'Love Story' Is Actually a Horror Story

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Love Story" Is Actually a Horror Story

Cannonball with Wesley Morris (The New York Times)

Date: March 26, 2026
Guests: Wesley Morris (host), Sasha Weiss (New York Times Magazine culture editor)
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the real and fictional complexities of "Love Story," Ryan Murphy’s dramatization of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s relationship, and how the show morphs classic romance into something akin to horror.

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1. Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

The episode explores how the popular Ryan Murphy series on John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy reinterprets the "fairy tale love story" through a modern lens. Ostensibly glamorous and nostalgic for the 1990s, the show evolves into a meditation on the dark undercurrents of fame, loss of privacy, and the gendered burdens of public life. Wesley Morris and Sasha Weiss dissect the series’ narrative arc, key dramatic scenes, and the broader cultural meanings and anxieties embedded in this depiction of iconic love doomed by both external and internal pressures.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

Situating the Show in Time and Place (02:16-03:49)

• Nostalgic 1990s Setting: Weiss recalls JFK Jr. and Carolyn as "celebrity wallpaper" in New York, always present in the tabloids, epitomizing glamor but also hounded by paparazzi.
• Bringing Depth to a Tabloid Figure: The show takes "a caricature of a spoiled...party girl" and makes Carolyn "touchable," giving her depth and relatable struggles as someone sacrificing her own ambitious life for love and destiny.

Ryan Murphy’s Transformational Approach (03:51-05:53)

• Psychologizing Public Figures: Murphy is known for reanimating American history’s side-characters, adding psychological realism to sensationalized figures (O.J., Menendez brothers, Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky, etc.).
• Carolyn’s Character Arc: Murphy renders her not just as a fashion icon but as an independent, career-driven woman forced to sublimate her life in the glare of Kennedy mythology.

Genre Shift: Romance Becomes Horror (06:15-14:23)

• From Sitcom to Rosemary’s Baby: Morris draws a line from TV’s history of independent women (Mary Tyler Moore, Caroline in the City) to horror (Rosemary’s Baby), where love, gloss, and freedom curdle into suppression and psychological dread.

"What you're watching is...this Carolyn in the City character, this history of single women on TV, turn into Rosemary's Baby." – Wesley Morris (06:15)

• Family as Horror Setting: The Kennedy compound introduces Carolyn to intense scrutiny and impossible expectations (breakfast sign-ups, political talk, matriarchal testing by Ethel Kennedy).

The Fight: Anatomy of a Relationship under Siege (09:31-15:12)

• Famous Battery Park Argument: The show reconstructs their tabloid-captured fight, exploring betrayal, fame, and personal boundaries.

"It's actually, for me, one of the most persuasive portrayals of a fight of a day long." – Sasha Weiss (11:15)

• Dynamic Empathy & Psychological Realism: The argument oscillates between both characters’ perspectives, highlighting how the audience’s sympathy shifts through the course of their shared pain.

"It's such a great portrayal of one of those fights that just, like, rakes your soul clean." – Sasha Weiss (12:57)

• Submission and Exhaustion: Carolyn’s eventual acceptance of the proposal comes less from joy than fatigue, marking a chilling turn.

"Her tears are like, of, I don't know, like the tractor beam got her or something... she's so exhausted that she's like, I do love this person, but, oh my God, I can't resist anymore. Just fine." – Wesley Morris (15:12)

Ethel Kennedy’s Advice & The Kennedy Curse (15:39-19:38)

• The Burden of Public Womanhood: Ethel tells Carolyn she’s been "spared the indignity of the world’s indifference," implying being watched is its own curse and weird privilege.

"Your freedom is in your own inner endurance...what Kennedy women do." – Sasha Weiss summarizing Ethel's advice (17:44)

• No Real Choice: The paparazzi’s vehemence, the 1990s tabloid boom, and modern celebrity leave Carolyn realizing she has no real agency over her image or well-being.

Rosemary’s Baby Parallel & Gaslighting (19:38-20:50)

• Victim Blaming and Gaslighting: Both JFK Jr. and the show’s patriarchal figures insist Carolyn "chose this," echoing classic horror setups where heroines are trapped by circumstance.

