Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in FX's Love Story FX Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment So now I have to admit that I'm watching it. This is a touchy subject for those who actually knew John and Carolyn. Do you purposely and deliberately not watch, assuming Love Story - Ryan Murphy's latest extravaganza dramatizing their relationship and tragic death - will be dreck that they'd both have hated? In solidarity with John's beloved nephew Jack Schlossberg, who was the ring-bearer at his secret wedding, and who, months before a trailer was even released, accused Murphy of profiting off his uncle "in a grotesque way"? Yikes. Shouldn't we all be virtue-signaling and (grandly) announce that we will not be watching it? Related Stories Lifestyle These 10 JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Books Are Trending Amidst 'Love Story' Buzz TV 'Love Story' Star Paul Anthony Kelly Explains the Weight of Portraying JFK Jr. and Filming His Final Moments With Jackie Kennedy Well, no. I worked for John at George. He started a magazine, for chrissake. And one of the reasons he was an excellent editor (yes, he was) was because John had the No. 1 quality of a great editor: an insatiable curiosity. Journalists are curious. He also, in a very Tina Brown kind of way, wouldn't miss something that was so clearly part of the zeitgeist. Everyone's talking about this. It was the same reason he invited his staff to a dinner party (with big-screen TV) at the Racquet Club the night Monica Lewinsky blabbed all to Barbara Walters - even though he was visibly uncomfortable, squirming through the whole thing, just the idea of this thing, a 21-year-old intern talking about flashing her thong and then fellating the President of the United States in the oval office. Ick. But of course he watched. And I think he'd have hate-watched Love Story. So, I gathered my tissue boxes, and I did cry - before it started. That choked-upness that comes at any John trigger, and there are so many. JFK airport can do it to me. But the lead-up to this series has been a nonstop bombardment. Then it started. And first, I was pissed. The opening of the pilot, obnoxiously named "Pilot" (get it?), is focused on their normal-for-them lives before they get to the airport. John is at the office, talking to staff, handwriting a personal note. Yeah, he would do that. Then, Murphy recycles that old debunked trope, first promulgated by Ed Klein in Vanity Fair (as John used to say, "He had one lunch with my mother and has been dining out on it ever since"), that they were late taking off because Carolyn kept getting her toenail polish changed, to the perfect shade of lavender. In Love Story, it's her fingernail polish and it's red, though Carolyn never wore nail polish on her fingers, and certainly not red (red was for lipstick). But that shit doesn't bother me in a fictionalized miniseries. What does bother me is the implication that her vanity caused the crash. As Klein's source has explained numerous times, she left the salon before 5:00. The plane took off at 8:15. Jeesh. Let it go. It was the Jackie depiction that had me howling. Naomi Watts did such a spectacular job playing Babe Paley in Murphy's previous miniseries (that I mostly loved) Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, that I expected big things from her Jackie. I did not expect a cartoon character that was too off-the-charts to even be considered camp, from her first scene, where she is at her dining-room table in her Park Avenue apartment, imperiously ringing a dinner bell to summon the help. But the hilariously bad Jackie scene comes in Episode 3. You know that great portrait of President Kennedy that hangs in the White House, the pensive one where he is glancing down, the one Jackie actually did approve? Well, Murphy has it in her apartment. And one night, all alone in a dark room (where's Maurice, you damn fool?!), and knowing she is dying, she puts Camelot on the record player (well, it was 1994), lifts up the painting in her fragile state, and dances with it to Camelot. Are you fucking kidding me, Ryan Murphy? Of all the zillions of Jackie stories in circulation for 70 years, some of them true, this is what you pull out of your ass? Naomi Watts as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in FX's Love Story. Kurt Iswarienko/FX And what's his beef with Daryl Hannah, who comes across as a certifiable ditz? Clingy, dim, goofy, stoned. Was/Is she that much of a flake? I never met the woman, but I can't imagine that John, who was preternaturally attracted to smart strong women, could have lasted five minutes, let alone five years, with Murphy's Hannah. It's all so comical that even when John accidentally gets her dog killed (which, apparently, is true), I didn't cry. And whoever cast RoseMarie Terenzio, John