I May Destroy You - Michaela Coel

Amazing last episode.

Finale spoilers from here

Has been difficult to process finale in a coherent way, cos all I can think is “wow”.

Last time I hadn’t seen episodes 10 or 11, so a bit on that as well.

10 is fascinating. Even before Nick (the brother) says she wouldn’t learn basic Twi you know exactly what the situation is, but the details in this series, as ever, kill me.

(My friend was tickled that the flashback Twi is clearly phonetically read whereas the rest is fine).

I really love when people do family drama well and this is so good - auntie Leonora, the contrast between Arabella’s wilful ignorance and how watchful Nick is, the scene with her mother. Also, Nick otm re plantain.

I really liked Kwame in this episode as well, that montage of hedonism running head on into the calmness of Tyrone. It felt cathartic without being judgemental I thought, but others may interpret it differently.

11 is great. Susy Henny is very well observed, her little “cheery” asides are needles and she doesn’t miss anything. This one is a real rollercoaster, there’s initial devastation and then finally it’s the catalyst she needs to start writing.

I liked Terry and Kai’s scenes as well. The unease about the Italy threesome is finally resolved - this show does not believe in loose ends - and Kai is a really sweet character who’s grounded and real and, again, so well written.

I was a bit ??? at Bella inviting Zain back to help at first and at him even going but I guess she was at rock bottom at that time. I really liked the mapping and her disappearing inside the book as she thought through it.

12, well. What to say? I absolutely love alternate endings and realities and here we get three, each flawlessly done. I have to say this series has made The Archandroid really sinister for me, lol, think about half the songs have been used throughout.

The various endings are great for how they tell us about how she’s working through everything: first anger, then understanding, then an attempt to take control of the situation. When both of them exit her bedroom it’s a really powerful moment.

I really need to rewatch ASAP as I’m sure this is something I’ve missed a million things on already and it’s just so majestic. I find all the Fleabag comparisons really confusing because Fleabag left me cold and I could never disappear into an episode, it was very very forced for me.

Honestly, stunning show and so happy that it was made and that Coel had the space to do the things she wanted.

We finished this last night, and I almost want to start watching it all over again. What were Arabella and Biagio arguing about at the start of the first episode, as she was preparing to leave Italy? That's been bugging me all the way through. Perhaps it was significant, but perhaps not. Anyhow, a staggering piece of work that I can't stop thinking about. (And when I finally get my DJ night back, I'm SO playing SFA's "Flowers".)

I've noticed Flowers being played all over the place here in East London recently!

Didn’t realise there was a thread!

At first I didn’t like the ending, but I kept thinking about it, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

I loved the show, and I realized that the twinges of dissatisfaction I felt after watching it were largely because the show's resolute apoliticism isn’t meant to be satisfying

I totally missed this thread - there was some chat on the female showrunners one.
I feel I missed a lot and could do with re-watching - the way it evolved from episode to episode was great.

btw in the halloween episode who saw and who missed the figure floating above her bed? I went back to watch it and she has taken up residence in my head :/ (same shot shows 'under the bed' sort of illuminated too)

I'm gonna watch it again for sure, I was confused by a lot of it (the threesome situation in the first couple episodes especially, I didn't really get what was happening.)

The most satisfying part of the show for me was the banal-source-of-stability "token white roommate", he was the perfect balance of nondescript and nourishing, a shredded wheat of a character-- I loved that the most supportive white man in Bella's life is basically himself a bit of a houseplant.

Part of me wondered if the show had an "anti-woke" thesis-- Ep 12 depicted an unsatisfying punitive resolution, an unsatisfying reconciliatory resolution, a pipe dream "women are given men's power and don't abuse it" fantasy that was bittersweet in its beauty and "wouldn't that be nice"-ness. But the solution ends up being provided by Miss You-Think-I'm-Your-Ally-Because-We're-Both-Black-But-I'm-Actually-Your-Boss-- I gasped when Suzy said, in response to the mention of "melanin": “do you believe in multiple races as a rational taxonomy?”. Suzy's solution being: "do you grow?" and Bella's endgame in moving past her trauma is exactly this, not justice, not closure, not reconciliation, but just "growing"-- literally depicted with that *pop* moment and it's a year later and the plants are that much bigger.

