Class of ’09, Daisy Jones and the Epic Character Arc

Man, have I been starved for good entertainment lately. I don’t think I have particularly niche tastes, but it feels harder and harder to find something that really scratches that itch in terms of the stories that hook me in. The kinda crazy thing is that I’ve had this issue not only with television and movies lately, but with music too.  Is it me?  As Class of ’09‘s Ashley Poet says in episode 4, “Am I the problem??”  I’m not convinced it’s entirely my fault.  My tastes have certainly not changed, but I think the variety in the types of stories that are being told has grown, which is obviously a good thing.  Maybe I need to widen my horizons on the different things I’m willing to try out.

The last thing I liked enough to bother writing about it on here was Station Eleven, which definitely had me by the balls.  Figuratively, of course.  Like, to the point where I watched The Last Of Us when it aired a couple months ago and yes, I really liked it, but even that still didn’t hit quite as hard for me as Station Eleven.  I found myself being slightly annoyed that TLOU was such a smash hit, while SE (a kinda similar premise) had been basically ignored on the same streaming service.  I guess it needed a video game version first.  I do love zaddy Pedro Pascal though, so I can never be too mad when he’s involved.

I’m trying to think of what other shows I’ve watched since my Station Eleven review that I really enjoyed.  Lemme see if I can find a list somewhere and pick out what I watched … OMG I just found a list of literally everything in 2022 and I’m finding some I forgot about:

• The Boys S3 – Season 3 was solid. I’ve enjoyed every season so far.
• Stranger Things S4 – For all its good points and drawbacks, season 4 kept me glued to the screen. I hope S5 comes out before all the kids turn 40.
• Yellowjackets S1 – Why haven’t I heard much chatter about season 2 of this show??  I forgot start it and I need to.  Season 1 was good.
• The Bear S1 – This show was way more relatable than I expected, which must mean that my job is far too chaotic.
• Kleo (German show on Netflix) – If I’m being honest with myself, my #1 genre is and will always be “lady spy”. This German lady spy show was super fun, despite being lazy with some continuity stuff which drove me insane.
• Search Party S5 – Lolllll every season of this show was hilarious and more insane than the previous one.
• Peacemaker S1 – I had zero interest in this show but my husband forced me to watch, and it ended up sucking me in more than almost any other shows on this list. Genuinely hilarious with just enough dramatic moments to get me really invested.  I’m definitely all in for season 2.
• Somebody Somewhere – This show is about simple every day life in a tiny town that is great and funny because Bridget Everett.
• Ms. Marvel – This show was actually great; super creative and fun, and I learned way more about Pakistan than I knew before.
• In From the Cold S1 – I completely forgot I watched this show until I saw it in the 2022 list.  Another lady spy show, this one had an absolutely batshit premise, but totally sucked me in, and then Netflix never said another word about it. I can only assume it’s canceled because Netflix pretends it never existed.
• Russian Doll S2 – Loved season 1 of this show, but S2’s premise didn’t really do it for me.
• Westworld S4 – A super bizarre season that ended up being pretty decent in the end. They set up a final S5 and then HBO – err, excuse me, Max – promptly canceled it.  But “Max” wasn’t satisfied with just canceling it, so then they deleted the entire series from their service.  Doesn’t look like anything to me!
• The Rehearsal – Hahahah this one was bonkers.
• Warrior Nun S2 – A decent season overall, ending on a cliffhanger, and then of course Netflix canceled it.
• The Peripheral S1 – I like the premise of this show and the characters, but the season was soooo slllowww and did not have an ending that was the least bit satisfying. They simply did not tell enough of the story in S1, it felt incomplete.  It felt like a show I could have loved, but they didn’t give me enough.
• The English – A limited series that I found very enjoyable until it ended on a horribly depressing note, and that was that.

