Is Normal People the “Titanic” of this generation? A love story that will be remembered for decades to come?
I’d been avoiding Normal People on more than one front.
I’d purchased the book and found myself reading a few pages at a time, unable to get into it. I’d throw on an episode every once in a while (the show can be found on Hulu), watch it in the background, and found myself lukewarm to the experience.
The show seemed to be a version of Twilight but without any of the things that made Twilight popular, namely that all the characters were vampires and werewolves. A Twilight show without the exciting stuff? Who’s idea was this?
But every few days I’d run into a glowing recommendation on the internet or from a friend. And then I heard that it was breaking all sorts of ratings records in the United Kingdom. That’s what really caught my eye. It’s nearly impossible to have a STRAIGHT DRAMA (not sci-fi, not superheroes, not vampires) break ratings records. So I said, “Okay Carson. No more hedging. It’s time to sit down and give this a proper shot.”
I’ll tell you the moment where it changed for me, when I knew I was watching something special.
It was when I realized the rich girl was the loser at school and the poor boy was popular. I know that seems like a minor thing but think about it. It flips one of the most common cliches in high school movies/shows on its head. The rich kids are always the cool ones. The poor kids are always the losers.
In retrospect, it was why I initially rejected the show. The setup was so different from what I was used to that I didn’t know what to make of it. It’s like anything that’s new and different. You’re not able to process it at first. I checked the episode count (12 episodes!) and was even more intrigued. How do you keep a high school relationship interesting for 12 episodes?
If you haven’t seen the show, it follows two teenagers, Marianne and Connell, who live in a small Irish town. Marianne’s family is rich. Connell’s mother is their maid. And that’s how they know each other. Connell will sometimes come by to pick up his mom. He and Marianne will share a few words and they go their separate ways.
Marianne is odd and rarely socializes at school. Contrast this with Connell, the best football player at school, the guy everyone gravitates to. Despite Connell having his pick of the litter, he can’t keep his eyes off Marianne.
She’s icy to him at first, but soon they start spending time together, and that time leads to a sexual relationship that blows Marianne’s mind. Connell is all she can think about. However, Connell is embarrassed by Marianne for reasons he can’t articulate. He can’t risk being seen with her. And so their relationship becomes a secret.
It’s a secret that works for a while. But when Connell asks another girl to the year’s final dance solely to avoid being seen with Marianne, Marianne is furious and stops talking to Connell cold turkey.
The series follows the two characters throughout the next six years as they have an extremely complicated relationship. Sometimes they get together. But more often they find new boyfriends and girlfriends, creating a never-ending flow of resistance between them.
The show puts a heavy emphasis on Marianne’s sexual journey as she searches out crazier and more intense sexual experiences that reinforce the negative feelings she has towards herself. At times it looks like life doesn’t want them to be together. And yet, somehow, Marianne and Connell always drift back together. Will they find a way? Or are they doomed to always know each other from afar?
One of the most fascinating things about this show is that there is no GOAL. There is no URGENCY. The things that normally keep a story together – there’s none of that. The series’ story engine is, simply, will they or won’t they? Will they or won’t they end up together?
‘Will they or won’t they’ scenarios are almost always secondary storylines. Never the centerpiece. Jim and Pam. Jack and Kate (Lost). You’d never be crazy enough to build an entire series whose only question is, “Will they or won’t they end up together?” But Normal People does. And somehow, against all logic, it succeeds.
Part of the reason it succeeds is because it mostly keeps its characters apart. Remember, when your characters are together, the question is answered. It’s only when they’re apart that we wonder if they’ll be together. So for these types of stories to work (think When Harry Met Sally as well), you have to keep the characters apart mostly. And as long as we love both of the characters, we’ll keep watching to get our final answer.
But that’s not the only reason you want to keep them apart. By keeping them apart, you create a TSUNAMI of subtext whenever the characters meet up. There are so many moments in this series where Marianne has a boyfriend and Connell has a girlfriend. And they’re both in town for a weekend and they run into each other and despite the fact that the characters barely say any words, the scene is BURSTING with energy because you can see all the things that they want to say but don’t.
Also, every one of Marianne’s boyfriends and Connell’s girlfriends know how close these two are. So you get a lot of great scenes where, for example, Connell comes over to a dinner with Marianne, her boyfriend, and a bunch of mutual friends. And you can see the boyfriend simmering beneath the surface, which turns what would otherwise be a boring scene into a subtext battleground. The conflict born out of competition becomes the centerpiece of the scene, even if all we’re seeing is people pour wine and pass breadsticks.
