Normal People

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

You confused me there. I wondered why you were bothering to tell us that you loved your mum more than a film, or possibly Pauline Collins.

hahaha, I think I omitted the word "Did" after the word "Mam."

My dad had a big crush on Pauline Collins. When he started teaching in Cahir, he was staying in a boarding house for the first couple of years. Anyway, A young pauline Collins was staying there for a brief period when some acting tour was playing locally. He observed three things about her. The first was that she was extremely beautiful, the second was that she was quite obviously pregnant, and she certainly wasn't married, which was a challenging combination in the early 1960's.. That I first heard this story before she ever mentioned in public that she had given up a daughter for adoption in the early 60's, which meant that for much of the second half of the eighties, I was in possession of a bit of tabloid level gossip.

[Bored Of Education]

That last post by Nocturnal Submission has already entertained me more than this series. So, three hours in and the big twist was that he was in the cool crowd in school and now she is in the cool crowd in university. That's it. It actually looked like she had found the backbone that she had at the start of the series for a bit but, no, it's all, "I don't want to have a threesome but I will if it pleases you" crap. Oh, and the bloody interminable sex scenes. Yes, they get back together and fuck but it has to be 'they've woken up so they fuck' or 'they're having a cup of tea so they fuck' . The whole thing could have been half as long without the repetitive slow motion sex scenes. I expect Lenny Abrahamson looked at the flimsy material from the book and thought, "12 episodes? Fuck me, I am going to have to throw a whole load of sex in there". It is genuinely a testament to him and the main two actors plus the mum to have created anything reasonably compelling out of nothing happening. It didn't surprise me that his Oscar nomination came from a film about people held in captivity in one room, this felt very similar. Obviously, I haven't read the book but it is telling that I asked Mrs B things about it like, "Did Connell become less and less charismatic as the book went on as well" and she said she couldn't remember. However, when certain things happened, she said it was just like the book. It took the visual clues to remind her.

Ok, there was a bit more suggestion of something interesting about the mother and the brother but not enough to drag me through another three hours. I'm done, I'm out. I've got Ozark, Killing Eve and Marvellous Mrs. Maisel that I could have been watching.

[Ray de Galles]

Slightly spoilery :

Just finished it tonight. It's been very frustrating because my wife and I watched the first ten episodes in two big chunks but then have had to wait a few days to see the final two while we watched family movies & theatre broadcasts and had zoom socials we'd already scheduled.

It was worth the wait though, the ending was really rewarding after the more harrowing episodes leading up to it and didn't go down the traumatic route I was worried about (I've mostly avoided this thread as I was worried about spoilers). Going to read the book now which is an especially positive thing as I really tend to struggle finding modern novels that interest me.

[marsupialman]

"Did Connell become less and less charismatic as the book went on as well" and she said she couldn't remember.

Maybe that's by design? In the small pond of their school, Connell was a god. Banging in goals for the football team, teachers flirting with him AND top of the English class. But Trinity is his first step into a wider and very different world and his status gets eroded. But maybe part of his story is working out the parts of him that Marianne loves him for and learning to love himself for them?

The structure (in terms of episode number and duration) is interesting. Most of them clock in around the half hour mark but a couple were closer to 20 minutes. Perhaps not having to conform to a standard episode length gives the creators more freedom to tell the story exactly how they want?

Normal People isn't groundbreaking by any means, but they've told the story well and in a way that feels a little bit fresh and novel, which is maybe why it's landed so well.

[Bored Of Education]

Maybe that's by design? In the small pond of their school, Connell was a god. Banging in goals for the football team, teachers flirting with him AND top of the English class. But Trinity is his first step into a wider and very different world and his status gets eroded. But maybe part of his story is working out the parts of him that Marianne loves him for and learning to love himself for them?