Now I’m checking what shows I’ve watched in 2023 so far.  I already covered TLOU.  Other than that, it’s a pretty damn short list because very few things have looked interesting:

• Poker Face – This was pretty good, with a fun premise.  But if there’s a season 2, I doubt we’ll be able to watch, since Peacock is no longer allowing people with cable subscriptions to log into their service.
• The Mandalorian S3 – We literally just forgot to watch this. I haven’t heard much about it, which is weird.
• Daisy Jones and the Six – I’ll talk about this one below.
• Shadow and Bone S2 – OH yes this season was good … did Netflix renew it for S3??  Knowing them, I should prep myself for the cancelation notice.
• Yellowjackets S2 – I will start soon, I promise.
• Beef – We just finished this one, it was really funny with an inventive premise, and should probably win a “best soundtrack of the year” award.

The other one I’m watching right now is Silo, which is on ep 5 as I write this.  I went into this one based off word of mouth and a trailer that seemed interesting, and it’s been pretty good so far.  Ep 5 was a bit less eventful than I hoped for, but let’s see where it goes.  This one has the potential to really suck me in, given that its premise involves the higher-level genre I enjoy, which is: One or more lady main characters who get to do cool and interesting stuff, and maybe there’s a cute guy in there somewhere (which there kind of is in this one, but I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers).  Give me a good relatable character (or a few) to live vicariously through and you’ll usually have my attention.

And finally that brings us to Class of ’09, which I saw the trailer for on YouTube sometime in April, and it immediately piqued my interest, as it fell into my genre and had at least a couple good actors in it.  The critics have been somewhat meh/mixed on it so far, but I forged ahead with it when it came out to see for myself.  Often I can find things I like about a show even if it’s a tad cheesy or just not exactly Emmy material.  The critics don’t hate this one from what I’ve seen, I think they’re probably just wanting more out of it than it gives in terms of a) the premise and b) meaty stuff for Brian Tyree Henry to do.  I’ve got thoughts on both of those, so I’ll dig into them a bit.

Warning: Spoilers for both Class of ’09 and Daisy Jones and the Six are about to follow, so stop here if you want to avoid them.

Point A: The Premise & the Storytelling

In terms of point A, the plot of this show is basically Minority Report (which I suspect causes some critics to write it off as a rip-off), but it’s actually less stupid than the movie in one key way.  First off, I say that as someone who saw Minority Report in the theater and greatly enjoyed it.  It’s a good movie, but the movie’s whole predictive law enforcement system relies on some clairvoyant ladies lying in a pool.  Am I oversimplifying?  It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen it, to be fair.  My recollection is that it’s supposed to involve this super complex technology, but ultimately its CPU is … ladies in a pool.  At least Class of ’09 goes with what it would actually look like if we moved in this direction:  the use of artificial intelligence.

That said, I’m not sure how many episodes the critics were given to review the show with, but I saw a cast interview the other day where the interviewer said she’d been given the first 4 eps.  That is exactly what has aired as I’m writing this, and if I were to write a real review of this show for an actual publication at this juncture, I don’t think I’d have enough info yet to predict whether it will follow through on the story it’s trying to tell in any deep or meaningful way.  I’ve heard that this is a limited series, which would mean that all we have left are 4 more eps for them to tell the entire story of this extremely complex topic.

That’s a very tall order under the best of circumstances, but the thing that is driving me the most insane about this show is that its middle episodes are each only 39-40 minutes long.  WTF??  That is several minutes shorter than your standard hour-long episode of television when you subtract the commercials, which is 43 minutes.  This show doesn’t have the constraints of a TV schedule, so why the hell are so many of its episodes this short?  I don’t need Stranger Things-levels of indulgence on the super-sized eps, but my god they could throw in an extra 5 or 10 minutes of material on these things and still be at a completely reasonable length.  I can’t figure out how they don’t have more to say when trying to tackle such a weighty and relevant topic in only 8 eps.

