The Premise

Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal) and Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) start off the series as high school seniors. Connell is smart, athletic, and has many friends and a loving mother. Marianne is smart, heavily ostracized, and comes from an abusive, but well off, household. What starts off as a secret romance becomes an extremely complex on-again, off-again relationship that we follow over the course of about four years. Connell and Marianne are both, in some ways, damaged and broken, dealing heavily with their own demons as they try to navigate through life with each other, navigate through life without each other, grow together, grow apart, and understand themselves.

There’s also a lot of full frontal nudity from both parties. Yeah baby.

Not naked yet, but rest assured that they will be soon enough!

My Half-Baked Thoughts

This show is absolutely devastating and it ruined my life for a few days.

I read the book first and found it very enjoyable, but it didn’t break me like the show did. Not even close. I think Normal People was brilliantly cast, brilliantly acted, brilliantly directed, and brilliantly scored. I’m trying to imagine this show with any subpar elements and it wouldn’t have been pulled off in quite the same way. I doubt I’d even be writing about it right now. But here I am!

I think it’s impossible to talk about my experience with Normal People without going into a lot of personal details about my life. I had a strong, visceral reaction to the show, unlike anything I’ve felt before from any sort of media that I can remember (other than maybe Severance for a very, very different reason altogether). Whatever was going on the book came across much better in the show. I saw a lot of myself in both Connell and Marianne, even as they grew throughout the show. Connell with his inability to express himself, his inability to even know what he wants or how he feels in the moment, his feeling of alienation, his anxiety, his depression. Marianne with her introversion, her warped sense of self-worth, her belief that something might be “wrong” with her, that nothing she can do herself will help her situation. I’ve felt all this at some point or another, and I know I’m not alone in that. Connell and Marianne’s ups and downs throughout twelve episodes were both beautiful and heart-wrenching. Needless to say, I binged the show in about three days. I was a wreck, and even a few days later it’s hard to remember that these are just fictional people created for entertainment. They both seemed so real to me. It’s astounding.

Deep down, we’re just a couple of normal people, y’know?

I’m not really equipped to psychoanalyze these two fully, because that would require a doctorate in psychology and I’m not going to get one of those *checks watch* for at least three weeks. I can’t really tell if they were consistent in their behaviors and their emotions based on their nature and their nurture. Some of it I don’t understand completely, like Marianne’s desire to be hurt during sex or Connell’s complete incapability to ask to stay at Marianne’s flat/house for the summer. Some of it I understand all too well, like Marianne’s incessant school bullying or Connell’s struggles with fitting in in a new environment. I think this is where “normal people” comes into play. To an extent, they are everyone. We all have our problems, our vulnerabilities, our insecurities. Seeing it portrayed on screen so vividly and brilliantly, as if it were my own reflection in a mirror, really hurts.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ENDING! God damn, that ending. I knew it was coming, of course, but it makes me wish I hadn’t read the book first because the show scene was so much more powerful. Christmastime, Marianne is home with Connell for the holidays, Connell and Marianne discuss Connell’s acceptance into a New York Master’s program and she wills him to go even though they both want him to stay. He decides to go. Even writing about it right now is ruining me. How mature did this relationship become that they simultaneously profess their love for one another (again) while understanding what’s best for the other? And that they know something like this won’t ruin the true friendship they have, even if life takes them along different paths and different romantic relationships? And with the very real possibility that Connell may love New York and decide to stay, separating themselves by an ocean indefinitely?

That’s ok, go to New York. I’ve been thinking about becoming a fisher off the coasts of East Indonesia anyway.

It’s too fucking much, dude. I can’t handle this right now. I’ll let you, the reader, fill in the wide gaps of what all this might mean to me. Use your wild imagination. It’s none of your business anyway, fucker.

Worth the Watch?

I don’t think this show is for everyone, but I urge anyone who picked up the book — whether they loved it or hated it — to give it a try. I think the show did a much better job of painting Connell and Marianne as sympathetic characters, that we got to see their conversations, their facial expressions, their reactions, their behaviors, and their voices. The book required you to fill in a lot of the blanks, but the show fleshes them out a little bit more fully. And if you want a romantic coming-of-age story that doesn’t feel fake or Hollywood, this is the best I’ve ever seen. Just be prepared to be messed up for a few days after finishing it if you’re sensitive to this kind of stuff.

And if you’re not into any of that at all, maybe you can appreciate the plethora of scenes of extremely-attractive-yet-attainable naked people fucking! Positively pornographic at times. Real erotic stuff. You’ll love it.

Let’s get it on like Donkey Kong, my love.