee shop where her main infatuation (or maybe it's true love), the ex-girlfriend of one of her patients, works as a barista. In other words, this is no In Treatment. Now, New York's a pretty big town, and we have to suspend our disbelief that she is constantly in danger of her patients running into her when she is seeing or doing more with one of their loved ones.  That's where the thriller part comes in, and Holloway loves the adrenalin rush.  I liked it, too.

There are good performances everywhere, especially by Melanie Liburd, who plays Alexis, secretary to Holloway's husband Michael, a lawyer, played by Billy Crudup, who does what's needed in portraying a well-meaning character who's usually behind the eight ball about his wife's activities, but gradually gets the picture.  In the end, this first season of a series that so evocatively calls for more is an ode to feminine sexual power, as typified by a scene in which Jean and Alexis each have sexual encounters, against most odds, and Michael, of his own choosing, has none.

Highly recommended for a few late summer evenings, or, I'd bet, a few evenings any time of year.

Twin Peaks: The Return 1.3.-4: Coffee and Cole

The second installment of Twin Peaks: The Return - aka episodes 3 and 4 - continued tonight in the unmitigated gonzo, steampunk, B-movie style to which we became accustomed last week.

Let me also say that one of the high points - perhaps the highest points - of David Lynch's work have been the singers on stage at one point or another in the narrative.  The Dean Stockwell character lip synching Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet, with Dennis Hopper's self-tortured character trying to sing along but taking the needle off the record, and Kyle MacLachlan's character in shock in the small, standing audience in the room, was so powerful that I've wanted to write a book about that scene as a transcendent moment in popular culture for years.  As it is, it's easily one of the best scenes in any movie.

Performances of original songs by unknown (to me) musicians and singers have ended every episode of Twin Peaks: The Return so far, and they've all been excellent.  But that Everly Brothers-like performance at the end of 1.3 was superb and to my ears and eyes already a classic.

Back to Kyle MacLachlan, the central story in episodes 1.3-4 was Agent Cooper's return to this planet.  It's unsurprisingly no easy return.  Part of the difficulty makes sense.  Cooper can't talk or think normally because he's been in that insane, other-dimensional room for 25 years.  Part of it, like all Lynch works, doesn't - or doesn't quite make sense.  Apparently, Cooper was "tricked," and his doppelgänger is still out and about on Earth, though soon locked up.  But the real Cooper seems to be making at least a little bit of progress, responding well to a cup of coffee in the morning, put on his breakfast table by his doppelgänger's wife (played by Naomi Watts, who starred in Mulholland Drive, generally recognized as David Lynch's second-best work - high praise - and I agree).

And speaking of Lynch, it was good to see him return as FBI Deputy Director Cole these two episodes (he was actually an FBI Regional Bureau Chief in the original), which got me thinking: how about Cole as Comey's replacement, now that Lieberman has bowed out?

Hey, if that actually happened, it would be a lot less strange than some of the developments in Twin Peaks: The Return, which I'll be back to offer a few more paragraphs about next week.

See also Twin Peaks: The Return 1.1-2: Superluminal Sans Cherry Pie

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