It felt like it was nodding toward "woke" solutions as viable possibilities (see also: Zain's cancellation and then summary redemptive moment) but landing on fundamentally-Resilience!-style systems of trauma recovery (that is: "you're fine, stop being such a wimp and get on with it", which are nice in theory but not an option to certain people with severe or ongoing traumas.) Kwame's trauma recovery was essentially the same-- oh so to recover from a violent rape you just need to meet the right man and move on? OK! I don't disagree but that is a very pretty thought.

Part of me wondered if the show had an "anti-woke" thesis

I think I posted this on the other thread, but one area I'm not sure I 'got' fully was Theo in the school flashback episode (those young actors were amazing btw). It hinted at genuine abuse but seemed to turn this on its head, or was it implying any girl doing what she did probably had been exploited/abused (physically or emotionally?) at some point in her past? And then seeming to show adult Theo as a con artist of sorts. Putting herself in a position of trust to Bella by a perceived shared experience - possibly parallels there to Susy Henny early on.

Yeah, the end of that episode (6: The Alliance) had all three of us spontaneously shouting "WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED" at the credits, and it marked the point when we stepped up from watching episodes every two or three days or so, to religiously watching one (or latterly two) every night. I just didn't know how to read Theodora at that stage, it was really disturbing. Ultimately - and this is only on balance, further down the line - I didn't think she was a con artist in adult life. She had exacted teenage revenge for the violation of the phone photos, in much the same way she'd been trained to by her mother at a younger age.

I think I twigged that the first ending (the violent/vengeful one) in the final episode was a fantasy, when I spotted Theodora's teenage pink streak was back in her early-30s hair. But I'm still not 100% sure that I actually saw that, either. There are so many little details like that - it what makes me want to re-watch.

(xpost: SFA's "Flowers" is also having a revival via the Nathan Dawe cover that's been in the UK charts for most of the year.)

Part of me wondered if the show had an "anti-woke" thesis

Maybe not "anti-woke", no, wrong choice of words, but a kind of a broadly critical gaze.

Four episodes in. I do like it so far, the music is really great and thankfully the EPs are not too long. Lots of good London detail, yes.

I think there might be too much back and forth in time. Bit too eager to impress but it's not too annoying.

The back and forth in time is necessary I think, questions of memory, comprehension, withheld information etc are all absolutely central both to the story and thematically. Also it all needs to be centered around the first night (and the night of the last episode).

about halfway through this, I really enjoy it though my wife is finding it hard going. Her review: "this is very rapey".

"the threesome situation in the first couple episodes especially, I didn't really get what was happening" I didn't at first either (I watched the first episode, part of the second, fell asleep...then went back and rewatched a few weeks later). Basically dude's wife is open to a threesome, I think she maybe initiated the request, and he 'found' a third person, who was actually someone he was banging on the side, and she did it because she wanted to meet his wife. That's all.

it's not clear to me why his cousin was there with him at the meet though

Distraction, i thought. You see how quickly Alissa flips and how unpredictable she can be.

I'm curious

Why did Suzy so abruptly drop Bella? I thought it was because "she was asking for more money" and "she wasn't delivering the draft" and "Suzy found her irritating". Bf says "no, Suzy was trying to cover up the fact that she was still publishing Zain, it was a direct response to her inquiries about 'Della'"

Mostly the latter, but the reliability aspect matters too. Susy is a cold-blooded capitalist through and through.

Distraction, i thought. You see how quickly Alissa flips and how unpredictable she can be.

But then she scarcely appears again, does she? I felt there were a lot of underwritten or unfinished fragments like this, bits that seem to have no real purpose othen than perhaps to show that life isn't neat.

There’s that fairly memorable scene with Bella! But messiness definitely a factor, the Simon stuff never felt very satisfying to me.

Why can't it be all of those things fgti?

Plus - Bella publicly outed another author on Susy's roster as a rapist. Which calls Susy's judgement into question. This is not the kind of publicity Susy wants. It's one thing to have a viral troublemaker on your hands, but when they don't deliver, and are trashing your brand...

Yeah Simon and his girlfriend were really prominent in the first episode, lots of character detail (literally what they were having for dinner), camera following them home etc, and they just disappeared. I suppose it was about establishing an atmosphere of (consensual) sexual freedom early on that could lead to non-consensual situations later but they were too peripheral in the story for that to quite work.

