The Wedding
Season 1
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
John and Carolyn tie the knot, but only after surviving a career meltdown and Anne’s rogue toast.
Photo: FX
At the beginning of her relationship with John, Carolyn’s central problem was that being part of the Kennedy family demanded some level of self-denial. By nature reserved and independent, she would have to accept a life governed by tradition and scrutiny if she wanted a future with John. The lead-up to their wedding presents Carolyn with the first set of sacrifices she will have to make to cement her place in the family. In the aftermath of their public blow-out on Washington Square Park, Ethel Kennedy, suddenly softened towards Carolyn — finally recognizing that she was once new to the family, too — advises her to tread with caution. Like Jackie, Carolyn has an inherent magnetism, but Jackie “never forgot that people were looking at her.” In other words, it’s up to Carolyn to control her own image. She is now responsible for what the world — and more importantly, the Kennedys — think of her, but she’s starting at a disadvantage: when John tells Caroline that they are engaged, she finishes the wine in her glass in one gulp.
For now, Carolyn’s strategy is to make herself as scarce as possible. Flipping through a photo album of Kennedy weddings past, given to them as a “jumping off point” by Caroline, John and Carolyn laugh at the family’s traditions. The fact that they are stoned only makes it funnier that, in a Willi Smith suit, Edwin Schlossberg “looks like David Byrne, but also someone who’s never heard of David Byrne.” Carolyn wants to do away with the fluff and have an intimate, understated wedding. John suggests Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia, a place that has “no paved roads,” would be the perfect venue for Carolyn’s “no bouquet toss, no party favors, no bridal shower, no brunch” vision. She becomes increasingly excited as she describes her idea of a pared-down ceremony, as if she were conceptualizing a campaign. Sarah Pidgeon is at the top of her game here: she injects Carolyn with personality in a valiant effort to rescue the character from thin writing. Dancing in their underwear, Paul Anthony Kelly can’t quite keep up with Pidgeon’s easy naturalism, but he tries.
Any person who comes from a big family and has planned a wedding will tell you that while the idea of an intimate guest list sounds glorious, making the requisite cuts is unbearably stressful. Carolyn and John hunker down in his George office, papering over the glass walls, in order to give this matter the serious consideration it deserves (John briefly entertains the idea of crossing out Lee Radziwill from the list in a passing reference to another Murphy subject). John’s insistence on using the George office for anything but actual work related to the magazine, which is perennially on the verge of collapse, is going to give Berman a heart attack. Berman, whose level of consistent stress is only rivaled by the orange M&M, is quickly becoming my favorite character. By episode’s end, I noticed that he didn’t make it to Cumberland Island, which is bullshit. Lee — who was excised from Jackie’s will — gets an invite, but Berman doesn’t? He’s carrying this hunk on his sweaty back!
By now, we have learned: Whatever John wants, John gets. Over lunch at Edwin and Caroline’s — a lunch which Carolyn partially spits out on hearing that the greens were “urban foraged” by Edwin on Central Park — John throws a fit when they suggest the couple host their ceremony at their house in Sagaponack. Caroline feels excluded from the planning process and offended that they don’t want a “Kennedy wedding.” Maybe her sense of loyalty to family tradition is just that strong, but more likely she’s feeling insecure about her own uncool Kennedy wedding. In any case, Caroline — who was a more compelling character when Jackie was still alive, subtly pushing against her family’s conventions — has now taken up Jackie’s torch as the guard of Kennedyisms, making sure his brother and his willful bride fall in line.
The weekend in Hyannis taught Carolyn that where steely Kennedy women are concerned, the best thing to do is to submit. It’s generous on her part to assume that Caroline wants to be involved out of affection for her brother rather than out of a need for control, but still, it moves her to see Caroline feel excluded. In an olive branch attempt, she decides to ask Caroline to be her maid of honor, which doesn’t sit well with her own sister Lauren. She accuses Carolyn of pushing away her own family to accommodate the Kennedys’ entitlement. “For someone who is practically a Kennedy, you suck at politics,” she concludes. Still, Carolyn goes through with her plan and offers Caroline the honor in Narciso’s atelier, where they are both being fitted. Caroline is surprised and moved. Though both of them tear up, neither of them openly cries.
As they’re leaving the studio, Carolyn worries about the three of them — herself, Caroline, and Narciso — being photographed together, which would open room for public speculation about the wedding. Caroline shrugs it off as no big deal, but that’s because she doesn’t know that Carolyn’s real worry is that Calvin will find out that Narciso is designing her wedding dress before she gets the chance to tell him herself. Earlier, Lauren encouraged her sister to come clean before the tabloids caught on, but it’s too late: Calvin puts it all together when he sees the paparazzi photo, another blow to his ego to compound the pain of his divorce.
When Carolyn comes by Calvin’s office later, we assume, like him, that she is going to tell him about the dress. Instead, Carolyn quits her job. She congratulates Calvin on being named one of TIME’s 25 most influential people, but Calvin knows “influence is fleeting,” prone to evaporate along with relevance, which is exactly what Carolyn is taking from him by leaving; by his own estimate, she is the “premier It Girl” of the moment. Calvin is honest about his humongous ego — he calls himself “a visionary” — and wishes Carolyn would do the same, instead of dancing around the truth that she is now too big for her boss. He tells her to get real: none of the attention she is getting is temporary, it’s “a masterstroke.” As she’s leaving, he tells her she’ll be in good hands with Narciso. He shuts away a mock-up for a wedding dress he had already sketched for Carolyn into a drawer — a nice, human touch. It’s a good scene, more attentive to the subtext that has been lacking in the season as a whole. Even more so because, as Carolyn walks out of the office one last time, she smiles to herself: Calvin is right. She has won.
