Normal People on Hulu took over the world as it released on the small screen with high anticipation. Thanks to Sally Rooney and her bestselling book of the same name, the series garnered genuine traction by fans and first-timers alike, but as the show hit the silver screen, many things went amiss underneath the poetic storytelling. Both the book and the TV show follow the conventional “will they-won’t they” dynamic in a romance that started in high school. The story still stands apart from its genre as it brings in a darker twist on things.
Normal People showcases people at their most broken and a relationship that would, in the context of Hollywood stereotypes, be perfect but is instead strife with imperfections. Marianne, who is used to the violence at home, is searching for someone who wouldn’t hurt her the way that she is so used to being hurt, while Connell is dealing with his own insecurities and pushing love behind for the sake of his image. The romanticisation of their relationship seems problematic as the couple are clearly toxic for each other but are not willing to change themselves at all.
On the other hand, Quicksand, a Norwegian Netflix series, starts off looking like a fairytale with a prince swooping in and rescuing the princess from her boring suburban life and her uninteresting job— it eventually turns sinister. The series opens with a school shooting and Maja, the witness, is taken to be the conspirator of it too. As the story progresses we look through Maja’s relationships with people around her and especially with Sebastian. Sebastian comes from a tough home life, with his violent father who thinks parenting is merely providing for his son’s every demand. The love is charged, passionate and beautiful but it ultimately takes a turn for the worse as we see Sebastian slip into addiction and heartbreak. Maja who is desperate to leave him for her sake gets more tangled in his web. All of this is until Sebastian finally snaps and commits a horrendous act. The show never shies away from the toxic structures that the couple portrays, rather it shows the couple at their best and worst and places before us the judgement.
Ultimately both shows have thematic similarities. They both focus on class and how it plays a major role in what a person wants from life, as well as relationships. Relationships are at the centre of both shows.
For the first part, Marianne and Connell also share the same high school sweetheart dynamic as Maja and Sebastian. Connell and Marianne come from differing social classes, just like Maja and Sebastian. Sebastian and Marianne both belong to rich yet violent families who have never paid attention to their kids. Unlike Marianne, Sebastian is rather flippant about his academic ideals. All of this might be explained by how Sebastian’s only role model is his violent father while Marianne’s parental role model is her absent mother. Her mother is blind to the abuse that her brother puts her through making her submissively accept the violence. They are taught to be different individuals. Sebastian, often picked on by his father for not being manly-enough, turns to drugs; Marianne’s ambitions, which don’t align with the role that is created for her by her household, try to quietly leave her life behind.
On the other side, Connell is conscious of his image, coming from a lower class, his only claim to fame in school is his well-crafted image of a follower. He is equally as smart as Marianne but is rarely seen to engage in intellectual discussions at school. Maja, even though she is smarter than Sebastian, is still conscious of her image. When Sebastian walks into her life, she throws her academic ideals to the backburner. Sebastian represents a life that she could never dream of, with parties, booze, and drugs at his expense no matter when. She is infatuated by the idea of being the girl in school everyone looked at because she was with one of the wealthiest kids there— here’s where Maja and Connell differ as well.
Connell doesn’t consider Marianne as a prospect in school as she doesn’t fit in with the popular crowd. Their relationship throughout is spent in hidden places, and their houses. But there is a sudden shift in his infatuation in college where Marianne is seen as influential and smart, exuding the charm that he has always loved but never seen in public. She is also more important and exciting than he could ever be, having friends in high places, while he feels lonely in the city which pushes him further to pursue her then. Even when they end up dating for a brief period we know that Connell was never going to stick, he was still motivated by the person he used to be in school while Marianne had grown into her own. Maja is flushed by the attention this rich boy is paying her. Even though she is not herself with him, she still gives the relationship her all. She wants to like him, even though she doesn’t.
The toxic patterns in both these relationships match up. As Marianne and Connell keep getting together and out of it, so do Maja and Sebastian. In Maja’s case, the relationship doesn’t last as long as Marianne. She, even when she couldn’t get away from her toxic relationship, was finally free of it ironically in jail, but Marianne kept returning to it, trying to recreate it anytime she was away from him. Both shows show inherently toxic relationships, two people who haven’t had the love that they deserved in childhood and two others who want to hold on to the spotlight.
Normal People turns this toxicity into a set up to a romance for the ages, one where Marianne is nursed back to sanity with Connell’s love. All the patterns that we had seen in the story up until that point, points out that Connell is bound to leave her for someone who fits his narrative better. Even when he is in love with her the entire time, and will keep making sure that she is in love with him, he wouldn’t stay. Marianne is never going to get the happy ending that she has been waiting for since she met him.
Normal People romanticizes the narrative, ending the show as Connell defends Marianne to her brother and rescues her from her childhood house. The future is deemed uncertain but people rarely act uncharacteristically. While Maja through her recollections and the trial realizes the hole she had dug herself into, we can only hope Marianne comes to that realisation before it destroys her.
(cover image courtesy: vulture.com)
Quite a pessimist, eh? So was the show I show love.
I love how neatly this is written. Your write ups are so clean, you could be called flawless.