This is something Iâd written months after S4 came out, Iâve just stumbled upon it today and well, it still kinda resonates:
Iâve been listening to GAâs podcast interview and she was briefly talking about the closure of Sex Ed and how it was great that she could do the whole perimenopause thing with Jean and to show the reality of having a baby and how Jean started as a âtoo good to be trueâ character and then developed into this whole other person at the very end, again, implying how it is more realistic etc.
I usually love hearing actors speak about these things, sharing their insights about portraying a certain character, but I just kept on shaking my head here.
I feel like theyâre mostly still ignoring the slight flop that was S4 and how most of the people felt quite robbed and disappointed by it and the course it took.
Iâm sure sheâs just trying to look at the bright side of it all, she tried to do her character justice with what she had left and she definitely carried it out well, her acting was superb, but her entire explanation about how great this transformation was for Jean felt like bullshit.
I think to most of us Jean was indeed a very lighthearted, fun, very loveable character, but the moment you start getting into the story, it soon becomes very obvious how Jean has many more layers and is indeed not as happy or as âfreeâ as she presents herself to be. She didnât live the way she did and had those generous amounts of one night stands etc., because she exclusively felt empowered by it, but because, deep down, she was avoiding intimacy and potentially being hurt again.
The reason I started to like her to begin with and soon became invested in her relationship with Jakob, was exactly how after some initial playing around and her funny indifference to men, there then came this one man who wasnât full of bullshit and he managed to capture her attention well enough, until she couldnât help but want to pursue the exact thing she so very much feared.
That relationship started to seem like her catharsis and the point of it all, in my opinion, especially the way she tried to fight it with all her might.
Another obvious reason was also that Jakob turned out to actually be a loveable and wonderful man, so masculine, but also caring and loving and you could see through all the tiny subtle things and hints, that Jean was really a romantic at heart and it seemed that with Jakob she could start to resolve her fears and uncover a safe, accepting, loving partner she could trust, at last.
Despite the trial and error, they seemed like the kind of couple who cannot help but get pulled together no matter what, there was something very tangible and magnetic about them and it could be felt through the screen.
I think the reason most of us wanted them to end up together wasnât just the longing for the fairytale ending and certainly not anything so terribly unrealistic and impossible it couldnât be written in a âreal lifeâ kinda manner, we simply saw two people who had so much natural potential and chemistry for three seasons straight, it felt like a glimmer of hope, it felt like the message that finding some happiness after heartbreak of a divorce and losing a spouse was possible and we wanted them to work it out, even if in the most vanilla, boring, real life way. They deserved every bit of that.
I find that way more empowering than what they tried to do to appeal to the stressed out realism of being a woman, which seems like another one of the boxes we are now ticking in storytelling.
And donât get me wrong, I am a woman myself and a mother of three young children, I know the drill, but I donât need to be unnecessarily catered to with these storylines, when itâs actually something else that needed to be wrapped up in the actual story.
I donât think anyone wanted a perfect ending for Jean and Jakob, but it truly was a disappointment how they have basically disregarded three seasons of growth and development between two wonderful characters, knowing that people were there for it, only to throw it away, avoiding to admit there was something else happening in the background due to which their story was left unfinished, then trying to do the character justice by focusing on entirely different, unrelated stuff, thinking it will explain things and wrap up the story, even stating this was the intention all along and completely ignoring all of the rest. Which made it that much worse. I felt so invalidated as a viewer.
This ending might work if Jean had not grown much in the past, had underdeveloped relationships with random men throughout the past seasons, maybe needing a further push to expand as a character, but there was something much bigger there whether you want to admit it or not and both Jean and Jakob kinda went through a lot together and persisted all the way through, so Jeanâs chosen ending only seemed bitter and filled with excessive suffering at this point.
Also, as someone has stated before, the point of Jeanâs growth was regaining the trust in her romantic relationships and trying to overcome her fears, because considering her childhod and her past, she still managed to have a great career and was a fairly good mother to her son, but it was the romantic aspect of her relationships where she seemed to struggle the most.
To me, you threw her growth away and bounced her right back into the beginning, only, this time, lost, depressed and alone with a baby, desperately trying to make it âempoweringâ by how enduring us women are.
At that point it just made me wish it had all ended a season prior.
As a woman, I love seeing stories that validate us but also ones that give us HOPE.
Iâm still pretty butthurt over this one and if I could have one wish, it would be to see a remake sometime in the future where they could resolve this (and many other things), because I think the writing was very much below expectations.
Just the fact that Iâm still thinking about this months afterwards lol goes to show the impact of these stories and how much we just prefer the things to be honest and true to the characters, rather than for the writers to go into the direction of trying to appeal to the masses and check boxes. People can smell the bullshit.
The show was great as it was from the beginning, it was inclusive, it was fun, it was realistic, it was endearing. It didnât need the exaggeration and it didnât need to push things being relatable.
Dear Jean and Jakob, in my head the paternity was never a question, I can only imagine you hugging each other more than tightly after Jean had survived the birth, forgiving one another, knowing that your love is stronger than anything else and worth pursuing.
I imagine you both still living in that red chalet together with Joy, eating homecooked dinners on the terrace, sneaking around to have sex, going through days filled with stress and stupid quarrels caused by real life and parenting a toddler, the joys of living, only to fall into the bed at night and wrap your arms around each other, grateful that you have found one another.
And I think this is a pretty realistic, decent kind of love.
So, kindly, for what you had done⌠fuck off.
