The first three episodes of the new series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” came out on Thursday, Feb. 12 on Hulu.
Produced by industry veterans Ryan Murphy and Nina Jacobson, among others, the show’s bland dialogue and drawn-out pacing leave it falling short of their past projects.
The show follows the story of JFK Jr. and fashion publicist Bessette. The couple met in the summer of 1994, moving in together in the summer of 1995 and getting engaged later that year. They were married in 1996 and spent their marriage under intense media scrutiny, something that weighed heavily on Bessette both emotionally and professionally.
The couple was killed, along with Bessette’s sister, when their plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in 1999.
Despite the first episode including Kennedy Jr. and Bessette meeting for the first time, Kennedy Jr. asking her on a date and witnessing that first date all within an hour, the show feels slow-paced and dull for most of its runtime. There’s not much action beyond the dialogue, and the conversations aren’t interesting enough to make up for that on their own.
Actor Paul Anthony Kelly and actress Sarah Pidgeon, who portray Kennedy Jr. and Bessette, don’t share much chemistry, making the show feel even more dull. It gets better as the first episode goes on, especially during their first date. Still, it maintains a quality of interest that would fall as a “C” or even “D” plot in a better show.
The most interesting parts of the first episode detail Kennedy Jr. failing the New York State Bar and putting his job as assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in jeopardy. Kennedy Jr. must deal with his failure in the face of the public as his misfortune becomes headline news. He is surrounded by reporters and photographers, even during his free time playing football in the park.
This intrigue is quickly abandoned as soon as Kennedy Jr. meets Bessette, as the focus of the show solely becomes their relationship. This leaves the prior part of the story as underutilized contextualization rather than a real plot point.
Bessette’s interactions with Calvin Klein are also rather enthralling due to Alessandro Nivola’s eccentric performance as Klein, but the scenes do little to aid the plot.
Either a documentary solely on Kennedy Jr.’s time after failing the Bar for the second time or show about Calvin Klein and Bessette’s time would have been more compelling. Certainly, neither of those ideas would have required or deserved a nine-episode series.
Even a documentary about the plane crash that killed them both would have been more interesting.
Why then, does this less intriguing concept require a full nine-episode series to do their story justice? There is no need for eight more episodes to bridge their first date with their deaths, which would make for a logical conclusion.Considering how much the creators packed into episode one of the slow-paced show, there are indicators that it might slow even more; a scary thought.
Rating: 2.3/5