If subtext has ever confused you, stop whatever you’re doing and watch this show. This show has more subtext in it than maybe any show I’ve ever seen. It actually has so much subtext it hurts the show at times. I wished that these two would just effing tell each other what they feel. But, by and large, it works because people not being able to say what they want is more interesting than people blurting out exactly what they want.
If there’s a Top 5 List of hardest things to do in writing, creating strong unique deep challenging characters is near the top of that list. Most writers will tell you it’s the hardest thing to get right. And I agree. 99% of the characters I encounter in the scripts I read are forgettable. What’s the secret sauce to finding that 1%?
Sally Rooney, the author of the book, has an interesting approach to that. She never looks at the character individually. She always looks at CHARACTER DYNAMICS. In other words, she needs a ying to the yang. She can never do just the ying. She must understand who Connell is in Marianne’s eyes and who Marianne is in Connell’s eyes to understand the characters on a deeper level. Only then is she able to figure out their backstories and how they came to be.
And that makes sense when watching Normal People. Their relationship is very complicated and very powerful and that’s probably because Rooney conceived of them as a pair as opposed to individually. Once you know the dynamic between the characters, you can go more confidently into their past to figure out how they got there.
Something’s obviously working because the “How they got there” stuff is so powerful in Normal People. The level of detail in their individual family relationships isn’t just strong. It’s a reminder of how important it is to figure out where your characters came from. The more you know, the more realistic they’ll be on the page.
Marianne comes from a single parent family. The father is gone. This has left her brother, a drunk, as the man of the house. And he hates his sister. He never misses an opportunity to tell her how worthless she is. And since her mother likes her brother more than her, she never sticks up for Marianne. She allows him to berate her.
Once you understand what Marianne has to endure at home on a day by day basis, you realize why she’s so reclusive. Why she’s so icy towards others. Her self-esteem is bottomed out. She doesn’t believe she’s worth anyone’s attention. And, of course, that’s why she’s so drawn to Connell at first. Here’s this boy everyone likes and he sees something in her. She’s so desperate for that positive attention that she’s willing to go along with his stipulation that they don’t tell anyone.
I loved the way Rooney used contrast in her characters. Marianne is a rich girl with an unloving mother who’s unpopular. Connel is a poor boy with a loving mother who’s popular. Think about the complexity of that for a second. It would’ve been easier to give Marianne everything. She’s rich. Her mom is great. Her school life is perfect. This is how most writers think. By giving the rich character the terrible family and the poor character the loving one, it creates more layers within the characters which makes them more realistic.
That’s the ultimate goal, by the way. You’re trying to make imaginary people made of words seem as real as you and me. And as we all know, we’re all a combination of plusses and minuses. We’re full of contradictions. None of us have it all. So it makes more sense to give your characters a messier makeup.
And to Rooney’s testament, she takes that to the next level because the characters evolve over the course of the show. Connell is popular when we meet him. But once he goes off to college and isn’t good enough to play on the football team, he becomes an outsider. His popularity disappears. Meanwhile, Marianne has tons of friends at college. That’s what was so brilliant about the show. The characters kept evolving and then had to deal with those evolutions.
In retrospect, I should’ve known I’d love this. It’s directed by Lenny Abrahamson who directed my favorite movie of 2015, Room. Oh, and that’s something I didn’t even mention. The acting in this is incredible. I don’t know if there’s been better casting for a movie or show in the last ten years. I mean that. These actors are so great in their roles. To the point where I searched for interviews of them afterwards so I could see them together again.
If you’re entering The Character Piece Showdown, this is a show you’ll DEFINITELY want to check out. It’s some of the best character writing I’ve seen in a long time. But bring a box of tissues and be prepared to have your emotions jacked around for six hours. You’re going to be emotionally exhausted after this show. But it’s a good exhaustion. Trust me.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: TENSION IN SCENES. Goals are great. Stakes are great. Urgency is great. But none of that matters if there isn’t TENSION in your scenes. Tension (a form of conflict) is the secret sauce to making scenes pop. It can be anger. It can be sexual tension. It can be unspoken tension. It can be a third character adding tension. The reason this show is able to be so good in spite of a weak narrative is because the writer makes sure there’s tension in every scene.
