“Tell Me You Love Me” — Series Premiere
Between the VMAs, the new season of Curb, this and James Gandolfini’s documentary on wounded soldiers, last night was one of the oddest nights of television I can remember. When I started up Tell Me You Love Me, HBO’s new Sunday night drama about couples trying to stay together you know you’re in for something special: HBO followed it’s usual GS, N, L, and AC warnings with a full-screen graphic that declared “Viewer discretion is strongly advised.” Hrmm… I clearly wasn’t going to be seeing your average relationship drama. And I didn’t. Sex aside, Tell Me You Love Me is an incredibly honest and sophisticated portraits of communication or the lack thereof. I found it completely engrossing. More after the break…
First the negative. If you’re the type of person who frequently finds themselves complaining about Woody Allen’s apparent belief that there are only white people in New York you might want to avoid Tell Me You Love Me. The series is whiter than the teeth of a television anchor. It isn’t a show about the great problems of our time. There’s no war, there’s no poverty, there isn’t much reference to anything in the outside world. Despite this, the emotions are pretty universal, and for me that’s what sells the show.
Here’s the basic premise: Three couples (actually, I think a fourth will be added next week) go to the same therapist and try to work through all of their problems. Pretty simple stuff. Hugo and Jamie are engaged and having copious amounts of sex (I’m sorry, but the physics of front-seat based automobile sex confuse and amaze me to this day) while sorting out apparent trust issues. Hugo isn’t much of a talker (unless he’s saying things to his buddies that will likely get him in trouble). Palek and Carolyn are married and trying to get pregnant which isn’t going well which causes some general resentment from each party toward the other. David and Katie are happily married with two kids but haven’t had sex in over a year.
That’s it. That’s the setup. The show itself is mostly comprised of these small life-moments that happen to all of us everyday, only shown through the prism of each of these relationships. There is also a lot of cold, mechanical sex laid (pun intended!) throughout the episodes. The juxtaposition of life’s minutiae and graphic sex creates a narrative far more complicated than your average hour-long soap. It kind of all comes down to the question of what should of been said in lieu of sex or what was said. It’s some pretty heavy material for 9pm on a Sunday and will certainly make this the show to avoid watching with your significant other (despite being pretty solid conversation fodder after).
For me, I found the married couple (who isn’t having sex) the most compelling. Their problems, the most ordinary, struck me as being the most vivid. Just the way two adults find a way to care for two children was enough to keep me fascinated. The episodes best scene involved David and Katie tag-team reading to their children before bed, including a hilarious omission of the word “corpses” from the picture book being enjoyed by their young son.
It’s kind of a hard show to write about without some give and take from another, so I’m just going to stop here and ask if anyone else watched and what they thought. If you tuned in, leave a comment!