Point B: Meaty Story for Brian Tyree Henry

Everyone loves Brian Tyree Henry these days, myself included.  Like many, I first saw him as Paperboy on Atlanta, and my husband and I tend to excitedly say “Paperboy!!” every time he pops up in something new, which is very often.  I’ve seen a lot of ’09 reviews with a headline of, basically, “BTH is good but I wish this show gave him more to work with.”  I think part of the issue is that this is very much an ensemble show, with BTH and Kate Mara as the two leads playing kind of the yin and yang of the story, with Sepideh Moafi close behind in terms of character focus, and then Brian J. Smith rounding out the main cast.  I think when you combine the ensemble nature of the show with the issues I mentioned in Point A, you get the critics wanting more for BTH’s character, which I totally understand.

That said, it’s funny because I think the thing this show has been remarkably good at, especially given the short eps I complained about, has been sketching out the characters and their relationships.  And that is the precise reason I’ve gotten weirdly obsessed with the show, and why I’m sitting here bothering to write the first TV blog post I’ve done in a year and a half.  Characters are always what draw me in, always.  Plot is important to me too, but mainly for how it drives and influences the characters.  Our daily lives and the things that happen to us and around us help shape who we are.  For instance if you’re watching a news story about the war in Ukraine, the entire reason you care about it is because you want to know, will the Ukrainian people prevail, will they survive these hardships, and will they be able to rebuild their lives?  I’m sure some people watch solely to see how an apartment building crumbles when struck by a Russian missile, but those people are probably psychopaths.

Given all this, I’ve found myself quite annoyed by the fact that some of the reviews essentially say, “BTH is the only reason to watch this show.”  How the hell can you say that when the other three mains are standing right there??  I said earlier that one of the things that piqued my interest in the show was that it had “a couple good actors in it,” but if I’m being honest, I don’t think I’d actually seen Kate Mara in anything prior to this.  I just felt like I had, because she’s been in stuff for many years and I’ve seen her sister in things.  I’m just looking at her IMDb … OMG LMAO <spit take> … I take it back, I’ve seen Fantastic Four, which I imagine she wants to forget too.  The shockingly bad quality of that movie was NOT her fault in any way, but it certainly wasn’t a movie that showcased anyone’s strengths.

IMDb says she was in 127 Hours and The Martian, but it couldn’t have been prominent roles, right?  I don’t remember her in these.  Anyway, suffice it to say, BTH is the only one I was already familiar with.  I definitely had not seen Sepideh Moafi or Brian J. Smith in anything.  Yet the show and the actors are have got me fully invested in all the characters, so “BTH is the only reason to watch this” is a crazy thing to say.

And that brings me to what I hinted at in the title of this post, which is the epic storytelling they do in this show, and how that’s what is making me care about it more than anything else I’ve seen in a while.  A quick sidebar on this first – I’ve seen several folks on Twitter say that the 3 timelines are confusing them, which, come on, you have to be paying zero attention to be confused by this.  It is so easy to tell what timeline they are in just from their clothes and hair, let alone the fact that the show calls it out 95% of the time!  2009 involves them wearing trainee or casual clothes, 2023 involves professional FBI attire, and 2034 involves everyone with greying hair, futuristic clothes, aging prosthetics and Poet with one less eye.  Think, McFly!

I’ve seen one other recent show do a good job of covering loonnnng character story arcs, and guess what?  It’s the only other show this year that hooked me in a similar way.  Yes, it was a little cheesy (especially the ending), and the music is not my genre, but hot damn did Daisy Jones and The Six really pull me in with great characters who were fleshed out really well over like a 25 year timespan.  To be fair, the 70s were the main focus, but the interviews in the late 90s which provided the narrative for the story helped give the context of where everyone ended up.  And one thing this show did better than most is the fact that it had not just one, not two, but three really well-written lady characters.  You had two of the characters in direct rivalry with each other for decades, yet you didn’t ever find yourself cursing at either of them because their motivations were so well-understood at every turn.

And it’s not for nothing that some of the key stories being told in Daisy were long epic love stories, which is exactly the case for Class of ’09 as well.  Let’s dig into the main characters a bit and I’ll talk about what I’m loving so far and what is driving me absolutely insane.

