No Filter Wanted: Watching The Good Couple with Grace-Crammed Eyes
Spoiler Alert: This text accommodates spoilers for The Good Couple.
The Good Couple offers viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s crammed with stunning individuals main stunning lives.
Individuals who know me can be shocked as I write these phrases, however I don’t appear to be Nicole Kidman. Or Dakota Fanning for that matter. Nor do I dwell in a multi-million greenback mansion off the gorgeous Nantucket shoreline with servants, medicine, intercourse, and Botox at my beck and name. With that stated, Netflix’s homicide thriller, The Good Couple, resonated with me—a relatively middling Catholic spouse and mom who’s more likely to be consuming an excessive amount of popcorn and bingeing Netflix exhibits on a Saturday night time than dancing fabulously in a cocktail gown with my associates to Megan Trainor’s Criminals like we see in that superb opening credit of the smash-hit sequence.
OK, full honesty right here: typically you may discover me in my kitchen pretending to bop like this. Generally, too, you may discover me dreaming I dwell off a Nantucket coast, particularly through the summer season after I’m mendacity on a lower than pristine Texas seashore, curled up with an Elin Hilderbrand novel that I’m solely catching each different sentence of between a barking canine and delighted-to-be-at-the-beach-yet-also-because-of-this-screaming youngsters.
As I watched The Good Couple, I thought of my propensity to daydream about others’ seemingly good lives. Family and friends who know me properly know that it’s not troublesome to search out me misplaced in a guide. Neither is it troublesome to search out me gazing at out-of-reach mansions on Zillow or scrolling by way of others’ untouchable lives on Instagram.
Their need for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to kind genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and associates.
The Good Couple offers viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s crammed with stunning individuals main stunning lives. Viewers are supplied a uncommon glimpse of a glitzy world most solely ever dream about. We’re given unfettered permission to stare as well-known novelist Greer Winbury, performed by the all the time beautiful Nicole Kidman and her charming, good-looking husband Tag (Liev Schrieber) plan a lush marriage ceremony by the ocean for his or her son Benji (Billy Howle) and his hanging fiancée Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson).
The sequence juxtaposes the 29-year-old marriage of “the right couple,” Greer and Tag, with the one simply starting within the subsequent era, Benji and Amelia. Just like viewers like me, Amelia is an outsider to Nantucket tradition, and she or he wonders if she’ll ever slot in with this pristine household—and their fantasy life. Unsurprisingly, Greer doesn’t consider she’s going to, however that doesn’t cease her daughter-in-law, or her associates, from attempting.
Amelia additionally wonders if it’s definitely worth the effort to even strive to take action, even with all its seeming perks. Within the present’s starting, Amelia and her stunning mannequin maid-of-honor Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy) share selfies as they lounge poolside on the Winbury mansion, curating posts to encourage envy earlier than a marriage that’s undoubtedly being deliberate with each intention to perform simply that.
As additional working example, when the youngest Winbury son, Will (Sam Nivola), feels unhappy after a current breakup, Merritt playfully flirts with him and snaps a photograph with him, tagging him publicly on objective. Merritt’s keenly conscious that her tanned, bikini-clad physique, and radiant smile set in opposition to the scenic ocean view and multi-million greenback residence can be simply the factor to cheer Will up and make his ex jealous. Importantly, the envy solely works if such a photograph is posted for the world to see. No genuine emotional connection happens between the 2.
In spite of everything, in fact, Merritt’s tired of Will—even when the youngest Winbury shoots her longing appears. The “good couple” and the radiant smile Will’s ex-girlfriend theoretically sees on-line is a sham, as are a lot of the “good” relationships the sequence depicts. Image-perfect lives are all staged.
Quickly after this image is shared, audiences uncover Merrit has been having an affair with Will’s dad. Nothing is because it appears to the skin viewers of this household’s life.