"The husbands still wind up having to kind of gaslight them anyway into thinking that they chose this." – Wesley Morris (19:38)

The Ryan Murphy Project: American Myths and Trauma (22:16-28:55)

• Murphy vs. Ken Burns: Morris positions Murphy as a "great American television maker," paralleling Ken Burns but using melodrama instead of documentary.
• From Anonymity to No Privacy: The show probes what it means for a person (Carolyn) to go from unknown to world-famous, and how that destroys the very relationship fans mythologize.
• Princess Diana Parallel: The series draws overt analogies to Diana—her death as the apex of fame’s horror and a chilling warning for Carolyn.

The Last Straw for American Innocence (28:55-34:34)

• Post-Lapsarian America: Morris invokes Don DeLillo’s idea that Kennedy’s assassination marked a national loss of innocence, arguing the deaths of JFK Jr. and Carolyn drained America’s last shred of optimistic myth.

"There’s something sort of cosmically American about them just sort of taking off one day on an airplane and just never coming back..."

• Refusing the Camelot Myth: The show both revives and complicates the Kennedy mystique, highlighting the human costs beneath the glamour.

Anticipating the Series’ End (33:51-34:34)

• Both speculate on how Murphy will end the show. Morris hopes for ambiguity: "Just leave that plane in the air," rather than re-enacting the fatal crash.

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "What you're watching is... this Carolyn in the City character, this history of single women on TV, turn into Rosemary's Baby."
  — Wesley Morris (06:15)
• "It's actually, for me, one of the most persuasive portrayals of a fight of a day long."
  — Sasha Weiss (11:15)
• "Her tears are like, of, I don't know, the tractor beam got her or something... she's so exhausted that she's like, I do love this person, but, oh my God, I can't resist anymore. Just fine."
  — Wesley Morris (15:12)
• "Your freedom is in your own inner endurance...what Kennedy women do."
  — Sasha Weiss (17:44)
• "The husbands still wind up having to kind of gaslight them anyway into thinking that they chose this."
  — Wesley Morris (19:38)
• "There’s something sort of cosmically American about them just sort of taking off one day on an airplane and just never coming back..."
  — Wesley Morris (31:35)
• "It's such a great portrayal of one of those fights that just, like, rakes your soul clean."
  — Sasha Weiss (12:57)

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4. Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:16 – Sasha Weiss on 90s New York tabloid culture, personal recollections
• 03:51 – Ryan Murphy’s approach to historical characters
• 06:15 – "Carolyn in the City" becomes "Rosemary’s Baby"
• 09:31 – The famous Battery Park fight reconstructed
• 14:52 – Submission to exhaustion: Carolyn’s proposal acceptance
• 15:39 – Ethel Kennedy’s matriarchal advice, the burden of being watched
• 19:38 – Gaslighting dynamic, Murphy’s horror elements
• 22:16 – Ryan Murphy compared to Ken Burns; American myth-making
• 25:04 – Princess Diana’s death as narrative analog
• 28:55 – DeLillo, post-lapsarian America, loss of innocence
• 33:51 – How should the series end? Refusing spectacle for lingering mystery

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5. Overall Tone and Language

The conversation is deeply analytical yet accessible, full of cultural references, empathy, and candid reflection. Morris guides the discussion with warmth and critical rigor; Weiss brings informed, experience-based perspective. Both balance nostalgia and critique, landing on a mood of bittersweet fatalism about celebrity, love, and America’s mythic narratives.

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6. Closing Sentiment

• Heavy reflection: Both Morris and Weiss end feeling "a little heavy," mourning the loss not only of the Kennedys themselves, but of a certain American hope and innocence that may never return.

"Well, that's as it should be. We live in post lapsarian America."
— Sasha Weiss (35:01)

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For listeners or readers, this episode offers a rich, emotionally resonant, and critically sharp account of how a "love story" can become a horror story—not just for its subjects, but for the nation that watched them.

