Misfire ‘Gypsy’ Feels Particularly Lackluster Following the Calculated Excellence of ‘The Girlfriend Experience’
Netflix original series Gypsy presents a sexually charged mid-life crisis, a trope of bored, middle-aged men, from the viewpoint of a bored, middle-aged woman. Jean (Naomi Watts), the show’s protagonist, works as a therapist in New York City and lives in the suburbs with her husband Michael (Billy Crudup) and eight-year-old child (Maren Heary). She grows predictably bored with her life, but unfortunately for the viewer, this boredom is contagious. From its dull protagonist to its tedious pacing, Gypsy is misdirected in every way imaginable.
While watching, I could not help but compare Gypsy to the far superior first season of The Girlfriend Experience, another show that focuses on the secret relationships of a female protagonist. In it, Christine (Riley Keough) works as a call girl, a role she finds both personally and sexually satisfying, while attending law school. Like Gypsy, the show often focuses on the collateral effects of her relationships; however, The Girlfriend Experience is deliberate with its storytelling, aesthetics, and overall execution in all the ways Gypsy is not.
Gypsy’s most damning shortcomings are illuminated when comparing the lead characters of each show. Throughout the series, Jean and Michael allude to the wild, unpredictable woman Jean used to be. When she begins meeting the characters whom her patients most often discuss in their sessions, an absurdly careless practice, the viewer wonders if Jean is reverting back to a more exciting, impulse-driven identity. She isn’t. To the contrary, she develops an equally boring journalist persona, Diane, to meet and flirt with Sidney (Sophie Cookson), the ex-girlfriend of her patient Sam (Karl Glusman).
I cannot overemphasize how confoundingly uninteresting Jean is. Whether talking with her patients, coworkers, or Sidney, with whom she begins a gruelingly slow-to-develop relationship, Jean speaks with no conviction or certainty. Her lack of self-confidence would be an interesting attribute if 1) this blazingly obvious trait were commented on by the show’s other characters or 2) it was an intentional choice by the show. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that each character lacks the basic awareness to notice, or forgives Jean each time she clumsily lets a secret slip that suggests she is leading a double life. The show tries to use her occasional outbursts — several times she lashes out at the mothers of her daughter’s classmates — to demonstrate a confident woman with agency, but instead these tantrums come across as inauthentic and bizarrely out of character.
Conversely, The Girlfriend Experience supplies Christine little backstory and allows the audience to develop an opinion rather than force-feed one upon them. Her apathetic countenance, paired with her performative role as a call girl, make Christine a fascinating character to watch, particularly during conversations with clients. When she offers flattering, reassuring words during these exchanges, one wonders who earns her praise and platitudes and to whom she is merely feeding lines. She uses a balance of adoration and aloofness in order to keep clients interested, but not dangerously infatuated.
This demonstration of control over her sexuality, one which women are rarely afforded either in entertainment media or society as a whole, makes Christine a significant character. When she loses this control — the result of fallout following a sex tape that a client emails to her family, friends, and law firm coworkers — she transitions to an empathetic character. The confidence with which she approaches her internship at the law firm is undermined, exemplified by one particularly illuminating scene in which two men use coded, sexualized language to talk about Christine. These moments highlight the difficulties of working in a male-dominated field and the ease with which a sexualized woman can be dismissed, particularly at the behest of a sexualized man. The Girlfriend Experience provides both a manifestation of these hypocritical situations and a protagonist to navigate the unbalanced power dynamics.
As they do with their lead characters, Gypsy and The Girlfriend Experience take completely different approaches to their story arcs . The former suffers from all of the consequences of a “slow burn” series while the latter redefines itself throughout its season. Despite how slowly Jean and Sidney advance their relationship, there is no genuine tension, sexual or otherwise, when they are together. Rather, the show manufactures tension via close calls when Jean’s double life is almost discovered.
It becomes apparent rather quickly that these close calls drive the tension of the show. As a result, the viewer spends hours waiting for something — anything — to happen, while knowing full well that nothing will happen; the story simply spins its wheels in hopes the viewer will think Jean might get caught. Were Gypsy adept at developing characters, it would flesh out its players while raising the stakes of Jean’s infidelity. Instead, Gypsy comes across as aggravatingly coy, a trait it fails to earn.
The pace of The Girlfriend Experience is calculated and works masterfully within the confines of its thirty-minute timeframe. Each episode lets action unfold and disentangle. Unlike Gypsy, which has a predictable, tired arc, The Girlfriend Experience uses major events to subvert viewer expectations and change the course of the series. Though I will not reveal specific plot points, I will say that the show continuously redefines where it is going. In doing so, it offers genuine surprises anchored in character-driven motivations.
The look of each show epitomizes the contrast in approaches by the haphazard Gypsy and the meticulous The Girlfriend Experience. Gypsy uses soft lighting in many of its shots, a visual choice that exists for seemingly no reason. Were I to give the show more credit than it deserves, I might argue that it wants to portray Jean’s seemingly perfect life as a façade. Perhaps her sunny life serves as an idyllic goal for some*, but undercuts her own ambitions and instead acts as her prison. Though uninspired, at least this would be an explanation! However, there is no gritty contrast, or any visual style to speak of, to ascribe meaning to the soft lighting; even this generous, unambitious interpretation is out of the show’s reach.
On the other hand, The Girlfriend Experience is intentionally crisp and clean, presenting a color palette of polished greys and blues. Like the transactional relationships that Christine maintains, this color scheme provides an aesthetically sterile beauty. These colors pair with the voyeuristic camera to present the show’s action, and the characters within, as environmental. To that end, the show associates Christine’s corporate law office setting with both the New York City backdrop and her escort work, all of which exist matter-of-factly in the same realm. For this association, and the commentary it provides on labor and sexuality, to be unpacked fully, one would need to write a disseration-length essay. Needless to say, The Girlfriend Experience is aesthetically fraught with meaning.
The best that can be said for Gypsy is that the idea of pegging Jean as the protagonist, rather than husband Michael (who has a similar arc of infidelity throughout the season), is noteworthy. Stories that follow spouses with mirroring crises, such as American Beauty (Mendes, 1999), almost exclusively prefer the male character (such as Kevin Spacey’s Lester) over, and often at the expense of, the female character (Annette Bening’s Carolyn). However, very little about Gypsy is genuinely original or provocative. The show is all text, no subtext. No more than one character at a time has anything close to resembling an inner monologue.
Conversely, each character in The Girlfriend Experience gives the impression that dialogue is merely a single layer of a multi-layered conversation. Every aspect, like the show itself, is a result of measured intentions. From its commentary on gender dynamics to its impressive display of storytelling, The Girlfriend Experience demonstrates a level of control and self-awareness that all shows, the least of which Gypsy, aspires to attain.
Love what you read? Want to follow us closer to get all the latest Legendary Women news? Then sign up for our monthly newsletter and also our Medium collection. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