The subsequent day, Merritt is discovered useless, floating within the water by the Winbury’s home. Her finest good friend’s marriage ceremony is known as off, and everybody on the marriage ceremony celebration turns into marked as a possible prison. Or to place it Catholic phrases, they’re all marked as doubtlessly sinful. Whereas they could have appeared good on the skin, now it’s evident to the complete world that they aren’t. As journalists swarm the home, the Winbury household and their circle’s sin is on show.
Greer, a romance novelist, has promoted her seemingly good life with Tag as a part of her model, crafting a picture of an idyllic marriage to spice up guide gross sales. Nonetheless, the true subject of their relationship is just not Tag’s affair with Merritt nor even the violence that occurs at their property. What stands out as much more problematic within the present’s parameters is the couple’s mutual fixation on sustaining their prosperous, seemingly good Nantucket life-style on the expense of actual human connection. Their need for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to kind genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and associates.
Greer and Tag don’t appear to know if the opposite one has killed Merrit, or care: they solely need to keep their surface-level happiness.
Whereas watching the present, I couldn’t assist however discover parallels between its portrayal of life-style advertising—by way of each guide promotions and social media—and the regarding pattern of idealizing couple and household perfectionism to the purpose of idolizing couple and household perfectionism, a phenomenon I’ve noticed more and more inside church communities, together with my very own Catholic circle.
It’s releasing to do not forget that God all the time sees beneath the floor, even after we people typically get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
In one of many early scenes after we first see Greer and Tag alone, they’re stress-free exterior their beautiful residence, sharing a second that might learn to outsiders as at first intimate and loving. As an alternative, Greer makes use of this valuable time to mock their Nantucket neighbors, observing judgmentally, “Anybody who wears flip-flops exterior of the confines of their very own home ought to be arrested.”
Instantly, I used to be reminded of a narrative I noticed this summer season about applicable apparel at Mass, which mentioned “ladies who gown inappropriately” at church. Like Greer, the article talked about “flip-flops” particularly. I’m not saying that this can be a good comparability: the author doesn’t point out arrest, in any case! But I do fear a couple of prevailing sentiment that households should look and act a sure approach or threat not being totally included in church life.
Catholics typically give attention to the thought of the “home church,” which emphasizes the distinctive name of holiness for Catholic {couples} and households. Vatican II doc Lumen Gentium describes it this fashion:
The household is, so to talk, the home church. In it mother and father ought to, by their phrase and instance, be the primary preachers of the religion to their youngsters; they need to encourage them within the vocation which is correct to every of them, fostering with particular care vocation to a sacred state.
What Lumen Gentium suggests is that Catholic {couples} and oldsters should construct genuine, loving relationships before everything with the Lord, after which springing from that, with one another.
What it doesn’t recommend is that Catholic {couples} and oldsters ought to put a common ban on sporting flip-flops to Mass. Or that they should police different {couples} and oldsters about what they are sporting to Mass.
The ending of The Good Couple leaves its essential characters at a crossroads, together with Greer, its protagonist romance novelist. Greer “breaks up” the right couple starring in her guide sequence, a pair supposedly based mostly on her relationship with Tag. This determination hints that maybe she’s able to face the imperfect fact of her personal marriage. It appears neither she nor Tag murdered Merritt, viewers and the couple uncover alike, but their refusal to attempt to unearth the reality in regards to the homicide collectively confirmed the evil beneath the floor of their outwardly stunning lives, and marriage.
First Samuel 16:7 reminds us, “The Lord doesn’t have a look at the issues individuals have a look at. Individuals have a look at the outward look, however the Lord appears on the coronary heart.” In a tradition obsessive about good appearances, each within the tradition writ giant and (in my thoughts) extra sinisterly in church life, it’s releasing to do not forget that God all the time sees beneath the floor, even after we people typically get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
There is no such thing as a good couple, or human. For this, I’m grateful to God, who affords loving grace not for our polished appearances, however for our honest efforts to like each other, flaws and all.
Sure, even when these flaws embody my dangerous kitchen dancing.