Transcript

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[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball Today. I imagine it's tough seeing how unhappy you make me. You know what it is? Like a lot of people I am watching Love Story. It comes out of the Ryan Murphy funhouse. It's about JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette, how she meets this man, had this kind of momentary fairy tale relationship. And then it takes this turn and people have just been really obsessed with what a 90s nostalgia bomb this show turns out to be. The soundtrack, the clothes, the places they ate dinner, it is just sending people off to dress like JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. People have been obsessed. But, you know, I have been watching this thing and thinking a lot about why we're watching it at all, what it means to watch it, what the show is doing to try to complicate our relationship, to like public love and this particular relationship especially. And as this show is ending, I just want to think about what we watched. So Sasha Weiss, my friend and the New York Times Magazine's culture editor, she's here and we're just going to talk about Love Story. Sasha, thanks for coming on. Thanks for doing this.

[Sasha Weiss]

Oh, thank you for having me.

[Wesley Morris]

First of all, we should just sort of like situate ourselves in the world of this show and the time it is representing, which is the early 90s to basically 1999. What do John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, what do they mean to you? Where were you? Does it mean anything? And is this show teaching you something about this time that you lived through and perhaps never even thought about?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, I was in my high school career, you know, when they were roaming about New York being glamorous and also being hounded by the paparazzi, which is like, you know, sort of the main tension and problem of the show. I thought of them as like a prototypical glamour couple. I mean, they were all over the tabloids I grew up in New York. You know, they were sort of pictured every day. So they were kind of like a celebrity wallpaper of my life. And I admired Carolyn Bissette for her elegance and chic and, you know, sense of a kind of what seemed like an untouchability. And what this show does, you know, is make her touchable and kind of reinvests her with, you know, a real character and a psychology and makes her actually somebody who anybody who's been in a relationship that has its difficulties can kind of find a way into, can relate to.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Sasha Weiss]

I mean, I think that the thing, you know, one of the things that Ryan Murphy does, you know, is take these figures from the recent past in American history. O.J. and his lawyers, the Menendez brothers. There are lots of other examples. And he kind of reanimates them, you know, and psychologizes them. And I think here we've got these two, you know, in a way, minor players in the Kennedy saga because their lives were cut short tragically. But he's giving them a lot of depth and kind of like repychologizing them for us. And their psychologies are pretty interesting. And especially Carolyn Bessette's like, I think, you know, it seems like the interest there is in giving someone who really was kind of a caricature of a spoiled. You know, the press treated her like she was like a party girl and a cokehead and potentially unfaithful to JFK Jr. And just like a bitch. And, you know, this is trying to kind of imagine what it would be like to be her, you know, a career girl with a, like, a really exciting life as a publicist at Calvin Klein and kind of a real touch for understanding talent and discovering, like, how to make that business run and a life of New York and a life of her own and what it would be like to kind of subordinate that to destiny. And it's really, really interested in that problem in ways that I found actually, like, moving and kind of fascinating.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah, I mean, it's. You're watching, I don't know, as television. You're watching one type of show become another type of show.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yes, right, right.

[Wesley Morris]

This show, if you just look at it from her perspective, it has a very comfortable television history. I mean, we all started with Mary Tyler Moore and, like, extended all the way to the 1990s, where, you know, every show on NBC, at least, was about a young, single woman going to work.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right.

[Wesley Morris]

And that is basically who Carolyn Bissette is on this show for at least, you know, Three or four episodes until she meets this man. And what you're watching is, like, this Caroline in the City character, this history of single women on tv. Turn into Rosemary's Baby.

[Sasha Weiss]

Say more. That. That's. What do you mean by that?

[Wesley Morris]

Well, I mean. I mean, her life basically goes from this carefree, independent white lady in the city to sitcom, right? To this horror show. And you can really feel that transition from, like, light to dark when JFK Jr takes Carolyn Bessette to the Kennedy compound for the first time.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right?

[Wesley Morris]

Essentially to meet the family, but mostly to meet Ethel Kennedy, who is Robert Kennedy's widow. And she's. She is essentially the matriarch of the family, especially in the wake of Jackie's death. And Carolyn fails most of her tests, doesn't sign up for breakfast, doesn't even know she's supposed to sign up to make a breakfast. Can't talk about current events at the dinner table. And it doesn't matter because he loves her. JFK and he. Junior and he's just gonna. He pops the question one day, and she's like, I need a second to think about that. Would you mind? I'm gonna take a second to think about that. And he's like. I mean, for him, that's a rejection. It's not about whether or not she needs the time to think about this commingling of their lives. He's like, what? Are you fucking. Are you kidding me? I'm perfect. Everybody tells me I'm perfect.

