Know what? I never much cared for the film Swimfan, and after the latest installment of Tell Me You Love Me, I’m pretty sure I downright loathe that movie.
Tell Me, however, is still top notch in my book, even if that particular scene did have me wondering if I were breaking any laws by watching it. All of the couples find themselves wading into unfamiliar waters, attempting to make progress but quite possibly backsliding into a place even worse then when they started. And yes, I used an aquatic metaphor thanks to the aforementioned film Swimfan. Great. Now I need another shower to wipe its stain from my existence.
Onto this week’s couples analysis!
David/Katie
Dr. May’s reintroduction of frank, sexual talk into their therapy sessions throws the couple tremendously off. They were mere seconds away from leaving therapy, with Katie leading the charge, only to have their childish response to Dr. May’s direct questions about their sex life expose how much work was left to do. The question at hand seems to be this: “Can these two coexist as adults?” Coexisting as parents causes them no problems, but as the show has demonstrated, the identity of a “parent” is cleaved from that of an “adult.” The former is asexual; the other potentially, potently sexual.
What the episode gradually reveals is that while Katie might have initiated therapy over her belief that her husband no longer finds her sexual, Katie herself might be more afraid of being sexual than David is. Her sudden desire for another child can be seen as an offspring of this anxiety: if two kids have kept them physically apart this effectively, well, a third might kill any progress the two of them have made back towards each other.
Katie’s scene with Bella (as well as the Swimfan scene) could easily inspire outrage if, you know, more than a million or so people were watching this program. The advice she gives to her daughter (your body is your own, what you’re feeling is natural, etc) is all technically good advice. The problem turns into a twofold one.
- Some could say that her daughter’s too young to receive such advice
- Katie doesn’t remotely take her own advice
The first problem, I feel, was solved early in the season with the explanation of Bella’s early menstruation: the modern world, not merely the world of Tell Me, is oversexual to the point that children as both psychologically and physically affected by it. Whether or not you agree with this point is somewhat irrelevant: the show believes this to be true, and Katie, while perhaps unhappy about such a reality, nevertheless deals honestly with Bella and by doing so make her feel less isolated and less alone.
Problem is, Katie’s own speech just isolates herself from her body even more. Watching the asexual mother give sexual advice to the confused pre-teen was an exercise in irony: at the anticlimax to Episode 2, Katie failed to heed her own advice. Couple this with David’s increasing desire to engage in Dr. May’s frank discussion, and you have a woman so terrified of sex that she’s willing to add another child into her life just to put it off permanently.
However, the Catch-22, which nearly everyone around picks up on, is that for her to bear David’s child would more than likely require them to do That Which Is Forbidden, which is a lot like He Who Must Not Be Named only it’s about sex and not Ralph Fiennes. David, for his part, has gone from someone completely resistance to therapy to one completely dependent upon therapy, invoking Dr. May’s name when confronted with Katie’s declaration of wanting another child.
Also on his mind are the words of his possibly bipolar work buddy, Jeff, who has discovered the “undiscovered country” of 40-something female sexuality. David is starting to rediscover his wife’s body; only when she sees him looking, her instinct is to cover it up. Katie may have started their journey back to each other by starting her sessions with Dr. May, but it’s completely unclear if she’ll be able to finish them. And if she doesn’t finish them, well, David and Katie might be finished.
Palek/Carolyn
If this had been Sweeps Period, and if Tell Me You Love Me were on Fox, I would have laid down 3:1 odds that Palek would have accidentally stabbed Carolyn at the birthday party. But since this is HBO, Carolyn was spared the knife. Then again, she’s pretty must hoisted herself by her own petard, so maybe it’s best to let her dangle a bit while Palek holds on for his dear life inside the Bouncy Castle.
But let’s step back a bit, since this doesn’t explain how these two went from clothes shopping/scoping out a potential new partner on one hand and discovering (with no small amount of horror) that one’s greatest wish had come true on the other.
