Made in Chelsea - S06 E10
In this episode Jamie claims he’s never felt this way before.
In TV dramas, comedies and films, we love to point out inconsistencies and continuity errors. I love John Wick but I’ll be the first to admit his hair grows abnormally fast over what appears to be three very stressful weeks. In Criminal Minds a character claims to have 5 brothers in an early season and then proudly declares herself an only child further down the line.
Reality TV shouldn’t have these issues, right? Because even when it’s constructed reality, the characters... are real people... ish. And yet Made in Chelsea captures the truth of humanity, which is that while our hair may not grow three inches in as many days, and siblings don’t tend to evaporate, our internal logic is rarely as clean as it should be.
Jamie, for example, is forever convinced that he’s “never felt this way before”. He had never felt that way before about Louise, then about Binky, and now he’s never felt this way before about Lucy. Jamie’s insistence that every romantic feeling he has is new and confusing is always used as a bargaining chip, either with the woman in question or with the person he’s battling with for that woman (I’ve put “the person” because I presume this motif will eventually be repeated with an adversary that isn’t Spencer. At some point. Right???) It’s an inherent flaw in his character that Jamie falls back on being “new at this” whenever he’s finding something difficult or complicated. Just as Spencer falls back on “I don’t want to be in a relationship” every time he ends one of the basically unbroken chain of relationships he’s started over the last six seasons. These are excuses which take the responsibility for their actions out of their hands. “I’ve never felt this way before” Jamie claims, as if he’s driving a car for the first time and so it’s not his fault when it crashes.
We love, as humans, to absolve ourselves of responsibility this way. My husband and I regularly have tasks or chores which we will claim we “Don’t know how to do.” My husband definitely knows how to cook gluten free pasta, and I know how to take the bins out, but rather than simply saying “No, I don’t want to do that” we feel like we have to make some excuse to justify not wanting to do the thing. This is stupid, but I have a suspicion it’s probably a generational thing: Millennials, man. Perhaps it’s a symptom of writing about TV and films, but I often feel like I’ve got to come up with an ideological justification for why I do or don’t like things. I don’t like the Avengers movies. My dislike is not rooted in the fact that there are far too many of them, or that superhero movies are “ruining cinema”. I just don’t enjoy watching them.
It’s OK to have an opinion on something that isn’t rooted in ideological discourse (I didn’t like Marriage Story because I didn’t enjoy it, not because something something gender), it’s OK not to want to do something because you don’t enjoy it (you can still take out bins even if you don’t like taking out bins) and it is alright to say “I really like this girl but I’m not very good at maintaining relationships” instead of claiming you’ve never felt feelings before. I think we’ve got to stop making excuses for our preferences and just accept that they’re our preferences. There’s a time and a place for reading deeply into things (here, on Tumblr, is an excellent place for it), but having to always justify our preferences is EXHAUSTING and also eventually leaves us feeling powerless and limp. By all means be prepared to argue your point with people, but saying you like or dislike something is an OK thing to do. I can’t believe I feel like that needs to be said.
It’s OK, Jamie, you’ve felt this way before. So have I.