Inside Ryan Murphy are two wolves. One is the outrage machine that creates off-the-rail shows like American Horror Story or the recent The Beauty. The other is the biopic master who steps back and allows other writers and directors to bring forth some of the more troubling parts of human history. In American Crime Story, that ranged from O.J. Simpson to Bill Clinton, while Netflix’s Monster anthology has tackled serial killers and spawned a multitude of headlines about responsibility to the victims. That sort of controversy likely won’t stop with his latest series, Love Story, which captures the short romance and tragic deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette. But true to the name of the show: holy heck, it is romantic.
For a time JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were the most famous couple in America, the equivalent to Lady Diana and Charles, a comparison the series makes multiple times – eight of the nine episodes were provided to critics for review, presumably so as not to spoil what happens at the end (just kidding). But as portrayed by actors Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Kelly, at its best Love Story is more concerned with how two human beings fall and stay in love, rather than the god-like myths constructed of them by the press.
Therein lies at least part of the controversy of this show, as while it’s based on the book Once Upon a Time by Elizabeth Beller, the production did not talk to the Kennedy family, much to their consternation. And because JFK Jr. and Carolyn were in the public eye so spectacularly, there’s a fair amount of ownership over their look, their story, their personalities by the world at large. This too, is something that the show digs into, particularly once the duo are married: how do you maintain yourselves as a couple, let alone as individuals, when every move is analyzed, torn apart, and thrown to the wolves?
All of this is fascinatingly built. And while the show starts as part of the trend of rich white people problems TV shows that have plagued TV lately – Carolyn, when we meet her, is working in sales at Calvin Klein, and dressing Annette Bening for the Bugsy premiere, while JFK Jr. is… JFK Jr. – whenever the show moves away from everyone else and focuses, intimately, on the courtship between the two, it soars.
In scenes of JFK and Carolyn alone on a date, or in an apartment, or talking in hushed tones at a party, the camera cuts in on close ups… In these moments, they are the only two people in the world, to the exclusion of even the world itself. It can, at times, be almost uncomfortably intimate, like you’re somehow the third floating in the middle of two people utterly in love. But what that allows the scripts to do is concentrate on who JFK and Carolyn might have been. These are all imagined conversations, or for the most part they are. And the episodes allow us to know and understand the two “characters” in a way few shows rarely take the time to do.
Even more laudably, it allows them to be flawed and real. Often, JFK Jr. acts like a whiny, self-involved, spoiled brat, despite being firmly in his thirties. Carolyn can be antagonistically caustic, keeping everyone including JFK at arm’s length for fear of getting hurt. They lie to themselves and therefore each other, get into a near brawl in a public park, and consistently make bad choices that put them in tough situations. Which is a long way of saying this isn’t an idealized couple… But it is an idealized romance. It’s actually very real and rarely talked about that you can bicker, and fight, and want different things in life, but still love the person you’re with deeply and truly. Pidgeon and Kelly bring that out in every second on screen. Here are two people desperately in love, trying to figure out how they can ever be together while knowing they can never be apart.
Everything around them? It works to varying degrees. The worst of it is when the show delves into raw impersonation, with Dree Hemingway’s Daryl Hannah getting the the dregs. She’s the woman before Carolyn, and the show goes out of its way to paint her as a typical rom-com villain – ditzy, dumb, bad for JFK Jr. She’s an impediment to their relationship, and it’s unfortunate Hannah wasn’t given the same gentle treatment as some other famous people who pop by. That includes Naomi Watts, who does her best as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But while the show mentions multiple times that the real Jackie O was a woman to be reckoned with, the talented Watts can only come so close by matching her wispy voice and aping her force of nature demeanor. Both of these come off like distracting parody, and stand in stark contrast to those relationship scenes with JFK and Carolyn.
Right in the middle, in a neat trick for a show about one of the most famous legacies in American history, is Sydney Lemmon as Carolyn’s sister Lauren Bessette, and Grace Gummer as JFK’s sister, Caroline Kennedy. It sort of seems like they’re here for the nepo baby joke of getting Jack Lemmon’s granddaughter and Meryl Streep’s daughter as the sisters of our leads. Though both are excellent actresses who do the most with their roles, there’s not a ton there.
(Also, just for kicks, I’ll mention that yes, Dree Hemingway is the great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, while Leila George, who plays Kelly Klein, is the daughter of Vincent D’Onofrio and Greta Saatchi. So there are plenty of nepo babies to go around in the cast.)
A step above that is Constance Zimmer, who appears briefly as Carolyn’s over-bearing mother, Ann Messina Freeman. While she mostly lives in the realm of disapproving mom, she does get a mid-wedding monologue that will absolutely wreck you. And the series neither completely villainizes her, nor ushers her into sainthood. She, like Carolyn and JFK Jr, gets to be a person – warts and all.
Then there’s Alessandro Nivola as Carolyn’s mentor Calvin Klein, who also introduces the couple to each other. As usual, Nivola does so much with so little, eating up every moment on screen and giving real pathos to his scant arc. It’s a stand-out performance, the sort that makes you want to know more about his internal life and discover how Calvin rose and where he went wrong. Here’s hoping a spinoff season of American Fashion Story is in his future.
Often, the scenes not involving JFK and Carolyn navigating their relationship fall to the level of well shot, well produced soap opera. They’re still engaging, and there’s plenty to enjoy as we follow the rise and fall of JFK’s magazine George, or Carolyn swiftly rise up the ranks at Calvin Klein. An episode where the couple goes to the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport for the first time and meet Jessica Harper as the absolutely terrifying family matriarch Ethel Kennedy is Meet the Parents for American politics. And there’s the requisite wedding drama once that episode rolls around, which again is lovely to look at and unequivocally romantic.
But there’s a palpable difference in the swell of emotion and intensity whenever the duo are left alone. The biopic elements work in fits and starts and often are eye-rollingly obvious (JFK Jr. is seen flying a little toy plane with some kids, and how did he die? Flying a plane). The show is not just far more successful, but, like the couple itself, far more concerned with getting to be alone, even for a moment. There, we see what Love Story is really about is less the tragedy of their short relationship, than interrogating the idea of how one falls in love at all. Why do we do that? How do we do that? What does it feel like? It’s all right there in the title, with Love Story first, followed by the duo’s names.
While die-hard aficionados of the myth of Camelot may wring their hands at a detail here and there, or the fact that this show exists at all, for those of us who thrill at the idea of seeing two people fall in love? You will cry, you will laugh, and yes, you will fall in love with Love Story. This time, at least, the good wolf inside Ryan Murphy came out the winner.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette premieres tonight at 9pm ET on FX and Hulu with three episodes.
Love Story Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette premiere Thursdays at 9pm ET/PT on FX and 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Hulu. The first week will debut three episodes (at 9pm, 10pm, and 11pm on FX), followed by one episode a week until the season finale.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Love Story, with premiere dates.
- Thursday, February 12, 2026: Love Story, Episode 1: “Pilot”
- Thursday, February 12, 2026: Love Story, Episode 2: “The Pools Party”
- Thursday, February 12, 2026: Love Story, Episode 3: “America’s Widow”
- Thursday, February 19, 2026: Love Story, Episode 4: “I Love You”
- Thursday, February 26, 2026: Love Story, Episode 5: “Battery Park”
- Thursday, March 5, 2026: Love Story, Episode 6: “The Wedding”
- Thursday, March 12, 2026: Love Story, Episode 7: “Obsession”
- Thursday, March 19, 2026: Love Story, Episode 8: “Exit Strategy”
- Thursday, March 26, 2026: Love Story, Episode 9 *Season Finale*
Comic Book Club Live Info:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.