#like god forbid women have hobbies (stalking and blackmailing their husband's mistress)

[ojacksonscohen]

love your review! I agree the back and forth was really annoying. I think the biggest failure was just not making it as believable that she would constantly take him back. they shouldn't have made will more villainous per se, but more ambiguous for us? like we as the audience clearly knew he was full of it which only made liv's decisions more annoying and stupid. we didn't see their journey or truly why she was so in love with him. that all came from her narration. all we saw was this smooth, rich suave guy with a sexy hotel job from the get-go. and yes liv had a load of issues stemming from childhood to justify why she fell for it but jenna I feel also played liv a little too...self assured? if that makes sense. also I didn't read the book and the trailer made me think the show would be about liv constantly trying to kill will in different ways in the wilderness but failing each time while he remained oblivious 😭 the wilderness barely played a part. And the prison scene was def sexy. If they leaned into a psychosexual dynamic with liv and will I would have been so into it.

thankyou bby!

wills a weird character, all the horrible things he does are revealed by accident (liv reading his messages, finding the sex tape, forcing will to tell her about the key, her mum finding the photos, and sending the tape to the police) so while he’s a shitty dude, he’s not Evil. he just never really came across as a fully fleshed out person?? he was just filling the role he needed to in the moment. i actually think we might have benefited from more time spent with will and cara together, if only to confirm that he:

a) really didn’t care about livs feelings or b) that he was just leading cara on

like obviously he’s our main antagonist, but then we have these weird pockets where we’re supposed to feel…bad? for him? the one off nods to that fact that he came from an abusive family, that absolutely bizarre story about the dead bird, his genuine grief for cara, and then a single line where he posits that he might actually have a really problem (with keeping it in his pants) but it never goes anywhere!!

100 percent agree that there is zero narrative to show WHY these two people are still together… like she wants him dead but all it takes is some puppy dog tears and hes back in bed with her…? but also why is he staying with liv? he loved cara, and even after she died and liv kept threatening him, why bother staying???

we know the absolute best scene was the prison scene, but i wish will had put things together sooner, like he knows she killed cara but can’t prove it and liv knows that AND knows that she could pin it on him so they’re just left hating each other and needing each other to survive!! HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND AND I HOPE YOU DIE I HOPE WE BOTH DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry i blacked out there.

im with you on liv’s overall self assuredness, even in her messy drunkenness she was always put together, one step ahead of everything and everyone (the scene where she recorded will confirming it was self defense was….. ridiculous imo) there was a taste of the female cop not believing her but that disappeared. and they definitely oversold her trying to kill him multiple times adfklasdjf even in the book she didn’t really want to kill him and tried to give him an out. will is also very stupid in the book, not really suave at all and it turns out cara was sleeping with a bunch of the men at the hotel and he was duped by her!

book liv also gives off a way more frantic vibe!! she was actually stalking cara, killed another boy when she was a teenager, went to a grief counseling meeting under false pretenses and ended up cheating on will (with garth). its also made clear in the book that after she kills cara (thinking its will) she realizes that she actually does still love him and works hard to keep them together (by providing him with an alibi and generally covering for both of them)

i think when the show removed her general insanity and internalized misogyny they made her boring :(