Review of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch movies and shows again.

I didn’t used to watch a ton of television, then I worked as a critic. I’d formally studied television as a part of my undergraduate education and had watched it on the side, but I never saw it as my focus. Then I slowly started watching more and more—now I say I’m more of a television-focused individual.

Anyways, I kept seeing the hype for Love Story online, but then I didn’t have a Hulu account until recently. I was unfamiliar with Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. beyond the untimely story of their unfortunate deaths, although I read that this series wasn’t as accurate as it could be.

Let’s get into the review!

The romanticized story of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr.’s relationship and how they met.

This series, as I wrote before, takes a fictionalized approach on how Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. met. At first they’re not in each other’s social orbits at all, with Carolyn working her way up at Calvin Klein and eventually becoming a publicist, and JFK Jr. dating Daryl Hannah, who’s an actress balancing her life between New York and Los Angeles.

Slowly but surely Carolyn moves specifically into JFK Jr.’s social orbit, ultimately putting these two on a path where their future is going to collide and end with each other. Carolyn is an ambitious young woman in her career, and, to the claims of some, she was willing to put herself in the path of JFK Jr. and his social circle considering her job.

I think that this show presents their meeting as fairly organic, and I’m not the one to make the judgement despite those claims out there in the world. It’s also worth noting that woman who end up marrying higher than their initial social class end up getting blamed for so much even when they don’t deserve it.

Their romance isn’t a quick start, either. I see this series as a bit of a slow burn on this period of their lives together, even though it feels like it moves quickly at times. Like I felt like I blinked and Jackie was gone.

For me the most interesting character in all of this was Carolyn, especially considering she worked to get where she was at and then she married someone who was incredibly high-profile at the time. I couldn’t help but to feel bad for her and what happened with the press, considering her lack of privacy, when she needed to be alone the most sometimes.

I think this series serves as a mirror or reflection of their reflection, all the good and bad, even though it might not present anything new about them in the long-run. It feels comfortable, which might be why people love it so much.

Overall Thoughts

I would say that I enjoyed watching this series. It’s stylish and at a good pace, and all of the actors do a good job with the material. No one felt janky or out of place in terms of dialogue and setting. I could see how this revived an interest in Carolyn specifically when it comes to aesthetics though.

That said, I can’t vouch entirely for historical accuracy. I only knew the bare bones of these two, and I felt like I didn’t learn a ton more about them beyond the fictional slant that I already knew before. Is that bad? No, because I think I’ll check a book out on them in the near future.

I would say watch this show if you have a free weekend and haven’t seen it already. It’s something you could either binge watch or slowly take in—I preferred the slowly take in approach, which worked well for me.

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