Love Story is more tragedy porn than American fairytale

Say what you will about Ryan Murphy, but his shows are almost always fun. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good, nor are they programs anyone feels especially proud of telling the rest of the world they’re watching (let alone enjoying). And his anthology series—American Crime Story, Feud, American Sports Story, even the first few seasons of American Horror Story—can be quite good, full of outstanding performances, controversial themes, and bold storytelling choices. Murphy’s work can and does contain multitudes, which is why his latest effort is ultimately so frustrating. FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette (which was executive produced by Murphy and created by Connor Hines) is neither particularly fun nor especially insightful. It doesn’t even manage to be all that romantic, which feels like a failure for a show with “love story” in its literal title.

What’s worse is that, on paper, this kind of show should be a slam dunk. In the 1990s, John and Carolyn’s relationship was a pop-culturural obsession. They were essentially American royalty. He was the heir to one of the country’s most storied political dynasties. She was a glamorous fashion executive. They were both magazine-cover attractive. Their relationship was full of drama, from their whirlwind courtship and top-secret wedding to the tabloid gossip about their married life. And their story ultimately ended in a horrific tragedy. This is the stuff of TV dreams. And yet Love Story never truly cracks the surface of what made their romance so compelling to so many, instead serving up a paint-by-numbers recreation of memorable moments without giving their relationship real depth. 

Inspired by the book Once Upon A Time: The Captivating Life Of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller, this nine-episode project is, at best, a surface-level retelling of a relationship doomed to live forever in our collective memories because of its end. The series tracks the development of John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette’s (Sarah Pidgeon) connection from their first meeting—courtesy of one Calvin Klein (Alessandro Nivola)—but it never really makes the case as to why viewers should invest in it. For a series called Love Story, there’s precious little romance and even less sense of what it is these two people see in each other or why they still captivate so many years after their deaths.

The show repeatedly tells us how drawn the pair are to one another, but doesn’t quite make their relationship feel particularly necessary in either of their lives. It doesn’t help that Pidgeon and Kelly don’t generate much heat as lovers, would-be or actual, and the show spends more time on the idea of their relationship—of what it means to date a man with John’s level of fame—than the fact of it. Kelly bears a shocking resemblance to JFK Jr. and generally nails his charming, laissez-faire approach to life and responsibility, though Pidgeon often comes off more as a canvas on which an idea of Carolyn Bessette can be painted. (Her outfits are predictably great, however.)