Certainly, it's by design in the reversal of roles in Uni - the massive reveal in episodes 3-6 - that is shown and verbalised. However, it is how he becomes less charismatic in his interactions with Marianne that is more notable - not least when she reverts back to being submissive to him. It's not like he started with a high bar of charisma in the first place, his social popularity and attraction to the opposite sex slightly jarring with his character being a shy nice well-brought-up lad (which, in itself clashes clumsily with his treatment of Marianne in school). There was a hint of his early anxiety in school which may have explained his cuntish behaviour that he verbalised in one of the Uni episodes but that wasn't enlarged upon. It may, along with Marianne's continued acquiescence to him even after finding herself in University, have been explained later on in the series but it had taken so long to get just to that little glimmer of backstory that it was a case of tl:dw. Another aspect that I find infuriating was that, for two people who were able to talk reasonably open with each and who had known each other closely for a long period, they didn't actually talk about anything important affecting them such as her treatment by her brother and mother and his rejection of his story. Again, this may have been explained later in the series but, after three hours, meh...

I realised it reminded me of that slow TV thing that they did of a canal boat going down the Kennet and Avon Canal. The boat was very well made, the settings were lovely, there was nothing to offend you (unless you have a Victorian attitude to sex scenes) and you could watch it for an hour or two with the little that did happen unfolding slowly in front of you before getting bored and watching something else. With more sex possibly.

[E10 Rifle]

He's weak and repressed in a pretty believable way if you ask me. You can be both and still be a nice guy.

Here's a bugbear: there's been a lot of talk about how this is a drama for "millennial women", as if you have to have some kind of direct relatable time-sensitive empathy with the characters and situations to get into it. This strikes me as something that only tends to get said about dramas with young women at their fore. No one says The Wire is only for Baltimore crims and politicos. My uni days are well behind me, and Normal People doesn't particularly gel with my own experiences way back when, but it's still compelling.

[Diable Rouge]

The one thing I don't get in episode 3 is why he felt compelled to ask that particular girl to the debs, when they barely even talked to each other normally - granted, there may something about keeping "face" with the lads, but surely as the leader of the pack, he could pretty much do whatever he liked? Admittedly, my own social skills, either then or now, border on the non-existent.

[marsupialman]

I guess that pertains to Bordeaux's point about Connell. At school his athletic and academic prowess gives him status, but he doesn't necessarily have personal charisma. Not to the point where he felt it natural for him to go against the grain in terms of his romantic choices.

[Ray de Galles]

The one thing I don't get in episode 3 is why he felt compelled to ask that particular girl to the debs, when they barely even talked to each other normally...

I thought they had gone out, or least had sex, before he got together with Marianne (as well as after he and Marianne first stopped seeing each other). Obviously he should still have asked Marianne but, once he didn't, the choice of Rachel didn't seem that strange,

Talking about Connell becoming "less charismatic" seems a particularly tone-deaf reading of the fact that he's clearly slowly succumbing to depression while at university.

[Bored Of Education]

Having charisma and being depressed are not mutually exclusive; I am not confusing having less charisma with depression and it's ridiculous to suggest that . At the point that I left it, he had just split up with Marianne which, while there were suggestions of his unease, is the start of his depression, I assume.

[Jimski]

I thought Conversations with Friends was fantastic- haven’t liked a book so much since Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad

Ditto - actually think I preferred it to Normal People, but really enjoyed both. No idea why there's this idea they are books "for women" (which seems to be a widespread opinion). In general though, men don't tend to read books written by women, especially not when they are predominantly about women too, and I've never really understood why. Women don't have the same problem with books by and about men.

[E10 Rifle]

Is Connell really "the leader of the pack" at school though? He's one of the Top Boys, for sure, on account of his sporting prowess and looks, but he's not calling the shots. He never really is. I'd like to know at this point (six episodes in) more about his own family life - his mum's ace (the moral centre of the story almost) but what else has gone on there?

[Ray de Galles]

The lack of back story on both Connell and Marianne's family circumstances remains the case throughout the series.

It's clearly a very definite decision to not explain their lives too much before they connect. I would guess that's to focus on the intensity and importance of the relationship between them and how it shapes them, rather than what they were before.

It's a little frustrating, particularly with regard to Marianne's family dynamic, but my wife tells me the book doesn't give much more detail that she recalls.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Watched the whole thing in one go. It was beautiful television, with two leads that I liked and cared about. E10 is spot-on about C mum, she is the moral anchor of the whole series, loving her son, understanding M and not shy to admonish C when he screws up rather than 'being on his side' as he wants her to be.

