I’m watching one of those rarest of birds: an intelligently written and convincingly acted TV series, via Netflix.
With all that working against it in TVland, the series apparently lasted one season. Go figure.
Jack and Bobby came to my attention after I watched the movie Bobby, a fictionalized account of the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. But Jack and Bobby isn’t about the Kennedy brothers; it’s about two teenaged brothers in the first decade of the 21st Century, one of whom grows up to become the president in 2041.
I love coming-of-age tales, which usually center around precocious and sensitive children and their often larger-than-life (think Atticus Finch) parents. The larger-than-life parent in Jack and Bobby is played by Christine Lahti, who is no Atticus Finch. Although she’s a brilliant tenured professor with a Ph.D., her character tends to judge others quickly and harshly, and she smokes pot to deal with the intensity of her life and her personality. Her name is Grace.
For me, Grace is the most compelling character in the series. (Watch a clip of one of her scenes below.) For a few episodes, I spent at least a few minutes during every episode yelling at her to get over herself and stop acting like a megalomaniac. A child of my own era, the Grace character has great confidence in her intellectual and moral (social justice-wise) superiority. Her fuse is short and she erupts into self-righteous rants at the slightest provocation. She intimidates people and she is made of iron.
Seven episodes in, I realize why I find Grace so compelling: I fight being like her so fiercely that sometimes I believe I’m winning that fight.
Anger. Intellectual superiority. Controlling behaviors. Self-defensive, out-of-the-mainstream beliefs and actions designed to say, “I don’t belong with you” before you can say, “You don’t belong with us.” All are elements of the wall I built around myself and carefully guarded for about 40 years. I spent much of my life being that character and, like Grace, making people around me miserable.
No wonder Grace ticked me off.
As the series develops, however, here’s what’s surfacing: Grace’s vulnerabilities. The fears that fuel her need to control and her compulsion to be right. The flawed spirit behind her inability to fully embrace the intimacy necessary for real relationships. I don’t yet know exactly where the 20th episode of Jack and Bobby will leave viewers and these characters, including Grace, but I begin to suspect that the series is as much about Grace coming of age as it is about her young sons coming of age.
That, I think, is the best I can hope for: that I can continue to come of age; that I can accept the way every age brings new growth from the seeds of the previous age; and that I will have the grace to love myself in that becoming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBNAnboUNG8