Thornier moments like that are refreshing and welcome, but it’s bizarre that there was no crisis leading up to Carolyn’s decision to quit her job. I felt as blindsided as Calvin. Just last week, Carolyn differentiated herself in the Kennedy compound by insisting that her job gave her a sense of purpose. Even if that passion had started to wane as she became more assimilated to the family, or even if it was somehow strongly implied that she couldn’t possibly be a Kennedy and a fashion publicist, it’s a gross oversight on the development of her character to take the decision as a given. It creates friction for Carolyn to choose Caroline over Lauren as her maid of honor, for example; it should cause at least some friction for her to give up her job. It doesn’t make sense that she would come to that decision as nonchalantly as she decided to go blonder and start overlining her lips.
Carolyn’s mother, Ann, completely agrees. The low-pitch frustration and helplessness plaguing Ann give Constance Zimmer good material to work with. When Ann gets to Cumberland Island, she wants to be helpful, but there’s nothing for her to do other than tell her daughter some harsh truths. She worries that Carolyn is already “making her life smaller” in order to accommodate what she will later call John’s “massive life.” She asks the million-dollar question when she posits: Who is John F. Kennedy Jr., beyond who his family wants him to be? Carolyn can’t really say, but she can insist that he would give up his inheritance of Camelot for her. “You’re wrong about him,” Carolyn says, sounding like a teenager. “Maybe, but I’m not wrong about you,” Ann replies.
Later that night, at the rehearsal dinner, Ann goes rogue during her toast to make these same points to a portico filled with Kennedys. She takes her turn after John has gotten the day of his own wedding wrong — he’s so silly! — and Edwin has regaled the room with his “poetry.” Ann’s speech starts out harmlessly. She tells the room that as a teenager, Carolyn rode the school bus in front to keep company with a girl who felt carsick, rather than in the back with all her friends. It’s an anecdote that illustrates Carolyn’s generosity of spirit — the same one that compelled her to ask Caroline to be her maid of honor — and firm sense of justice. Ann concludes by saying that she can only pray that when the time comes, John will go where he is needed rather than expected or wanted. If that’s what she can come up with on the fly, I want to see what she wrote down in advance…
Ann breaks down in tears when she gets to that last part and excuses herself. John follows her inside and promises that he won’t let her down. Perhaps in an effort to humanize himself, he reminds her that both of his parents are dead; Ann and her husband Richard will now take their place in his life. He promises not to take them for granted. Ann, who cannot stop roasting John, only replies: “I know you believe that.” But John is, as established, too dense to be truly affected by any scary woman. He finds Carolyn on the beach. They fall asleep on the sand, wake up, and skinny dip. Life returns to its rightful balance, which to John means its natural awesomeness: His wife is super hot, the landscape is super beautiful, everyone is super rich, and Berman will take care of the magazine.
The little chapel John and Carolyn have picked is nestled in the woods, which means their guests have to be Jeeped there. They are instantly boiling in the late-summer southern heat, as Caroline predicted, when they arrive. John, accompanied by Anthony, is late after engaging in a chase with a helicopter following him to his destination. He manages to lose it, but when he gets to the chapel, Carolyn still isn’t there. She is over two hours late because she got her makeup done before putting on her dress, which didn’t have a zipper. Caroline is no help either in the prevention of this mistake or in its resolution. Lauren is ticked off but steps up, as sisters are wont to do. Narciso does as well, sewing the dress on Carolyn’s body in improvisation.
As they wait, the guests are divided into the Fun Group — the people who know nothing can be that bad when there are endless coolers of free beer available on a summer day — and the Not Fun Group, which is to say, the Ethels and complainers. The priest takes a nap. The sun goes down and the chapel is lit up with candles, which only makes it look more charming. Finally, Carolyn arrives. They take their vows, which we see in extreme close-up so that their promise to be there for each other “till death do us part” can land with full dramatic irony. If that weren’t enough, the episode closes with Carolyn and John heading back to the city — after a reception framed to recreate some famous photos — on a small plane flown by John. This time, though, there is a pilot present. He offers John the opportunity to log some hours on a “beautiful day to fly.”
• John takes a lit cigarette from Anthony Radziwill, whom we already saw conspicuously coughing in earlier episodes. We know that Anthony died of cancer only a few months after John’s own death. Since he died after John, I’m curious to see how his battle with cancer will feature in the storytelling here.
• We abruptly learn that Calvin and Kelly are getting divorced through Carolyn, which has me wondering: Have we seen the last of Kelly yet? Was it the fact that she was reliving so many of her own decisions through Carolyn that pushed her to her breaking point? She was a great character … I hope to see her back!
• For over 20 years, the tabloids have discussed Ann Messina Freeman’s reservations about Carolyn and John’s relationship, including her infamous wedding toast, which supposedly made everyone uncomfortable.
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