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm a prince.

[Wesley Morris]

How can you not?

[Sasha Weiss]

You're look.

[Wesley Morris]

You look like a princess. I'm giving you the ring, and you're saying, maybe, let me think about it. And so I think that is.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, but there's another layer. There's another layer because he's also like, yes. He's like, in a way, a spoiled guy, and everything's frictionless for him. But there's another layer which is important, which is. But we love each other. And like, nothing else matters. And like, all of this accoutrement and all of this architecture of my life shouldn't matter, because love should.

[Wesley Morris]

Because I love you.

[Sasha Weiss]

Because I love you and you love me, and the love is real. So isn't love enough? He's a little delusional. And she's a realist. And she is also a realist about herself and her own temperament. And she does love him. And what ensues after that are weeks of negotiation and conversation that, on the one hand, are her reckoning with the real sacrifice and potential horror that it might entail to become his wife and be put under the microscope of the press.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. JFK Jr. Is trying to promise a life that she knows he can't give her, he can't guarantee her. And he's really not equipped to realize it because it's so normal to him being chased by photographers. It's so normal for him to be spoken to by strangers in this very familiar way and to be loved by, you know, in most interactions, except in the tabloids. But he's also kind of immune to that in some way. And all of this is so new to her. And I find. I just think the best. Some of the best moments on this show involve her and him talking about what it is going to mean to stay together any longer.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah, I like the way the show takes these famous moments. Or famous, if you consider moments captured by the paparazzi famous. Like, there's this moment that I kind of remember where they were caught fighting in Battery park and it was splashed all over the papers the next day.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Sasha Weiss]

So it starts out, you know, it's sort of in the circumstance, in the moment when she has said no in the weeks after she has said no. And the press gets wind of this and they start to cover his rejection. And it's this embarrassing moment because he's supposed to launch his new magazine, George, and he decides with his team at George that he needs to issue a statement that he's not engaged. It's just a rumor. And this is kind of like the first manifestation of their relationship going public. And she feels totally betrayed because he has promised her that he's going to protect their relationship from the public. And then the first chance he gets, when there's some kind of friction, he goes out and he tells a lie about their relationship. And she is just totally livid at him.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

Carolyn, stop. Carolyn, come on.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

Do not grab me.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

What am I supposed to do? You're running away from me.

[Sasha Weiss]

It was photographed a zillion times. They were being surveilled. They seem not to have known it. And there are pictures. You can look them up. She's wearing a, like, fisherman's sweater. And, you know, they were really going at it. And the show imagines the circumstances of this fight and what was said.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

I think you can't handle a partner who's emotionally mature enough to talk to you.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

You don't know what I mean.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

Actually, I do. You need control. You need to be the one who abandons. It's obvious and quite frankly, lame.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

You want to talk abandoning? You Looked me in the eye, and

[Sasha Weiss]

it's actually, for me, one of the most persuasive portrayals of a fight of a day long.

[Wesley Morris]

I agree.

[Sasha Weiss]

A fight that has many phases, many evolutions, many tones, many locations.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

How can I trust you?

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

You said it was okay.

[Sasha Weiss]

I said it. It sounds like you don't have a choice.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

Berman said the choice.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

Oh, really? Berman made you do it?

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

You made me do it.

[Wesley Morris]

None of this would have happened if you just accepted my proposal in the first place like a normal fucking person.

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm sorry.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

I needed time to think about a proposal that came out of nowhere.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

It came out along, but you know what? I take it back.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

No, John, if it's too hard of

[Wesley Morris]

a decision for you to make once

[Sasha Weiss]

the fight really gets going, you know, she's walking away from him. He wants to talk about it. She's not ready yet. She needs spell. Then they start to really get into the character assassinations.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

Do you know how lucky you are? You should be grateful.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

You pretend to be some humble man of the people, but you're a spoiled brat obsessed with his own image. You had to deny the engagement because you couldn't handle the world knowing there was a woman on planet Earth who might not want to marry you. Who's looking for the escape hatch now, huh? Talk to me. Fucking pussy. What, are you scared of me?

