#35 - Oops I'm Obsessed With Starstruck

I miss the era of a good 30-minute TV show. Especially reality shows. I feel like we used to have these condensed down hyper potent episodes where a lot (and nothing) happened all at once, and it was 22 minutes without ads, and we all walked away having seen the entirety of Laguna Beach Cabo Spring Break trip.

I love a good romcom, and have bemoaned the loss of the genre for years (although, Netflix got Nancy Meyers out of retirement and I hope the ENTIRE FILM takes place in a luxury kitchen) so when I stumbled into some rave reviews for the BBC show Starstruck (and finally got HBO to work on my PlayStation) we were off to the races.

And you know, the Brits really have the art of a 6-episode season perfected. And these episodes were only 21 minutes each. So of course I finished the entire series in one sitting and grinned like mad the entire time.

It’s very very well done, the fights and the drama and the love all felt very real and lived in and there was no like cringey awkwardness that made me need to get up and pace out my anxiety (the moments where people make decisions that you know will come back to haunt them always feel extremely understandable even if during them I was yelling “noooo” and scaring the cats out of the room).

I loved it. The whole time. Can’t recommend the show enough. I love how the characters felt like real people and reacted in ways that my friends do. The jokes are lived in and lovely and no one is working jobs that they absolutely love and success is varied throughout the friend group and people are trying their best but also feeling hopeless and awkward sometimes and like…yeah. That’s how I feel right now! Right right now!!

The show reminded me of why stories about love are, in fact, lovely. While I have been a long-time bemoaner of the lack of importance that friendships take over romantic attachments in stories, when the romance is done well, holy shit yes, gimme gimme gimme. And modern romances are often so negative about the world of dating as it is now, so the romance of yore is leaned on because damn if we know how to do one thing on film, its display the tension between two characters as their hands almost touch without gloves on in Regency-era England.

I’ve been dating recently (bleh but also whoo?) and it’s been a wild experience to realize how much practice and effort it’s going to take for me to feel comfortable and not constantly check in with my friends after sending texts.

“Does this sound normal? Like a normal person wrote it?”

I think I went in with no expectations, which was good, but also left me feeling unprepared for the emotions that did come along with putting myself out there in this way. And the first date went…as poorly as it possibly could have? Like, left my phone on a bench, accidentally stained his carpet, worst and most awkward sex of my life kind of bad. But! I didn’t die (though the phone-loss saga did manage to make at least one friend think that I had been kidnapped, but hey, who am I if not causing my own chaos to then write about, right?). I left the date feeling both woefully unimpressed with the idea of ever going on another one with anyone but excited I had proof (real proof!) that maybe dating wasn’t such a big deal. I can meet a person for a few hours, have a nice time (sometimes), and just keep living my life. Not everyone has to become entrenched and part of a bigger story.

But then, BUT THEN when I got home from the awful date, I saw a TikTok that started with the sentence, “I am not here to give dating advice, I am here to give advice to people who only want to date someone who is madly in love with them.” and like, this might sound really stupid, but I don’t think I had considered that as an option. Like, yes, you have to love yourself to love somebody else, but I think there is a vast difference between loving myself and actually projecting myself out there as lovable and holding the standard that the next person I really invest in should find me entirely lovable.

Lovable now. In my current form. I don’t have to change anything to be worthy. Like, I could and that would be fine, but I don’t have to. I am enough. This version of me is enough. And I’ll figure things out, and I’ll discover new sides of myself, and all of that will be okay with the right person for me. It’ll be exciting and scary and new, but it’ll be okay.

I really loved the season 2 finale of Starstruck because it didn’t shy away from the problems that the season had presented. The lead is really trying her best, and her best looks wildly different according to the situations. The reality was lived in. It didn’t fix everything in a neat bow, but it was so hopeful and lovely and wonderful and I think the writing was exquisite and I just want everyone to watch the show so that I have more people to talk about it with!!! Especially the best accidental pot brownie scene since That 70’s Show!!

Love isn’t lame. It’s weird and requires a lot of vulnerability and effort and whatever, but it should also be fun and not the absolute most stressful thing ever. It’s probably not great that my mind was absolutely blown by a TikTok suggesting that I don’t have to accept the bare minimum from other people and that I can step it up on my end as well and go into this whole thing with a bit more clarity on what I want and what I expect rather than just hoping the other person doesn’t find me offputting. I am offputting! And that’s okay, the right person is going to love me anyway. Like ideally because of and not in spite of, y’know?

More romcoms! More love! More depictions of the support and trust and growth that happens slowly and without us necessarily noticing or putting direct effort towards those things!! Oh and watch Starstruck and then tell me so we can chat about it!!!!