I May Destroy You - Michaela Coel

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!

He also fucked her when she was off her face and he was stone cold sober.

That said I'm not surprised in the slightest that he kicked her out of his flat.

Oh yeah totally, he’d been ghosting her for ages!

She was imagining this grand love story where none existed because it suited her to believe that, because nothing else was going right, because it was Italy, because he came through and delivered evidence, and she latched onto that like it was some highly significant token of his love, when from the very beginning we've seen that he doesn't really give a shit. It's true that he called... what, a couple of times? I guess when he was bored or lonely himself. But that was it. And yes everything ulysses says - I was shouting at the TV, like 'OF COURSE THIS HAPPENED! JESUS!!!'

When you see how she deceived herself about her father as a child...

He was calling her repeatedly in earlier episodes, though. She was initially totally ghosting him. All of which makes me keener to remember what they were arguing about right at the start of Episode 1.

Your invert the sexes point makes no sense when the show has done its best to show everyone’s side, even the rapist’s.

Bf pointed out last night that “James, the rapist” existed entirely as fantasy— Bella never actually positively identified him, except in fantasy. His identity, personality characteristics (and even his specific culpability) are all projections. I felt the point was that Bella played out a few scenarios and then opted, instead, to stop trying to find him— going to Ego Death every night was not an act of healing.

I didn’t think Biagio/Bella was a gender-role inversion. The couple just had a different dynamic— Biagio as low-key nice guy with a sober-predatory edge and an outdated attitude toward rape culpability— I remembered being told by Italian friends that culturally they generally have an “it’s your own fault” attitude toward over-consumption and it was normal practice to abandon a male friend if they got too fucked up in public— and Bella believing they had a major connection that was part her own continental fantasy, part escape-from-trauma, and part entitled fixation.

Can't go by
A man from
Ostia

Hey Ninetto

Remember that
Dream
We talked about
It
So many times

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

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