[Sasha Weiss]

Huh?

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

You're the one who's scared. You're terrified of committing to this relationship. I may act impulsively, but at least when I'm in, I'm all in. Are you even capable of that? Do you even know what you want?

[Sasha Weiss]

It's recognizable. You feel kind of allied with both of them at different moments.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, I like the shifting. The shifting empathies here, which really means you've got. You're empathetic to both parties in this fight.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's such a great portrayal of one of those fights that just, like, rakes your soul clean.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

I saw what it did to my mom, and I promised myself I'd be really sure before I married someone.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

You can't eliminate risk entirely. All people are risky. Why can't we just love each other? Why does it have to be so hard?

[Sasha Weiss]

And I just want to say the last phase of the fight, like, the fight has an arc, you know? The last phase of the fight is the part where you're so exhausted that you start to joke around.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

I love that you don't feel the need to please me or anybody else. I even love that you didn't say yes when I proposed. It Was weird. I think I talked about fish

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

fishing partners.

[Sasha Weiss]

And then that's the thing that finally loosens and softens everything so that the final surge of passion can arrive. I don't know. To me, you actually don't see fights like that on TV that much. It's like a really, really good fight.

[Wesley Morris]

They're rare. But I just want to say something about that moment because that's, to me, that's the real turn into the horror. Because it's one of those things where they, like, they're fighting all day. They're fighting all day. She's exhausted. These people probably haven't ate. They haven't had a thing to eat.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yes, yes.

[Wesley Morris]

And you know, often when you have these all day fights, the argument is your meal, right? You're eating the argument, you're eating the other person's words. And at some point you're just tired of talking and you want actual nourishment, not all this toxic emotion. And so she. I don't exactly remember the exact setup, but at some point it occurs to her, while they're like, in each other's arms, that she is about to say, yes.

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

And be honest, I don't think marriage

[Sasha Weiss]

is necessary,

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

but I'm down to do it with you.

[Sasha Weiss]

Oh, my God.

[Wesley Morris]

When she cries is her cries. Her tears are like, of, I don't know, like the tractor beam got her or something. She's so exhausted that she's like, I do love this person, but oh, my God, I can't resist anymore. Just fine. I'm gonna say oh, my God. I'm saying yes. That, to me, is the beginning of what is like the dark part of the show.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, after this fight, there's this other great scene, I thought, where basically they're caught fighting, right? This famous tabloid story that we all know. It enters into the show and they're caught fighting on camera and it's all over the papers the next day. And Ethel, this fearsome matriarch, who she's previously kind of failed the tests, Bethel, as you said, invites her to tea and gives her a very, you know, kind of heartfelt advice, kind of surprisingly. And she basically says, you know, I was always jealous of Jackie. She understood that she was always being watched.

[Ethel Kennedy]

You remind me of her, Jackie. Like Jackie, you have been spared the indignity of the world's indifference. You are noticed. And now it's entirely up to you whether to receive this gift, as burdensome as it may be, with grace. Jackie certainly did after what happened in Dallas. She didn't Take off that pink jacket for 24 hours, she said, I want them to see what they did to Jack. She never forgot that people would be looking at her.

[Sasha Weiss]

And then she says, you know, when my own husband was killed and I was pregnant, I understood that, you know, I was an image and my body was an image, and that I had a choice about how I was going to process my own pain and grief, and I inhabited the same dignity that Jackie had modeled for me. And now what you have to understand, Carolyn, is that the world from now on is watching you. And you're only choice is about how you respond to that and what you show them.

