Have you hit peak ENOUGH?
You don't have to pack your bags, change your name and head to Alaska
Sometimes there’s a moment in a TV show or movie that grabs you, not for its importance to the plot or its narrative propulsion, but for its undeniable truth telling. The nugget at its heart that makes a million people yell/mutter/whisper YES!
Like Kristin Scott Thomas’s gloriously self-confident character Belinda’s legendary menopause speech in Fleabag: 'The menopause comes and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world. Yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot, and no one cares, but then - you're free. No longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You're just a person... It’s horrendous. But then it's magnificent. Something to look forward to.’ Half the population punched the air as they crawled out from under their menopausal blanket of silence.
Like Claire Danes as Rachel in Fleishman Is In Trouble, screaming and screaming and screaming, unable to stop, as the pressures of her life explode out of her. OK, so that wasn’t a line but who needs words when the expression is so emotive? A zillion midlife women (and beyond) will attest to its scripting genius. [Midlife women feel like screaming]
Another such line happened this week in episode four of the new season of True Detective: Night Country. (It’s not a spoiler, so if you haven’t watched it yet, don’t worry, you don’t need to look away now.)
The ghosts of Christmases past, present and yet to come are flocking in Ennis and Navarro (Kali Reis) drops in on Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw, stealing every single one of the few scenes she’s in) and is stunned to find the woman she thinks of as borderline bag lady, looking a million dollars plus change, having prepared a festive banquet for no one but her.
It could be poignant; a moment of supreme loneliness and isolation. But, somehow, it isn’t. Instead it perfectly encapsulates Rose’s self-containment. She is who she is and she’s perfectly content with that.
‘Who were you?’ Navarro asks.
‘Before I was old and crazy?’ Rose fires back.
‘No! Before Alaska.’
Looking the very definition of soignée, Rose lights up, leans back and blows out smoke. (A tragically rare occurrence on screen these days. It made me feel nostalgic for a ‘good’ old-fashioned cigarette.)
‘I was a very serious professor in a very serious school writing very serious ideas,” she says. “Well, one Tuesday morning, after coffee, I sat down to polish some pompous useless article, and I just had enough. I had enough. Every damn word I’d written in my entire life was meaningless. Making so much noise. So much noise. It is at least quieter here. Mostly. Except for all the fucking dead!’
I just had enough.