I really liked the ending, I was fearing some over the top drama but no...

[Hot Pepsi]

He was popular in high school because he was good at sports, good-looking and a generally agreeable guy. She was not popular because she argued with teachers and was just a bit awkward. Being smart might not win her any friends. Apparently she wasn’t regarded as attractive because she hadn’t sorted out what to do with he bangs. That’s really the main difference, so that did feel a bit like that old Hollywood cliche.

But she also carries herself with more confidence and ease in college and that makes her seem more attractive. I suppose that happens in real life. At a place like Trinity, she could find more people who appreciate her intelligence and many of them were probably even more awkward and weird in high school, so she wouldn’t feel like such an outsider.

Indeed, at first, Connell is the outsider among the English lit nerds because he was good at sports and not used to talking a lot in the seminars.

They do seem to eventually accept him, but I wasn’t sure it was going to go that way. I noticed in college - and especially in grad school - that a lot of the Argyle-sweater-vest-wearing, affected-pipe-smoking intellectual types seemed to *go out of their way* to show off their disdain for sports, TV and other non-intellectual pursuits. They seemed to be trying to get revenge against the jocks that weren’t nice to them in high school.

[Jimski]

That definitely does happen in real life - people can be outsiders at school, simply because they aren't in with a certain crowd, and not being considered pretty (despite being so) just because they don't act a certain way, and lack confidence.

[E10 Rifle]

Spoiler alert(ish)

The episode documenting Connell's pretty-much mental health breakdown is the best yet, really stayed with me. In fact it crept into my dream last night. Tremendous stuff.

[Duncan Gardner]

I haven't watched nor read any of this, and probably won't bother, but enjoying the detail on Pearse Street Tech.

[danielmak]

I had heard nothing about the book or the series but saw that this thread was one of the longest dedicated to a single title in this part of OTF so gave it a go. (Of course, like any good OTF thread, half of the thread has nothing to do with the show.) And while I loved Bored's recap (total laugh out loud moment about nothing happening), I think the fact that not much happened sucked me in. The dramas within the drama are all small.

SPOILERS (although anyone reading this far has had a lot spoiled)

It's not until the last or second to last episode when he finally says what has been unsaid the whole time: he is afraid of looking foolish. He says this to her about the application to the MA program in New York. But that quest to avoid teasing of any kind is the whole foundation for the show. If he had confidence (and let's be honest, probably 5% of teenagers are confident so he's not unusual when it comes to lacking confident) then both of their lives would have been radically different. Anyway, I really enjoyed this series but it fit with some other slow movers, like Marriage Story (which I also liked) that run counter to the faster paced shows that tend to draw people's attention.

My one big complaint about this series has to do with the sexual politics, or the sex politics. The screenplay treats any level of kink as a product of self-hatred. The only time we see a break from that is when she's in Sweden and during one scene she's bossed but then that dominance is followed by after care in the shower scene when he's washing her hair. But even that relationship is expressed as her self-hatred leading to a need to be dominated. I find all of that too problematic; as if people can't be confident and in control but seek out kinky relationship where they are willing to give up control and be turned on by (consensual) aggression/dominance.

[laverte]

Spoilers.

The episode documenting Connell's pretty-much mental health breakdown is the best yet, really stayed with me.

Yes, me too. Brilliantly acted, filmed and scripted. In general the dialogue is really sly at going back and forth between direct and evasive. It's not showy but at the end of the series i did feel like the characters had gone twelve rounds with each other, feigning, jabbing, flattering, stinging like a bee.

That said, Connell's breakdown is much more dramatic – or dramatisable – than Marianne's drifting, monochromal anomie, as portrayed in the previous, 'mirror' episode. It's really, really hard to convey that kind of depression in fiction, since numbness and emptiness defy all the psychodramatic requirements of narrative and character, and so i'm intrigued to know how the novel (which i haven't read) approaches it. i think the tv adaptation is broadly unsuccessful, and for me it's the weakest episode. But in portraying depression from the outside i'm not sure it's possible to get anywhere close. Depression is pure mood, which is a subject for poetry, painting, music. Not telly.