It did create the conditions for the rape to occur in the first place though, specifically Simon being absent when he might otherwise have been there to help Arabella.

Arabella's flatmate was another narrative thread that felt under-explored.

Idk the flatmate kind of felt like a deliberate joke to me til the last episode, like he’s supposed to be a parody of your typically flimsy black character that gets no development and has no life of their own outside their few interactions with the protagonist.

Like when shes talking about crafting or something and thinking “that sounds just like him!” Think it might be the only offscreen mention he gets all series.

Yeah there's the scene where there's the house party and he's just in the bedroom on his laptop with his headphones in with people barging in on him, which is played for lols at the time but you later realise there's more to it.

That's what I liked about him, he was an inversion of the token black friend character

Also: the clipped Received Pronunciation with which Suzy delivers that "rational taxonomy" line, wow. I loved how it seemed as if any time Bella seemed to express a desire to speak directly to Suzy, her other associates were discouraging her. Bella saw Suzy as an ally but everybody else knew she was a businesswoman.

I wish I had the words to express this complicated (not negative) feeling I had about the politic of the series as a whole, that the path toward trauma recovery seemed like Landmark-style "new possibilities" methodology, building resilience, etc.

I've seen a few ppl who had been expecting ~twist~ the flatmate to be the rapist, although it's really not that kind of show. It was kind of obvious to us who it was likely to be, right, although I'd probably need to watch ep1 again to be not distracted by the Simon storyline? (which I agree seemed quite focal then... not)

Yeah it was obvious who it was but not who that guy was, as the audience we get the full picture that she herself is just wading through.

Susy was the one character who felt maybe a little too cartoonish for me, mostly because her phrasing and supercilious facial expressions seemed lifted directly from Alan Johnson in Peep Show. But we see her through Arabella's eyes so maybe that's OK.

Yeah in a way it made her less frightening.

I don't know - based on my interaction with aspiring actors, I think Suzy is pretty spot on.

Wait a sec - sorry I'm mixing up characters.

i am three episodes short of finishing this so am avoiding reading the thread but this article touches on some of the larger themes I've run into so far:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/sarah-schulman-conflict-is-not-abuse.html

Wait a sec - sorry I'm mixing up characters.

Oh yeah, I definitely didn't mean Terri, she's brilliant.

xp to FGTI a new, agented author would always be discouraged from independently getting in touch with their powerful publisher by their agency while technically in breach of their contract, and British literary culture is very funny about directness. If a writer has burned through her signature advance, it is especially infra dig to ask one’s publisher to release more funds, and the richer the publisher the more offended they’ll be.

Everyone in British publishing knows a Susy Henny and it was hilarious to watch UK writers on Twitter fully cringe when faced with the character.

one notable thing in the school flashback episode was how well the young actress channelled the older version of Terri. Quite remarkable. I think it was just about the only thing I liked in that episode, tbh, although I did appreciate the series on the whole.

You didn’t appreciate Babycakes on the soundtrack?

oh yes! haha.

@ suzy ahh ok that makes sense. Yeah I couldn't read if the conversation about houseplants that preceded Bella getting dropped was ingenuous or not-- if Suzy was "having a moment" before letting her go, or if her decision to let Suzy go was strictly to try and cover up the fact that Suzy had kept Zain on. Agree with Tracer Hand that it's likely all of these things put together.

just finished the last episode and bawled through most of it. this is an immensely rare thing Coel has made, utterly devastating and terribly clever, funny and painful and sharp and complicated and totally unique. I'm really kind of in awe. So I guess now I'll read the thread and some of her interviews.

Morning, I wrote this https://t.co/2q5K7ZWzxJ

— Bolu Babalola (@BeeBabs) August 4, 2020

Ignoring what is clearly a cry for help, Biagio has rejected Arabella’s impulsive visit and manipulatively locked her out of his home.

that episode just filled me with dread, start to finish.

Watching it tonight, in for a treat :)

i think it's pretty reasonable to describe that episode as an emotional breakdown for Bella moreso than a cry for help.

When she sheepishly states that she has left her passport in his apartment, he wordlessly, coldly slides it to her beneath his door. It’s a moment that slices into sinews. In response, she jolts, physically rocked by his rejection.

“Wow,” she says, in a moment of quiet, stunned realisation. And, as if this is not enough, she chases it with “Rah.”