[Ethel Kennedy]

You've had a lot of loss. Well, I've been blessed with a lot to lose, as have you, but you'll never be given the benefit of the doubt again. As ugly and unfair as that is,

[Sasha Weiss]

Carolyn, she basically says, your freedom is in your own inner endurance and your own. Basically, your own relationship with yourself that you preserve and you show a brave face to the world. And this is what Kennedy women do. And you remind me of Jackie, and you're gonna be able to do this right. And the whole dilemma of the rest of the show that Carolyn has is, is this the kind of woman I wanna be, this kind of stalwart matriarch of the Kennedy family who buries my own pain and kind of subjectivity and always is in control of the face that I show the world? And is it even the woman that I can be? And I think that maybe this is where the horror also starts to creep in, because we're in the 1990s, we're not in the 1960s.

[Wesley Morris]

I was just about to say, what wave of feminism are we in here? Is it third?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, there's the feminist question of do I want to sublimate myself, my desires, my person? But also there's a question of if it's even possible, if I choose to be. If I choose to be, you know, to kind of greet the cameras, knowing that I have an inner life that they'll never access. But we're in a different media environment now, and I think, like, this is where the horror movie genre starts to creep in. Because, yeah, she's making a decision about her approach, but she's realizing, and it's dawning on her, that she doesn't have a choice. The vehemence of the hounding by the paparazzi, the level of interest, the obsessive, violent intrusion on their lives, where she's really afraid to get out of her car or to leave her apartment it changes the whole tone of the show. And, you know, even though, yes, she chose this, the psychological dilemma, you know, is. Is horrifying.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, that's where the Rosemary's Baby part comes in for me. Right. Because the alignment then becomes between, you know, this Mia Farrow character and Carolyn Bessette, as depicted on this show, because the husbands still wind up having to kind of gaslight them anyway into thinking that they chose this. Right? You chose this. You knew what you were marrying into when you married me. I'm an actor, says Cassavetes and Rosemary's Baby and JFK is like, you knew all about me. You knew about my fame, my family. But you, you married me anyway. This was, this was a choice that you made. But I don't know, I think the thing that I really love about, you know, the thing I've come to appreciate about the way this show works is it's very true to the priorities of the Ryan Murphy TV experience. Right?

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah. Say more about that.

[Wesley Morris]

I think we should take a break first and when we come back, like, we should talk about what the Ryan Murphy project is and how this show fits into it.

[Sasha Weiss]

Okay, great.

[Wesley Morris]

So we'll take a break and we'll be right back.

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One sweet, melty bite of a Hershey's bar and suddenly I'm right back, sitting on the front porch with my grandmother on a slow summer afternoon. She doesn't say much, just breaks the bar in half and hands me a piece. I open my mouth to say whatever a 9 year old wants to say, and she replies with a low,

[Wesley Morris]

listen.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

So we sat there listening. That was the first time I learned that quiet can feel full. Hershey's.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's your happy place.

[Wesley Morris]

We're back. And I just feel like Ryan Murphy. Of all the people making TV right now, and there are many good ones, I feel like Ryan Murphy is a very not obvious candidate for, for, like the great American television maker. And I think that what I love about the project is most of the work, whether we're talking about American horror Story or pose or, you know, one of his serial killer sagas. He's done the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky scandal. He's not afraid of the big sprawling event that kind of explains America to itself. Right. There's only one other person making things that wind up on TV who's as interested in that, how to explain this country to the people who watch TV as he is that question or project. And it's Ken Burns. Ken Burns is the only other person besides Ryan Murphy who makes TV at this volume. Right.

[Sasha Weiss]

Did Ken Burns ever expect to be compared to Ryan Murphy?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, it shouldn't surprise him, because what he should be doing is like, who's telling stories about America? As good as. As dedicated as I am? Who's doing that?

[Sasha Weiss]

So what is the story here? I mean, what do you think? It's Love Story. Yeah. What is the thing he's identifying here?

[Wesley Morris]

I feel like what we are seeing here on this show is something that I don't ever remember a work of art really, really trying to show me, which is what it is like to go from, I mean, for our purposes, anonymity to an abject lack of privacy. Right. Um, I actually can't even. I mean, I think the reason that this. This relationship is such a case study for, you know, late 20th century and, you know, all of the 21st century's idea of fame is that we are watching a person go from who's that? To being, like, overnight famous for her boyfriend. And I think one of the amazing tricks of the show is to show us what happens, to, like, situate the show in the world of Princess Diana and Dode Al Fayed and their driver dying in that tunnel, being chased by paparazzi.

