Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette Season 1, Episode 8: Exit Strategy

There is something about 41 minutes of television that is powerful and can fundamentally change who you are. Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette season 1, episode 8 was one of those powerful episodes of television that fundamentally change your DNA.

At least it changed mine.

It didn’t need music. It just needed Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon, as well as some wasted KFC. Episode 8 of the show has us in a chokehold. It was 41 minutes of just these two showing us a fight between John and Carolyn. Strangely, it was an argument where I could see both sides and didn’t disagree with either one. Instead I watched and saw pain in peoples eyes as they tried to explain where this marriage was breaking for both of them.

Carolyn didn’t want to leave the house. The media wasn’t kind to her and the idea of having to face them and for them to make up lies about her wasn’t high on the priority list. She didn’t want to go to parties or be seen.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think that the John that we meet in this show really ever understood her. He didn’t meet her in the middle, but she didn’t meet him in the middle either. Instead what we see is a man that wanted her to live and didn’t understand that the press was so cruel to her and she couldn’t take it with a grain of salt.

He was used to the press. She wasn’t. And when this show opens and it’s with Princess Diana dying – one can’t even be angry at her for being afraid. The paps were relentless and that would put fear into anyone that is chased down. She couldn’t stop watching.

John didn’t want to watch though. He couldn’t. He’d lived so much of people being lost from him. He knew that Carolyn watching it – she wouldn’t want to leave the house. She would be lost more. He didn’t know how to watch her fade away more. He’d lost too many people and he couldn’t loose her.

And there was never a moment this episode where I didn’t think that John and Carolyn weren’t saying the same thing. They just heard it differently – both being able to find themselves as the victim. Both being lost in their own pain – but wanting to understand each other. He didn’t want to start watching this because he wouldn’t be able to stop.

It was one of the most powerful moments – watching Paul Anthony Kelly as John crying and continuing to repeat that he didn’t want to loose her. Kelly stood there, a presence that towered over the room and there was nowhere to run. He wouldn’t be able to give Carolyn the answers that she wanted.

That she needed.

A year later and they are still having the same arguments. Carolyn won’t leave the house and he’s trying to do everything to get her outside. Not that she needs to work – but he knows how much it meant to her and he wants her to have that. She feels like he’s failing her and he feels like she’s failing him.

He thinks that he’s present. She thinks that he doesn’t see her. He thinks he’s helping. She thinks that he’s humiliating her. She wants him to talk to her. He thinks he is. Both of them know that they are failing, but neither of them knew how to save it.

Fighting has to be one of the hardest things for any relationship to go through. However, these two – they were fighting in their own way and missing what the other needed. She begged him not to leave, and he just couldn’t stay.

Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn, on her knees, begging him to stay and telling him if he leaves it will hurt worse than anything else he could do. She is filled with pain and it’s radiating from every cell in her body and is really coming through her eyes in such a way that I couldn’t stop my tears. He says he can’t fight anymore and she delivers the line, telling him that he has to – it was a lot to see.

But it was this moment and then him kissing her on the forehead telling her that he loves her – that was just everything. It rearranged me. It made me think about how we have to believe in love in a different ways.

John and Carolyn were basically telling each other the same thing, in different ways. It is hard to hear things though when you are fighting. It’s hard to hear things when you are upset. But, she was right. She was so right when she told him that they had to fight.

And she was also so right when she broke as he walked out the door. It didn’t matter that he said he would come back – he should have stayed.

The finale on Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette airs next Thursday, March 26th, on FX.