Your invert the sexes point makes no sense when the show has done its best to show everyone’s side, even the rapist’s. Biagio is a prick too, he blamed Bella for her rape!

I kept thinking about that mainly because I didn't know exactly where Ostia was and that was my sole Ostia reference.

Still waiting for some context on brain grass and long long eye gas over here

Yes, it was not even mentioned.

Alphie did you finish this in the end?

Yes I finished it last saturday at like 1am or something. Have scrambled thoughts I might put down sometime.

This just ended in the U.S. last night. Amazing final episode.

yeah, it fucked me up and i think about it fairly regularly.

far and away the best show i've seen this year. i love how deeply we got to know arabella, and how the show explained her behavior but never apologized for it. and i appreciated how, after all the things she tried to cope with her assaults, the thing that finally put her on the right path was good old-fashioned talk therapy.

also the soundtrack was cool as fuck.

lol as someone for whom talk therapy has helped overall, that was not the conclusion I took from that.

idk, bella a clear attitude/outlook attitude shift after that moment that allowed her to step outside herself a bit and be more open with the poeple in her life.

It's much more complex and muddier than that, I mean one of things that puts her on the path to getting her book written is literally sitting down and talking about the writing process with her rapist and I don't think many people would recommend that as an approach.

Show is fairly explicit that writing through it is a big part of thinking and rethinking and processing it all.

xp oh for sure, the show definitely doesn't posit anything as a panacea, and all three main characters process their assaults and resulting traumas in healthy and (mostly) unhealthy ways. i think i just really liked that scene and how coel's performance shifted afterward.

Yeah it's unclear how much of even the penultimate episode actually happens or whether it's part of her own writing process.

I think I liked that it resisted any kind of takeaway. There was some painful processing of experience, but ultimately stuff got done -- that she needed her rapist to take away her writing block I realise quite a brutal expression of what it is to do stuff, sometimes -- life goes on and we keep muddling through the disaster.

i think this show will come to define its year which is a hell of a feat for something filmed prior to and without mentioning covid.

I always think this show is called "Allow Me to Destroy You" because of this fairly obscure track from 1981, which I think about every time it comes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7bOImSiE1A

But the real title is interesting, nonetheless. I May Destroy You (It's up to me).

I think there is a lot of delusion in there. People have a go at destruction but they fail at that, or end up being used more than using.

i thought it was a comment on how any close personal connection can eventually end in intense pain

I May Destroy You (It's not up to me).

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0arolGdyR8wkSGaawcKHkD?si=KNl5EIyZSf2WrOFNIyK4vQ
LOuis tHeorux;s lockdown broadcast has returned with michaela as first guest for the 2nd series

Also available as a podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089sfrz/episodes/downloads

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Finished this a couple of nights back. Absolutely astonishing really and I can't stop thinking about it, getting flashes of scenes and clips of dialogue wafting up from my subconscious. Current obsessions are the family scene at Arabella's mums, which was so beautiful and heartbreakingly real (she comes out of the bedroom, having discussed her dad's infidelities *and* her rape and not only cuddles her dad but serves him food. I broke down at that point) and the final jump-shot of the roof garden. That could have been a clumsy rendering of the growth metaphor but it totally worked (I love how she undercuts her own metaphor with the whole scene in Susy's office, it's like, 'yes, I know my metaphor is cheesy and look, in other hands, it's totally wanky, what you going to do?').

I've been thinking about the birdsong that presages her visions in the final episode. It sounds vaguely mechanical but also *could* be a nightingale at a push. I've been pondering the significance but can't get much beyond it being a Keats reference (Lethe-wards had sunk or half in love with easeful death). Anyway, what a fucking triumph.

Finally got around to this, finished it last night, and nothing to add to the superlatives up thread except more superlatives. It does so many things so well, and goes deep on so many different themes and ideas. Even without more time to process it, I can confidently call it one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV.

Finally watched this. As good as billed, if not better.

I think it's one of things, now I've seen it, I'm gonna be watching most other shows and thinking "well it's good, but it's not i may destroy you good"

I watched this over the summer and completely agree.

better than billed and it was billed as very very good.

its astonishing that it came out of relatively nowhere, Michela Coel deserves every accolade she got this.

Better than Chewing gum so wonder where she will go next.
Hope we get to find out before too long.