Tayo Michaels

Let’s start with Tayo first, because his story has yet to fully reconnect with the other 3 in the 2034 timeline, though it seems this is bound to happen in the next episode based on the trailers.  He also isn’t romantically connected to any of the others, which we’ll just say for now is unique to his character, heh.  Tayo shares a strong connection with Poet in the 2009 timeline, but so far the story suggests that they are each off doing their own things in 2023 and 2034, though they do still talk and connect at key points.  Tayo’s moral sensibilities and personality are pretty in line with Poet in 2009, in the sense that he wants to help people and help the world, but he’s also somewhat tough-as-nails and ready to throw down if needed to protect his loved ones, as we see with his excellent shooting skills.

Tayo at some point meets the love of his life, who he marries, and we haven’t yet seen the genesis of that relationship, but I think we will soon.  What we have seen is critical to shaping his character though, which is his wife being nearly killed by the militia tiki torch Oathkeeper freaks in the present day timeline.  And this happens after his FBI partner is nearly killed by the same guys leading up to it.  Something snaps in Tayo at this juncture, and it sets him on a path of doing anything he has to do to protect his peeps.  In 2023 this means something quite reasonable, which is using Hour’s quick-data-gathering and data-correlating technology to tie evidence together and quickly pinpoint leads.

In 2034, it has evolved into something far more sinister, which is the Minority Report style “predictive” technology and the big brother controls over everyone’s lives, all in the name of making the country safer.  I think there’s gonna be a lot more to Tayo’s evolution in the back 4, but again, I worry because we only have a few (short??) eps left and a hell of a lot of story to tell.

Ashley Poet

The primary character I’m relating to hard in this series is Poet.  I think what really pulled me in and made me go “YAS, SAME girl” was the scene in ep 1 between her and the FBI psychologist.  The doc asks Poet about her past relationships, and she talks about how her ex-fiance tried to ruin her chances at making it into the FBI via one of his answers to an interview question.  The doc asks why she didn’t choose love over her career, and she basically says, it wasn’t even about choosing so much as the fact that the dude had totally let her down in a critical moment.  He could be as contrite as he wanted, but she would never be able to look at him the same or trust him after that, so the only thing left to do was to dump his ass and move on with her life.  I think I am somewhat extreme in my tendency to lose trust in people from certain incidents, and once it’s gone, it’s virtually impossible for them to regain it.  Poet gets me.

I think the other reason I relate to Poet is that everyone she meets just falls deeply in love with her – I’M KIDDING, I am kidding, obviously.  Lmao, I wish.  But it’s certainly fun to live vicariously through a character who kicks ass, takes names, and breaks hearts left and right.  Though I think the heartbreaking with Lennix has been quite mutual, but I’ll touch on that more later.  For now I’ll say that the reason I think people tend to fall in love with Poet is that she herself is so kind and nurturing to everyone she meets.  She’s an empathic soul who always wants to fix everyone’s problems, and it’s an endearing trait.

There are several other things I find extremely relatable about Poet: The story of her single mother always putting kid-Poet above her own love life, her high anxiety about stuff like the polygraph tests and the “what ifs” of her/Lennix’s relationship being exposed, and the fixed nature of her sensibilities and approach across time.  Across all 3 points in the timeline, Poet’s general M.O. and strategies don’t really change despite all the craziness that has gone down.  She absolutely learns from mistakes, which is why she apologetically tells Hour she was right all along and finally decides to start pushing back on Tayo’s crazy AI shit, but she doesn’t tend to make big swings in general life approach across time.

Hour Nazari

Hour’s character is the brainiac of the series, and the thing I probably find most relatable about her is her flare for drama when faced with challenges.  Like in ep 1 when she spends all her money getting to Quantico and can’t afford to even eat or buy the uniform, she’s flipping out and basically saying “FUCK IT this isn’t gonna work, I’m going home!!”  And when she finds out the guy who stole her technology to use it for evil is dead, she’s like “GOOD, he deserved it!!”  Yes, also same, girl.  I feel you.

