TV Series Review - Z: The Beginning of Everything
Z: The Beginning of Everything
Based on the book by Therese Anne Fowler
Starring: Christina Ricci, Maya Kazan, Sarah Schenkkan, Jamie Anne Allman, David Strathairn, Kristine Nielsen, Scott Rosenfeld, David Hoflin, Jim True-Frost, Talia Balsam, Matt Malloy, Holly Curran, Jordan Dean, Corey Cott, Andrew Call, Andrew Bridges, Joel Brady, AJ Cedeno, Christina Bennett Lind, Natalie Knepp, Lucy Walters, Bill Phillips, Tony Manna, Cameron Scoggins, Conor Donovan, Randy Kovitz, Sean Bell, Ian Jarvis, Jun Naito, and Gene Jones
Release Date: January 27th, 2017
Rating: ★★★★
To Watch
Zelda is a bit of a whirlwind to the belles of Montgomery, Alabama. She swims, in a nude colored bathing suit, she dances, ballet as well as the more risque numbers, she parties, she drinks, she smokes, she hangs outside the local whorehouse with her friends shaming the men going inside. She isn't like anything that is expected or acceptable, yet she is endearing, even to her exasperated family. She's the baby who is going to break all the rules and when F. Scott Fitzgerald enters her life, he's the biggest break their is. A Yankee who aspires to be a writer who will break her heart again and again, yet she cannot live without him, she cannot give him up. And she does try. But then his book is finally accepted for publication and Zelda finally accepts his marriage proposal and their whirlwind of a life begins. Arriving in New York City Zelda is overwhelmed by how vast and big their new life shall be. They get married and the nonstop party begins that very night in the honeymoon suite of their hotel. Zelda soon realizes that in order to fit in she's going to have to be even bolder and brassier and bare herself to be accepted as Scott's wife. So she transforms into a character straight out of one of Scott's stories. Short hair, sultry dresses, no more frills and furbelows for the wife of F. Scott! But also because she's his wife, no more freedom with her own artistic expression. Any dreams of taking her "it" girl status to the next level in Hollywood is stifled by Scott. She's there to come to his readings, to inspire him, to be on his arm as he parades his success in front of all those who thought he'd never make it. A success that needs a followup if they are to keep living the life they are. Because the bills keep piling up and Zelda keeps spending the money, being kept in the dark by Scott as to their finances. Therefore they must leave New York and they get a house in Westport. There all their troubles are amplified and things come to a head. But one thing is certain, no matter how bad they are for each other they cannot survive apart.
Therese Anne Fowler's book on Zelda Fitzgerald is an interesting logistical puzzle when you get to adapting it. From the framing device to Zelda and Scott's power dynamic to the narrative style, everything had to be reconsidered within this new medium. First and foremost is switching from a first person narrative to a hybrid which fleshes out the characters as something other than just how Zelda sees them while maintaining her voice. In order to successfully do this I was intrigued that instead of having Zelda and Scott somewhat equals they softened Zelda and hardened Scott, leaning heavily into being "Team Zelda" as Fowler herself puts it. Instead of Zelda's work and influence on Scott as a kind of "collaboration under duress" Scott is all out stealing her words and making them his own. He comes across as a pilfering, hostile, unlikable drunk, who will hurt Zelda any way he can. Now the book didn't endear me to Scott, but this series, it made me really hate him. There wasn't really any grey areas to their relationship, it was much more black and white, and to me, maybe a bit more romantic because there is the victim and the victor, and Zelda is deified as the true genius. While this might feel less realistic, Zelda has spent years being the millstone around Scott's neck in biographies and movies, so perhaps it was time for a little justice. Perhaps it was time for Zelda to be the out and out heroine. It sure made for bingeable viewing! Each thirty minute slice of life flowed into the next until the abrupt ending, which was meant to bridge into a second season which was commissioned and then cancelled. I can see why, once their daughter Scottie enters the picture their life changes and the show wouldn't have had the roaring twenties ritziness that so exemplifies the first season. The look, the feel, the sets, the costumes, everything made this time period come alive, almost more than the book. Because if anything, the twenties is about appearances, and well, no matter how well written a book is, sometimes things have to be seen to be believed.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
Zelda Fitzgerald is a tragic figure, and not just because she died sedated and locked in in a fire that broke out at the hospital she was living at in Asheville, North Carolina, claiming her life and the lives of eight other women when she was only forty-seven, but because she will forever be known, and to some vilified, as F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda Sayre, was the pampered baby of her family. She was active and artistic from an early age, taking an interest in swimming and dance, and later an interest in drink and boys. She was as shocking as she could be given the society she was surrounded with and her strict father, the judge. But the war and the parties for the troops gave her greater leeway than a southern belle would normally have and right before her eighteenth birthday she met F. Scott and both their lives would be forever entwined and she would find notoriety as the "first American flapper." 
If you were only allowed to pick one writer who encapsulated the zeitgeist of the 1920s your answer would be F. Scott Fitzgerald. I mean he is credited with naming this era the Jazz Age, a moniker first used in his 1922 short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. What's more is he embodied the hedonistic lifestyle of free flowing booze and partying that everyone associates with this decade. Most of his early life, growing up in Minnesota and New York State, disappears in the telling of his life as if he emerged fully formed as a not-quite-graduate of Princeton and a second lieutenant in the infantry stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Zelda. Their lives were so entwined that you can't tell the story of one without the other. Their pasts are almost irrelevant. Yet Scott wanted to be a writer more than he wanted anything else, even a degree from Princeton. But his hastily completed novel, The Romantic Egotist, was rejected by Scribners. With the war ended and the thought that he might forever lose Zelda if he couldn't support her he rewrote The Romantic Egotist and it was published by Scribners as This Side of Paradise on March 26th, 1920, and eight days later he married Zelda.
So here we go! The blog is fully back. Or I'm hoping it is. We'll see won't we? I took a year off in an attempt to quell the chaos that my life had become. Well, I don't know how things are going for you but that didn't work out so well. I was so excited for the start of this decade, the twenties are back people! But I didn't want it to start with a pandemic like it did a hundred years ago. Just goes to show that everything has a price apparently. The pandemic had me thinking I'd scrap my return, just continue to hide out in my house grumbling about people not wearing masks or social distancing, but then I realized that now IS the time to come back. Everyone needs an escape right now and everyone needs a community to belong to, and books set in another time are a perfect panacea, and my friends, my online community, YOU are what is keeping me sane. So it's time to get Roaring Back to Reading! To delve into the decade of decadence. The Roaring Twenties, where authors became stars and were fodder for gossip columnists! I'll be talking about several celebrity authors, some, like Scott and Zelda, who embodied the zeitgeist far more than say Virginia Woolf or Agatha Christie, who were still very influential. I'll be looking at the books, the adaptations, the stories of their lives, and I hope you'll join me. What else do you have on the books?