My one big complaint about this series has to do with the sexual politics, or the sex politics. The screenplay treats any level of kink as a product of self-hatred... as if people can't be confident and in control but seek out kinky relationship where they are willing to give up control and be turned on by (consensual) aggression/dominance.

i share some of this ambivalence. i do think it's possible, though, to turn it around, and argue that Marianne's self-hatred is a product of kink – more specifically, of a kink that sits uneasily with her feminist politics and her steely awareness of the dangers of being dependent on another person for anything, up to and including love and sex. i don't think any girl is going to sashay out of her terrifying household feeling confident and in control of her sexuality. And her relationship with that psychopath Jamie only intensifies her self-hatred and perhaps clamps it to her kink. But the key moment comes when she gets angry with Connell that he doesn't want to dominate her – it upsets her that hitting women, even in play, means crossing a red line for him. She doesn't (can't?) allow him his autonomy and his right to say no. By blaming him she shows that she is not ready for a safe, consensual power exchange; she tries to make him feel guilty for, effectively, using his safeword; she uses her feelings of shame not to intensify her own submission but to try to impose it on her partner(s).

To me the story of Marianne's kink is about the clash of autonomy and consensus/consent – two abstractions that young women, in particular, are invited to pursue as if they were compatible, realisable objectives. A pursuit that is lauded as a goal, but is bound to fail. Self-hatred emerges from falling into that gap. And from being a member of a dominated class. And from having a mother and a sibling from hell.

[NHH]

I read Conversations with Friends, and hated it. It was all dialogue and no real movement. I didn't care for any of the cardboard characters enough to give a a fuck about their fucking and with the various set piece locations, felt like somewhere between a first novel after a creative writing class as scripted by Stephen Poliakoff. So my gut feeling was that this would be not be much good.

How wrong I was. I fucking loved it. Then read the book and adored it. It was a brilliant adaptaton, but there's just a little more nuance, and texture in the book that fills out some of the characters; not in a way that the absence of that nuance denigrates from the show, but just takes the appreciation to another level.

It made me wistful about being that age and glad I'm not at the same time. I just though it was a beautiful love story about how people can change each other, and how the individualistic egotistic notion that there is a self who navigates through the world fundamentally unchanged is bollocks. It's about Marianne makes Connell a different person, set on a different life path from what he would have done and how he does the same for her. Those life paths intersect at times, and at other times throw people in different directions. It was great.

×

[NHH]

It was also a source of minor interest that when I did a DNA test, I was hoping for a degree of mystery and exoticism, but discovered that my DNA places me not just in Ireland (which I knew) but 98% in Sligo/Mayo border, and in particular a small triangle described by Foxford, Crossmolina and Easky.

×

[Diable Rouge]

It was also a source of minor interest that when I did a DNA test, I was hoping for a degree of mystery and exoticism, but discovered that my DNA places me not just in Ireland (which I knew) but 98% in Sligo/Mayo border, and in particular a small triangle described by Foxford, Crossmolina and Easky.

×

Which suggests your Irish ancestor had a surname very particular to that area - my own being virtually non-existent outside of Kerry and North Cork, though emigration has carried it as far as New Zealand.

[E10 Rifle]

It made me wistful about being that age and glad I'm not at the same time. I just though it was a beautiful love story about how people can change each other, and how the individualistic egotistic notion that there is a self who navigates through the world fundamentally unchanged is bollocks.

Yeah that. It jabs you back to being that age, and those very strong "us together against the world" romantic instincts that are very strong in your late teens/early 20s, even if one's own experience of, say, university weren't that similar to those depicted here.

Won't add any spoilers other than to say I was in absolute floods at the end of the final episode.

[Ray de Galles]

It made me wistful about being that age and glad I'm not at the same time.

Yes, same here. It's also very weird to watch it through the prism of one's own first significant teenage relationship & university experience (and how close some of it was to those situations) while simultaneously viewing it as the parent of an 18 year old daughter who, current crisis allowing, is off to university in the autumn. Connell even superficially reminded me of my daughter's first boyfriend, who she only split with a few months ago.

Both my daughters are planning to watch it soon (the other one is 16) and I'll be intrigued to see what they think of it.