{"id":351228,"date":"2026-03-21T19:03:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/351228\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T19:03:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:03:25","slug":"love-story-episode-8-exit-strategy-insiders-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/351228\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Love Story’ Episode 8, Exit Strategy (Insider’s Recap)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLisa DePaulo was a feature writer for John F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s\u00a0magazine,\u00a0George<\/a>,\u00a0and has\u00a0shared her opinion\u00a0<\/a>of the\u00a0FX<\/a>\u00a0hit series\u00a0Love Story<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter. She will be recapping episodes through the end of the season. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis penultimate episode of Love Story<\/a>: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is ominously titled \u201cExit Strategy.\u201d And the crash is next week. So\u00a0which of the\u00a0plot points constitutes said exit strategy? Is it John having to go to a book party by himself because Carolyn won\u2019t leave their loft? Is it John forlorn because he can\u2019t figure out if Carolyn has run the dishwasher? (\u201cDid you hear it running?\u201d he hisses. Could they be more banal?) Is it the Kentucky Fried Chicken he brings home for dinner? Kentucky Fried Chicken? They live in Tribeca! They eat at the Odeon! Rest assured that John Kennedy did not bring his bride Kentucky Fried Chicken, which in episode eight gets more product placement than Prada.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd why, oh why, are they making him\u00a0so\u00a0queeny? All the little hissy fits, the fey mannerisms, the gyrating to Sade. \u201cI love this song,\u201d he says. Then: \u201cYou know what else I love?\u201d Oooh, what? \u201cI love you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there a writers strike I missed, or something?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince we last left our heroine, she has gotten much more miserable. And some of this is true. She hates going outside and facing the vultures.\u00a0Indeed, and who\u00a0wouldn\u2019t?\u00a0She\u2019s pissed because he came home at 3 in the morning. \u201cWe were closing the August issue of George!\u201d he snaps. Well, that might be true. Though few believe this, he\u00a0did spend\u00a0many a late night at the magazine. It wasn\u2019t John\u2019s style to walk out on the rest of the staff, to leave the fact-checkers and copy editors to toil in the middle of the night. Graydon Carter would have been leaving Bar Pitti at this point, or in bed. What isn\u2019t true is that Carolyn would have been pissed \u2014 at least about that. She was all in with George, from picking models for the covers to meeting with investors. This idea that she was a put-upon housewife is absurd.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn any event, it reaches a crescendo when Carolyn\u2019s sister calls to tell her that Princess Diana has been in a car crash and John responds by going out for a run. A bereft Carolyn watches the news by herself until\u00a0Diana\u00a0dies. \u201cShe died,\u201d she tells John when he gets home. Then they have another fight, after Carolyn says of Prince William and Harry, \u201cat least they have each other \u2014 like you and Caroline,\u201d and John has another hissy fit. It wasn\u2019t anything like that!\u00a0Not sure where the writers were going with this. But we get another fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, back in real life, have you noticed the frenzy that\u00a0Love Story\u00a0has unleashed? It\u2019s a non-stop bombardment on social media and beyond. How to dress like Carolyn. Where to shop like Carolyn. Her tortoise-shell headbands are sold out at C.O. Bigelow. Her colorist Brad Johns is giving interviews. (No, it is\u00a0not\u00a0easily copied.) It really got out of control when Harper\u2019s Bazaar had a story on how to\u00a0smell\u00a0like Carolyn Bessette: \u201cIf You Want to Smell Like CBK, These 10 Musk Perfumes Are Your Best Bet<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEven John, who never thought of himself a style icon, is now a\u00a0style icon<\/a>. But I find that sweet. I have no problem with the new generation of otherwise boring young men wearing backward baseball caps and berets and hanging their wallets from a chain. (Though he did that so he wouldn\u2019t lose it.) I am glad, really glad, that thanks to\u00a0Love Story,\u00a0an entire new generation knows who John and Carolyn were. But the\u00a0John Kennedy, Jr. Look-Alike Contest<\/a>\u00a0in Washington Square Park? That was gross.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second half of \u201cExit Strategy\u201d skips ahead a year to the days before the crash, and it is even more grim than the Princess Di half. The dining table in their loft is littered with wine bottles from a dinner party they had the night before (because Carolyn won\u2019t go out, remember?) They are fighting, a lot. Carolyn is distraught. \u201cPlease don\u2019t prove my mother right,\u201d she says, sobbing. It\u2019s ugly. I don\u2019t want to watch this. Neither does John. He packs his stuff and leaves for the Stanhope Hotel, which in real life is next door to his mother\u2019s old apartment.\u00a0 Then\u2026 am I reading\u00a0this right? (I had to watch it three times.) Does the dining room morph into an institutional cafeteria, with Carolyn literally on a ledge? What kind of a misogynist fantasy is this? Are we to assume that she is having a nervous breakdown?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOk,\u00a0that\u00a0never happened. UPDATE: And nor does it happen in the show. I had to watch it a fourth time to see that, nah, she\u2019s just sobbing uncontrollably, as he leaves on one crutch for the Stanhope, which is bad enough. See how crazy this show is making me? I\u2019m giving Ryan Murphy<\/a> twisted ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDo I really have to watch the last episode?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lisa DePaulo was a feature writer for John F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s\u00a0magazine,\u00a0George,\u00a0and has\u00a0shared her opinion\u00a0of the\u00a0FX\u00a0hit series\u00a0Love Story\u00a0for\u00a0The Hollywood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,20102,85,46,170861,83686,47113,411],"class_list":["post-351228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-fx","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jfk-jr","tag-love-story","tag-ryan-murphy","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}