I feel at a disadvantage writing about Hulu’s Normal People, as I haven’t read Sally Rooney’s book of the same name. Rooney is often credited as a quintessential millennial writer, whose approach to romance is, in her own words, “is to try and situate love and romance in all its overwhelming power — and all the pleasure and desire that comes with that — in the difficult complexity of ordinary life. To take the mundane, unglamorous difficulty that we all have just being alive, and to allow romance to infiltrate that, and not be dishonest to either aspect.”
Normal People is an intimate portrait of two young individual’s lives, both ordinary and fractured in their own ways, as they discover each other and grow up around each other, their socioeconomic realities guiding them towards their eventual destinations. It’s not about big, bombastic love and grand gestures like The Notebook is, nor is it about searing heartbreaks like Blue Valentine is. Normal People distills the grandness of those events in usual romantic narratives into ordinary events that hurt and heal these two people.
When the show starts, Connell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) are in their final year of high school in the Irish town of Sligo. Connell is a popular athlete while Marianne is awkward and antisocial. Marianne’s family is rich, and Connell’s mother Loraine works for Marianne’s mother, which means Connell often runs into Marianne out of school. The two of them are drawn towards each other, but their social status gets in the way. As the two start a forbidden, tender romance, the two become entangled in each other’s lives for the next couple of years.
The chemistry between Mescal and Edgar-Jones is so palpable that you can’t help but be drawn towards their story.
Connell is quiet, a bit bone-headed but good at heart. Marianne is smart, ready with a barb whenever someone confronts her and deeply insecure due to constant abuse from her older brother. When they first start hooking up with each other, you can see how awkward they feel around each other, especially when Marianne arrives at Connell’s home to sleep with him. Nervous, Connell offers her a drink, and she asks for tea. When they finally do sleep with each other, Connell is considerate, asking for her consent. The way the show portrays intercourse in general is refreshingly tender. It’s treated as an integral part of love, compared to how recent shows portray the act as being blase or, worse, empty of meaning.
The obstacles that Connell and Marianne face together are realistic. Initially, it’s Connell’s insecurity at showing affection for Marianne publicity, and later it’s a mutual misunderstanding where both think they can’t stay with each other because the other person doesn’t value them as much as they do. At one point, Marianne says that “it’s not obvious to me what you want.” This echoes how people often expect their partners to understand their needs without communicating them, as though they are implicitly understood. They learn to communicate with each other and show affection to each other even when they aren’t dating, although that bothers the people around them.
While Connell and Marianne’s relationship is the driving force of the show, it’s astonishing how much time they spend not dating each other on the show. It’s not treated as an ‘endgame’ as other shows such as Friends and How I Met Your Mother treated certain couples. Connell helps Marianne get out of abusive relationships where she herself invites abuse, because she feels that’s the only way she can be loved. Marianne later helps Connell get out of a severe depression.
At the end of the show, they are together, but consciously choose to move apart to pursue their own life goals. They don’t choose to do this despite their relationship- rather it’s their bond which gives them the clarity to make this decision. One of Sally Rooney’s central premises is that love is a benevolent force that makes you grow, and this is beautifully realized by the ending. Will they ever get back together? That’s uncertain, but their bond won’t go away anytime soon.
Normal People is an exercise in simplicity, telling a tale inhabited by ordinary people. It shows a kind of love that feels both real and obtainable.
It’s a marriage of great writing and directing, made all the more better by the two leads’ magnetic performances. It strikes the perfect balance between being bleak and sunny, and at twelve half hour episodes, it has just the right amount of length to make you think once it’s over.