We can make a good thing bad.

Daisy Jones and the Six – 4/5

My friends, I was compelled to keep watching. The chemistry, the magnetism, the flame... the burning. Sam Claflin and Riley Keough are simply great to watch together. There is hate and love in equal measure, attraction and repulsion. Maybe it's just where I'm at in my life, seeing things through new lens, or perhaps I've simply not seen enough, but it seems like there's been a spat of entertainment in the past couple of years that upend old ideas. In this one, the notion of loving someone not because they have that Phoenix Flame that can destroy an entire planet, its civilization, its history, but because that love is quieter, smaller, not always perceptible. It's a love that doesn't give you anxiety, that doesn't make you question your choices, or hate yourself. It's a light on the darkness, not a sinking into the depths. The show does a great shift in personality right there at the end which doesn't contradict what came before. Daisy is mean, selfish, narcisstic, and so is Billy, but at least he wants to be better. But then when Billy wants to give into the darkness, to give into his worst excesses, to stop hating himself for wanting something other, Daisy reveals that love, for her, for him, is because it's a way towards wholeness. He wants to be broken, but she wants to be better. The show surrounds itself with side characters who are charming but don't always amount to integral, and the framing device more often than not surrounds everything that works with this patina of amateur. But the show smartly realizes that Billy and Daisy are where the heat is, and all is tangential to them. There is love there, it's hard to deny that Billy is denying something true and spiritual and eternal; but love can't work if it breaks everything around you.