The majority of the episode found Carolyn essentially annoyed that no one was happy to hear about her pregnancy. This reaction should have come as a surprise to none of us, who pretty much picked up on the fact that having a baby had almost nothing to do with the caring and rearing of a human being after birth. I’m pretty sure Carolyn’s mind never got past the theoretical future in which a ticker-tape parade were thrown on behalf of her and her reproductive organs. So to be shot down by Palek, Mason, and her boss completely negated the entire basis behind her pregnancy, leaving her alone with, gasp, a fetus growing inside her.
Course, Carolyn’s biggest program was in her choice of demographic: she only told people for whom the idea of a baby is only slightly less repugnant than that of bird crap on their newly waxed Lexus. Thus, she does something she had not done in six previous years: attend the birthday party of their friends’ child. Why? Because that would be Mommaville, a place where a new member of the terribly unexclusive club would welcome her with the open arms she so clearly craves. Got to love the shot of mother upon mother congratulating her, all with the same Carolyn look of “I’m wonderful! I’m terrified! I can’t believe you’d willing do this as well! I hope you like cake!” that makes her so fascinating, terrifying, and incredibly human.
So you can understand Palek’s panicked stare, cake knife in hand, placed into what for him must be hell on earth. Turns out, as we suspected, that Palek’s daddy issues are entirely based upon his own daddy issues: namely, the daddy that stormed out when Palek was three because, as Palek explains to Dr. May, he didn’t want kids. Whether or not Palek’s psychological assessment is true is irrelevant, because Palek believes it, and so informs his entire psychology around the potential of being a father.
Dr. May’s insistence that Palek is not merely a carbon copy of his father may have run false in his solo session with her, but it may have rung in his ears again as he helped a crying boy inside the aforementioned Bouncy Castle. His ability to help the kid stop crying, as well as participate in a game with him, potentially surprised himself more than it surprised Carolyn, and gave the first ray of hope in what lately has been a pitch-dark relationship.
That being said, inside the Bouncy Castle, one cannot help but notice the claustrophobia, the confusion, the utter chaos: metaphors for the life awaiting these two down the road if they cannot work out their differences.
Jaime/Nick
Hey Jaime, I’m no Dr. May. I’m just a guy who recaps television shows on Al Gore’s Internets. But here’s a quick tip for you: if the guy you’ve only seen for a few weeks comes by with some of his stuff to your place so he can crash for an undetermined amount of time, and your first instinct is to flee the apartment, it’s best to give him the number of the nearest Red Roof Inn. I’ve heard they’ll leave the light on for you.
Here’s Jaime and Nick in a nutshell: they both enjoy relationships in which they push and prod and see how far they can annoy the other person, they swoop in when the line’s been crossed in order to salvage the relationship until the next fight. Both claim to love the ideals of domesticity, but what they really want is a secluded place where both can act out their psycho-dramas according to the pre-determined scripts in their heads.
Jaime’s concerns completely center around her apartment. The ghost of Hugo still haunts her bed, and even her toilet. Yes, her toilet, which became the focal point of the biggest argument between the two of them. In Jaime’s mind, fixing the toilet means that that particular part of Hugo is now gone: that part of that life is that much closer to being completely erased. (And while I don’t normally comment on the sex in this show, notice how she’s facing away from Nick at the beginning of their long scene together: she literally can’t face this relationship.)
Naturally, these two can’t see the dramas they enact. Even when Jaime confesses things to Dr. May in a supposedly candid manner, the things she says do not reflect real self-awareness: they are again scripted elements that could have been pulled from any article in any relationship magazine. About the only true revelation she’s dropped is that she was unfaithful to Hugo. Her two instances saying that mark the realest Jaime has been until this point. Thus, it shouldn’t be too surprising when both declare Mason to be toxic but can’t see how poisonous their own relationship is.
In the end, Hugo’s ghost remains firmly between them, with Jaime unable to utter the words “I love you” to Nick. He wants her to be the first to day, but doing so runs the risk of making Jaime vulnerable, a position she simply cannot concede. So the two remain on the bed, in silence, worlds apart, with the three words that could reunite them left unsaid. It’s fairly clear that Jaime doesn’t love him, but that doesn’t mean she’s courageous enough to stay silent, because staying silent will mean being alone.
As we’re nearing the end of Season 1, how to do rank the chances of survival for these couples? Which one is closest to ending? And really, who do you know that actually bought a copy of Swimfan?