You’d be tempted to think that Hour’s motivations for creating her data science solution for the FBI are based solely on it being the logical and common sense approach, because it is, at the time.  But ep 4 then gives a good backstory on why it goes deeper than that, which is her parents’/family’s experience as Iranian immigrants, always being racially profiled by the authorities and suspected of being up to no good.  If her system could’ve been kept within her vision, it genuinely would’ve been quite helpful at forcing the FBI to work based on facts/evidence rather than the bias and hunches.

Hour is living a hard life in 2009 and 2023, having to conceal her true self for her parents, seemingly not doing much dating in 2009 and then marrying a dude in 2023, when she’s clearly not into dudes.  To double her troubles, the FBI is doing everything it can to shut down her entire operation and life’s work, her data science system.  AND we get hints that her system is eventually stolen from her and used for evil.  She just keeps getting shit on and disrespected at every turn, and it’s hard to watch her go through it.  It’s nice to see her vindicated in 2034, with Poet kind of coming back groveling, but sadly it’s too late to prevent all the badness that happened up until that point.

Daniel Lennix

The thing about Lennix is, he should be such a douchebag.  Everything about him is obnoxious on the surface: A rich, good looking, privileged saltine cracker of a dudebro who’s had everything handed to him in life.  As he admits in the show, everything in life has come easy for him (except Poet).  He does well with the ladies, he gets the fancy powerful jobs in FBI leadership, his dad has all the government / congressional connections, the world is set up to work perfectly for him, and it mostly does.

And maybe that’s why it’s clear this is fiction, because somehow, this would-be douchebag is … a good guy.  Can this conceivably happen in real life?  I don’t know, anything must be possible.  This show helps me imagine that it might be.  The show doesn’t delve into Lennix’s life and background as much as the other 3 characters, but he’s a simple enough character that I don’t think it entirely needs to.  We do get a lot of references to understand who he is and his life trajectory from 2009 to 2034, rising into FBI leadership, marrying some high society woman, having 2 kids, getting divorced, and being left with only partial custody.  Lennix wants to stick with the FBI as his career, but the FBI’s trajectory has made that extremely difficult for him, and he’s about to finally give up and go into politics just like his parents had planned for him.

Even this character arc sounds so annoying, but goddamn if this man didn’t make me melt for him in ep 4.

Epic Love Stories, Mysteries and Infuriating Vagueness

“But I can tell you now, loving you has not been easy, and I’ve loved you for 20 years.”

Wrong, Lennix, it’s been 25 years.  2009 to 2034, it’s easy to do the math.  Little details like this always drive me nuts, because this should’ve been obvious to the writers, but I’ll forgive them, because the line did make me squeal a little.  “Epic love story” has never been my genre as long as I’ve been alive; if you were to tell me, “oh let’s watch this movie/TV show, it’s an epic love story,”  I’d be like, nope.  No thanks.  Not interested.  But as it turns out, that’s apparently because I simply never saw one that was compelling.  I’m enjoying the idea of the love story that doesn’t quite work out, but the couple has the potential to finally make it happen decades later.  Of course, that’s not a novel concept, and I will not give two shits about it unless I love the characters.  But here we are.  Will the love reconnection really happen for any of the characters involved here?  Who knows.  We may or may not get an answer by the end of this series.

And what about Hour?  Is this “love triangle” a triangle, like in the Felicity / Ben / Noel sense, where Felice can’t decide?  Or is it a love triangle in the sense of Sydney Bristow / Vaughn / Will where Sydney/Vaughn love each other and Will just pines for Syd in the background?  (Yes, I will only make references to 20+ year-old J.J. Abrams shows, so no one under the age of 38 can get them.)  It’s unclear, and that has been somewhat infuriating to watch, because I’m not sure if Poet’s thoughts and motivations should still be quite so mysterious at this point in the series.

