I liked the ending a lot. And it's actually not ambiguous at all if you think about the character who - despite being full of silly fantasies - is a very ethical and seriously dependable person when it comes to everything she actually does. Her worst offense was forgetting to write the recommendation, and she confessed to it which many would not have done. |
| The book is ends differently. I always find it’s strange when they change things for tv. |
Hmm. I had a different take than this. We the audience saw everything through the main character’s lens, literally verbally we were walked through the show that way. She sees herself as ethical and dependable- but was she really? I don’t think so, at least not to the level she viewed herself. Consistently most people she interacted with (husband, affair partner, daughter, colleagues) saw her differently than she saw herself. At first I thought she was being gaslighted by her husband, but by the end I thought she has narcissistic tendencies and never views her own culpability in any situation. I liked the show! |
I saw it totally differently. We see her doing all the domestic chores (not her dh), trying to appease her moody and pretty ungrateful daughter, be blamed when there is fall out from the husband's affairs, affairs she also could have had but did not (just the one grad student who was age appropriate), she was clearly loved as a professor too until the recent dh scandal. I think it's interesting you see it as her having narcissistic tendencies: She's essentially escaping in her head and losing it in a pretty classic "but what about me?" moment many women experience in mid life after decades of serving others' needs. |
| Her drugging Vlad’s drink and then tying him up with zip ties and chains while he was sleeping was wild. I don’t get why she did that at all. She seems psychotic. |
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But don't older men sometimes give a woman a little too much wine in various novels and then we hear how he 'seduced' her and it's supposed to be romantic. He 'whisked her away to Paris'. That weird creepy story from Ballerina Farm where he bought a ticket on the airplane to sit next to her and asked her out and wouldn't take no for an answer.
I think that's what we're supposed to be thinking about -- is this woman a romantic heroine, is this a love story or is she a predator? (She stalks the family and then takes him back to her cabin in a pretty premeditated fashion. If a man did that, would we view this as a romantic seduction? Did you ever watch the TV series "I Love Dick" -- it plays with this same idea, how a man can pursue a woman and kind of lose his mind and we view it as romantic, but when the woman does it we think she's nuts.) |
| I just finished this. Overall it was a weird show and dragged on for me. They could have easily cut out 4 episodes from the middle and not lost much. I kept watching just to see how it ended. |
Yes, they are both British. They both do an excellent job with their American accents. |
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Spoiler from the last two episodes below.
So what was the deal with her husband and Cynthia? She saw them kiss but then it seems we are told there was nothing between them. Does that mean she imagined it as one of her fantasy moments? I didn’t understand |
Did anyone else think Weis sounded strangely like Jennifer Coolidge? |
She didn’t actually see them kiss - I even noticed that at the time and suspected that it would wind up being her misconstruing what was going on (either misconstrue/see through her non-objective perspective, or let her imagination take over, both of which she did constantly throughout the show). However, the actual explanation was so weird and rushed imo- Cynthia who was sober and had attempted suicide started doing drugs when meeting with the husband, and hardly anyone batted an eye over it (other than Vlad’s 2 seconds of he-man response). |
| Love it. Strikes the perfect balance between well-crafted and juicy. Very hot young actor and great chemistry between him and Rachel. |
| Enjoying it...trashy + fun. |
| It was so bizarre and left me feeling icky. I didn’t care for it. |