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polychromatic) wrote2019-05-26 07:37 pm
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Oof.
I started (and finished) watching Sorry For Your Loss this weekend. It's Facebook's first official (?) television show and it is a gut-punch of a portrait centering on one widow's grief. Leigh Shaw - the widow in question - is not exactly a lovable character. Her family loves her and her friends love her, but at this stage in her life it is clear that they love her despite the fact that her grief has enveloped her entirely and sunken into her bones, sometimes transforming her into a spiky entity of rage who lashes out with the intent to hurt the universe that has dealt her such a devastating hand. Frankly, I'm not sure how much I even liked pre-widow Leigh in the flashbacks at first - she's a lot lighter and happier without the shroud of tragedy around her shoulders, but the prickly, sardonic, bulldozing personality is all hers. That she loved her husband Matt - and loved him fiercely - is never a question. But love doesn't always mean understanding and it's hard not to empathize with her as she tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, examining and scrutinizing what she thought she knew about the man she loved.
Leigh is necessarily the main focus, but we also spend time with her mother - a spiritual but slightly bitter divorcee who runs a barre exercise studio, Leigh's adopted sister Jules - an often bubbly three-month sober recovering alcoholic who is clawing her way through her own issues, and Matt's brother Danny - who is coping very differently with his own grief and is someone who simultaneously can grasp what Leigh is going through but also often at odds with her. Leigh grapples emotionally with all of these people in her life, sometimes humorously in the small day-to-day annoyances of living in close quarters with very different personalities, sometimes reaching out to them in a time of need, but more often than not pushing them away using her grief as a weapon against them.
The show also discusses depression with what I perceived to be great sensitivity. There was a very firm emphasis that this is a disease, that it is not something to be fixed or conquered, and that even when managed appropriately there are times when it can creep in and overtake a person. It is not laziness, it is not simply sadness, and it can be a relief to have a name for it rather than feeling "wrong". It is not easy and it is not something that can necessarily be understood or described.
As per my tags, I flippantly classify shows I like into two broad categories: "shows everyone should love" and "shows I love but your mileage may vary". This is obviously too simplistic, too reductive in many ways. Though it has its moments of gentle levity, it still feels like Sorry For Your Loss is not a show to love; it's too raw and Leigh is oftentimes too refractory for that. If anything, it's a show that I think that everyone should watch at some point, whether it's now or ten, fifteen, thirty years on. Grief is a part of all of our lives - it's only a matter of whether we have been unlucky enough to experience it yet.