[Sasha Weiss]

You mean he draws those things into the world of the show? He draws that into the world of the show to make analogies.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. In episode eight, what we're watching is these two people in Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy, Jr. Talk about what about that incident. What's coming up for them as they watch it? They killed her. Princess Diana, who has done died. She did everything right, posed for every photo, gave them everything they wanted, and they was killed outright.

[Ethel Kennedy]

So, too, was they still killed her.

[Wesley Morris]

Surgeons at a nearby hospital fought for two. That's very sad. It's monstrous. And it's this really fascinating moment because you think it's going to unlock this very obvious trauma in him, and he's going to be like, yes, I was here.

[Ethel Kennedy]

This was.

[Wesley Morris]

This is. I can't watch this because he can't watch it, right. He immediately goes for a run, comes home from a run, and just avoids the TV altogether. And she's like, why aren't you sitting here watching this with me? This is terrible. And she's seeing her life flash before her eyes.

[Sasha Weiss]

She was their princess, and they treated her like prey.

[Wesley Morris]

And I think that what Carolyn Bessette is watching here is a person who wasn't even in the role that made her famous anymore still die because of it, John. And she's watching that. And JFK Jr. Is like, fine.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

I don't remember my dad dying at all. But what I remember vividly is my mom being basically in a trance. And the hours that Caroline and the nanny and I spent while my mom was locked away in a dark room, crying alone. Why couldn't she just play with me? It was my mother I watched die, not my dad.

[Ethel Kennedy]

I watched her die twice.

[John F. Kennedy Jr.]

And now it feels like I'm watching you slip away. You're choosing the darkness. I'm watching it happen.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm watching you become the woman I lost. I lost two parents, but I lost my mother twice. Cause she died grieving my dad. And then she really died. And what I don't wanna be married to is a person who reminds me of that version of my mother. Okay? And I was just like, that is good writing and good psychologizing. I don't know if it's true, but it makes a kind of sense to me.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, I think, like, this does get at what the show does so well, which is, like, the reason to psychologize the relationship and to get into some of the, like, complicated, you know, web

[Narrator/Advertiser]

of

[Sasha Weiss]

emotions, family, loyalties, expectation, desire that any couple, like any young couple, can relate to a lot of this, like, taking that kind of delicate knit of an early relationship and processing that, you know, newly woven fabric in the mill of this insane fame machine. You know, you feel for them and you feel the inevitability of what's going to happen to that delicate thing. You know, that's. That's just, like, on the cusp of knitting itself together. And it makes the tragedy all the more intense emotionally. I also think. I mean, maybe this gets us back to the Ryan Murphy universe. Like, you have a nice theory of the Ryan Murphy universe, that it's always interested in these American stories. It's always. I mean, you should say, right? Like, it's interested in a particular moment in American stories.

[Wesley Morris]

I just feel like. And I'm going to do a bad job at, like, really working this out, but I. I feel like there is something here about the thing that breaks here is a kind of like this is the last straw for a. For a. For a lineage of. Of what I would describe as American innocence that, you know, I mean, many people, you know, there's so much great writing and thinking about, like, the. The inset of disillusionment in November of 1963, which is when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and everything. You know, Don DeLillo's Libra is really about his novel. Libra is about this. And, you know, he gave us this great concept of an American, of a post lapsarian America where there was a before JFK in his death and there's an after JFK in his death and every subsequent thing. And, you know, we are still living in a post JFK America, right? In this post lapsarian time. And we just get more post and more lapsarian every decade. And the genius of this show, the thing that it is pointing us toward, is that this relationship is the last of its kind that could draw you in because you believed in love, right? You believed that this kid who, you know, for many of us, I will say for my mother and her cousins and my grandmother and her sisters, we as a country have watched this boy grow up, and we have been wanting the best for him. Didn't he deserve something to go right? This kid, we got broken that day, but this kid is still hope. There's still hope in JFK junior. Like, Jon. Jon is gonna marry this woman, have some babies, and this. This lineage of hope will continue. But instead, for a lot of the people, a lot of young people watching this show, the Kennedy family is RFK junior To them. Yeah, that's the avatar of the lineage. You know, one of Ethel's, one of Ethel's kids. And I just feel like what this show is getting at is that when that plane crashed, like, it really took something deep with us because he didn't die the way Diana and Dori Althayed died. Right? The thing I remember about their deaths was basically that we couldn't process that. There's some cosmic force that just won't let us have anything nice. Do you know what I mean? There's something cosmic, and it feels like cosmically American. If that's. Even if the cosmos is divided into nations, if it has a nations branch, like there's something sort of cosmically American about them not dying because of the paparazzi, them just sort of taking off one day on an airplane and just never coming back, you know, like, it's just it's just a mystery, but it also, in that mystery, it's just taking the last shred of optimism and belief in this promise that got made in 1960, when JFK gets elected. And we have been searching for something that makes us feel like that for. I mean, where are we now? I mean, the 70 something years almost. And it's wild. Cause I don't think we're really ever gonna get it. But we keep looking.

