I Love Suzie

Wait, how many people watched The Queen’s Gambit?

HBO has been on a roll with a very specific type of show; the type of show that I put on in the background to break the silence of quarantine while I do absolutely nothing on my laptop/phone and ignore the TV. I do this because I expect nothing special from these shows but I also expect them to not be completely devoid of craft. And so far, every single time, these shows have completely grabbed my attention, warranted a rewatch and prompted a recommendation. Shows in this category are Big Little Lies, Love Life, I Hate Suzie and the still in progress murder mystery, The Flight Attendant. All these shows are also female led and involve toxic relationships, so maybe they’re not actually good and I just sadistically enjoy watching women in bad relationships. Personal pathology aside, I wanted to examine I Hate Suzie in particular because of the sheer number of themes it explores with more depth than the 8 episode runtime should allow.

Spoilers ahead

What is it about?

There are more steps in a muffin recipe than in how to deal with a death

The 8 episodes are each titled with an emotion that might be a stage of grief? Maybe they’re the 8 true emotions you can ever experience in life? Or perhaps they’re the 8 stages of dealing-with-a-sex-scandal-that-ruins-your-marriage-and-precipitates-your-slow-descent-into-madness. Suzie Pickles is your typical child star from a broken, working class home who graduated into a pop star and sci-fi series actor in her prime that then settled for sci-fi conventions and a role in a weak, derivative TV show that everyone in her life has heard of but no one has watched. Somewhere along the line she also settled down with her university professor husband and a suburban house where they raise their Deaf/Hard of Hearing child. Her agent/best friend is a bisexual upper middle class, second generation Iranian immigrant whose mother died early in her childhood that relishes her high power, on-the-move lifestyle but also nervously watches her ticking biological clock. Keeping up so far? Other notable members of the colorful cast of characters include a low-key exploitative show runner, his charity-socialite, miscarriage victim wife, a charismatic deadbeat dad and a brilliant and/or dimwitted playwright.

If you gave me all of those characters and told me to fit them all into a single season of a TV show, I would roll my eyes and tell you to go back to wokecharactergenerator.com and tighten the number of parameters. Luckily, all of these characters come from a very genuine place (in no small part due to Billie Piper’s past) and the show doesn’t halt to point out why a character is so interesting. Look audience, did you notice the character has a quirk? All of these character details are filled out from visual details or throwaway lines or acting, you know, like you would do in a TV show or movie. More importantly, all of these details are incredibly consistent with our character’s behaviors in a way that these aren’t details for the sake of ‘good writing’.

Unrelated picture from The Haunting of Bly Manor

What I’m saying is that it’s a good show with good writing and good performances and good pacing and good soundtrack. I Hate Suzie is genuinely good.

So what is it about really?

Everything I just described above, really, truly that. There is natural plot progression as Suzie’s life slowly crumbles but it’s really about all the inputs that lead to the characters described above. As people, we’re largely a product of our environment and the tiny details of our past combined with the chaos of daily life inform the choices we make every day. A single past trauma doesn’t dictate everything I’ve ever done but a decision I make today is probably clouded by unrelated experiences from my past. I Hate Suzie captures all of this beautifully in all the normal moments of life like a child’s birthday party or a sister’s wedding or bonding with someone in the neighboring bathroom stall but also, all the not so normal moments of life like doing cocaine with another washed up actor at the sci-fi convention hotel or dealing with a film crew that brought potted plants and giant dogs to your house for a photoshoot.

I’m not going to describe what happens in any particular episode or scene for two main reasons:

1. It is impossible to translate true audio-visual art into words.
2. I would make it sound boring.

What happens in the scenes themselves isn’t ground breaking but each moment accrues like a drop of liquor, fine on its own, until suddenly there’s an extraordinary cocktail in front of you. Suzie deals with being the meal ticket for a trashy family, she deals with her waning fame, her undiscovered sexuality, her worst fears about her son and so much more. Naomi (aforementioned best friend/agent) deals with her desire to have a child, her similarly waning career, the tacit rules of the dating world and most of all, Suzie. Naomi and Suzie’s relationship pulls them both together and apart in a way that a deeply entrenched relationship could: aren’t the best relationships some form of toxic/codependent/unhealthy? All of this builds until the arguable climax of the series, the final episode.

Acceptance

Throughout the series we’ve been closely following the events in Suzie’s life but only in this final episode do we hear her internal monologue. Maybe it’s because sometimes you don’t have time for a monologue when you’re trying to keep your head above water. Maybe it’s because Suzie has finally cracked and is deeply psychotic. Either way, we hear Suzie and Suzie deal with her husband for what seems to be the last time. It’s not entirely his fault, after all he has to deal with Suzie — but on the other hand, she has to deal with him. It’s a relationship that has folded in on itself to the point where blame is a snake that eats itself. Suzie leaves and after an eventful pit stop, she takes a walk. One of those walks where you think about where your life used to be, where it might go and how it shouldn’t be where it is right now. Suzie is at her worst, her most vulnerable, her most unloved and after a presumptuous mixup with a couple, her mild fame pays off in a way that it never seems to in real life. Our tragic child star gets invited into the couple’s warm apartment to charge her phone and use the WiFi.