I’ve seen some tweets about this show that have cracked me up, because I can tell that one segment of this show’s audience is ladies who came here for Sepideh Moafi from The L Word, and they’re totally shipping Hour and Poet.  And they are all going, what kind of hetero besties are this handsy and eye-gazey with each other??  As a basic hetero bitch, I completely agree, because let me tell you my besties and I do not interact like this with each other, lollll.  Sure, we love each other, but we’re just not that touchy feely.

My assumption on this relationship has flipped back and forth over the past 4 eps, but I’m currently back to the theory that Poet’s love for Hour is in the bestie sense rather than the romantic sense ..??.. however that could change on a dime again in the next ep!  Anything could happen.  We’ve seen some clues that Hour may have lived in Poet’s apartment for some length of time following the current events of the 2023 timeline, so we’ll see if that turns out to be anything.  I will say though, I do love and have always loved a good epic bestie storyline, as I’ve got great long-time besties myself.  But if this story does take that direction, it would still be more complicated and somewhat tragic, as there would be some unrequited romantic love involved from one side of the bestie-ship.

But again, why so mysterious??  That’s what’s annoying me.  They were quite clear from the beginning what was up with Poet and Lennix, so I can’t tell if they’re purposely trying to tease people with the Poet/Hour ship, or maybe just trying to have it both ways with them.  As in, make it a platonic bestie-slash-one-sided-love story that tries to satisfy the folks shipping them too.  Who knows.  I guess/hope we’ll know by ep 8.

By the way, if you want to talk about shipper blueballs, it’s a great time to circle back to the other show this year that made me realize I could enjoy an epic lovestory, Daisy Jones and the Six.  Daisy/Billy shippers were treated to the characters embarking on an explosive years-long “romantic” relationship that they could never actually act on/consummate.  And let’s be honest, if this was a true story of a real band, they absolutely would not have had the willpower to resist getting together.  But the show had to walk a fine line to keep the characters likeable.  That said, it was nice to see the show wrap with the two reconnecting 20 years later (the cheesy/riddic fate of poor Camila as the catalyst notwithstanding).  We have no idea what the reconnection led to, but we can imagine whatever we want.  Not sure if the book was more clear about it.

Even More Mysteries

Back to those Class of ’09 mysteries, how are we 4 eps into this series and we still don’t know what the hell happened to Poet’s eye?  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good character mystery that they can dole out the backstory on.  But this is a good example of how long this show is enjoying drawing out these little mysteries.  Surely she didn’t volunteer to poke out her functioning eye at some point just so she can get a computery implant thing.  My current theory is that Lennix loses his arm in the building collapse we see at the end of ep 4, but Poet comes out relatively unscathed because Lennix is crouching over her when everything comes down.  She still has her eye in the trailers for upcoming eps showing more present day scenes.  There’s a flash of her fighting some guy in a truck in the trailers; maybe she loses it somehow in the aftermath of the terrorist attack while she’s trying to track down the baddies.

Final mystery I’ll mention – What’s up with this guy??  We get an intro to him right at the start of the series, making us think he’s gonna be a main character, and then we see almost nothing of him in the next 3.5 eps.  He’s kind of a cutie.  Did they cut out his entire character arc and that’s why eps 4 through 6 are so damn short?

I think what’s gonna happen is that this show’s love of mysteries and its bizarre short episodes are going to result in the series ending without doing more than scratching the surface of its main premise.  They’ve done a great job pulling us into (most of) the characters and relationships, but it would be nice if they could couple that with really deep diving on their main theme of AI and the cautionary tale of taking the justice system in this direction.

Well, that’s life I guess.  All I ever get is little glimpses into something that could be great, if only they would do this or that.  And/or flashes of things I love, that instantly disappear 2 seconds later.  What’s that Robert Frost poem that I only know because of Pony Boy and The Outsiders?  Nothing gold can stay.  This series is gonna end after the next 4 short episodes and I’ll be left with TV blueballs for eternity, per usual.

Maybe I’ll write a follow-up after the finale airs.