[Sasha Weiss]

But it's interesting, you know, because I also think Ryan Murphy is pretty. Like he's not reinvesting us in the myth. I mean, he is and he isn't. This is, I think, what's kind of genius. Like, at the same time that he's bringing them back to life and bringing all that promise back to life, he's also investing it with more complexity than we gave it at the time. And then we understood.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, yes.

[Sasha Weiss]

Right. So he's not just kind of like reanimating the myth of Camelot, even though he does that too. I think what he's really exploring is the true nature of the tragedy, which is like. Like the couple's not promising just because they're Kennedys and because they carry the hope of the nation. They're promising because they're like complicated people who are trying really, really hard to figure out how to make a life together. And he's really very interested in that and some of their particularity. So. I don't know. I mean, I'm curious. Tonight is going to be the last episode. I mean, we all know what happens.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, God.

[Sasha Weiss]

How do you think they're gonna handle it?

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know. I'm hoping, you know, it's. It's a. I don't know, because, you know, these people know how to make Ryan Murphy tv. It could go. It could go all kinds of places. Like, hopefully it ends the way it begins with you just watch the plane go up in the air and then they're like, you know, there's a. There's a title card that comes on. I mean, I don't want United 93. That's what I'm saying. I don't want a show to recreate this terrible incident.

[Sasha Weiss]

No, it seems. Well, based on everything you're saying, like, I wonder if it's gonna kind of suspend us in that before.

[Wesley Morris]

You know, I think it should. I think it should. I think it should. It's done enough speculating as far as I'm concerned. Just leave that plane in the air.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah, leave it in the air. Let it be there.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. Am

[Carolyn Bessette Kennedy]

I.

[Wesley Morris]

Sasha, thank you for doing this.

[Sasha Weiss]

Oh, thank you. I feel sad now, but thank you.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm a little. I feel a little heavy too.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, that's as it should be. We live in post lapsarian America.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, we really do it.

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[Narrator/Advertiser]

One sweet melty bite of a Hershey's bar and suddenly I'm right back, sitting on the front porch with my grandmother on a slow summer afternoon. She doesn't say much, just breaks the bar in half and hands me a piece. I open my mouth to say whatever a 9 year old wants to say and she replies with a low listen. So we sat there listening. That was the first time I learned that quiet can feel full. Hershey's it's your happy place.

[Wesley Morris]

That's our show. This episode of Cannonball was produced by Janelle Anderson, Elissa Dudley and John White. It was edited by Austin Mitchell and Lisa Tobin. Caitlin Love did our fact checking this week. This episode was engineered by Daniel Ramirez. It was recorded by Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman. Dan Powell and Diane Wong did the original music. Our theme music is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doe already took the photo for our show. Art Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. Thanks for listening, y'. All. We appreciate you.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

One sweet melty bite of a Hershey's bar and suddenly I'm right back, sitting on the front porch with my grandmother on a slow summer afternoon. She doesn't say much, just breaks the bar in half and hands me a piece. I open my mouth to say whatever a 9 year old wants to say and she replies with a low listen. So we sat there listening. That was the first time I learned that quiet can feel full. Hershey's it's your happy place.