The Perfect Couple
I just learned something about this show that makes me want to like it more. Jenna Lamia who plays Judy Cooper on Resident Alien developed, wrote, and executive produced The Perfect Couple. She is so talented and such a force of nature. I mean, have you seen how professionally she digs a grave? And yet, I can not bring myself to actually give a fuck about this show. I mean, if the best part about your show is the opening credits, I think you have a problem. The Perfect Couple hons in on what all trashy prestige television does, rich, pretty people getting put through the blender. Here they were just able to get bigger names and luck out by getting two actors from White Lotus. Nicole Kidman has kind of made this her niche, Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Perfect Couple. I think it's time for her to move on. Nancy Meyers Coastal Grandmother is over with and you need more than a pretty house to make a show. But damn, that house is pretty. The people though? They might be pretty on the outside, but are horrible on the inside. Though speaking of the outside, there's some serious WTF going on with plastic surgery. Isabelle Adjani is unrecognizable and as my brother perfectly phrased it, Nicole Kidman looks like she's had a Photoshop filter applied. Whereas Liev Schreiber just wandered onto set and they put hipster glasses on him and called it a day. Damn the double standards of Hollywood! The main problem here aside from the fact they don't believe in fair play and there are so many things that are dropped or unexplained is Amelia Sacks. Our protagonist played by Eve Hewson is about to marry into this privileged world and is to be the viewer's surrogate, and yet I have no idea why she's marrying Benji. She obviously doesn't love him. Yes, there's the, before her mother dies she gets to see her daughter married angle, but I felt like there was something deeper. Like she needed Benji's money or connections to help her mother out. Amelia obviously cares more for her murdered maid of honor than she does for her future spouse, and yet the whole cancelling of the wedding is just like a plot point that's not quite hit. It's an afterthought. And then throughout the show she becomes more and more irrelevant until the end when she and Benji just shrug and walk away from each other. Um, what now!?! All this production, all this fanfare, that ends on a whimper not a bang... I think that is a perfect metaphor for the whole show. It started strong, it started joyous, I mean, look to those opening credits, and then, by the end you literally didn't care. This was six episodes and it felt overly long. It lacked focus and didn't play fair. But then again, it was about foul play and at least it felt like Dakota Fanning was having fun.
I'm that person who picks apart a show as I'm watching it. What is happening, who is to blame. I don't just want to get to the bottom of it all before the reveal, I need to. So while I actually got the ending of Behind Her Eyes wrong I was technically right. Confusing no? But that's what Behind Her Eyes is all about. It's about gobbling up each and every clue you're given and trying to piece together the puzzle until at the end you didn't quite see it coming because it changed the rules while you weren't fully aware that it did. The show starts out with the classic comedy trope, what if you met a handsome stranger at a bar and you find out the next day he's your new boss? That's exactly what happens to Louise. The problem is her connection to David is electric. It doesn't matter that David is married, that Louise even ends up befriending his wife Adele behind his back, they are drawn to each other like magnets. Though Louise suspects that David doesn't understand his wife, but, for me, I knew from day one that Adele was the problem and David was right. Why else would she be so closely monitored and medicated by her husband? It didn't feel like control to me, it felt like barely maintained equilibrium. But while a three-hander show about infidelity isn't that original, this show has something else going for it, lucid dreaming. Yes, it might seem odd that the other aspect of a show about a torrid affair would be about lucid dreaming, but that's what sets this show apart. I have known about lucid dreaming as a cure for night terrors for years. But I'm actually able to exert some control in my dreams anyway and I'm not full into night terrors, but the possibility of complete control over your sleeping mind has always been interesting to me. So while Louise's dreams are kind of cartoonishly bad and then cartoonishly good, I mean, they're happy and Disney and she's in the land of the Teletubbies where there are no shadows... this is all leading somewhere deeper. It's not about the first door, it's about the second door. And it's all about Adele's past and her friend Rob who she met in rehab. Rob is the key. He's also an amazing actor. In a show with such a strong cast that boasts Tom Bateman and Eve Hewson, well, it's impressive that Robert Aramayo stands out. And yes, his real name is Rob too!
Now I do understand that changes are necessary for an adaptation to be successful. But that comes with the caveat that you have to maintain the spirit of the book. Just look to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and it's adaptation! A perfect pair without being carbon copies. The reason I mention Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is because that is a book I am fanatically devoted to, much as I am to Eleanor Catton's 
