ONE DAY and the search for lost time (Audio included)
*No spoilers* just a chat about the perfection of Netflix's new tragic rom-com
Netflix’s latest hit, ONE DAY, is based on a 2009 novel by David Nicholls. The 14-part limited series revolves around Dexter (Leo Woodall), a self-involved, privileged playboy with a soft warm heart and Emma, a wickedly funny, pretentiously brilliant, commoner turned writer who become best friends after a romantic run in on their last night in university together.
The premise brilliantly moves you through twenty years by highlighting one day, July 15, from 1988 to 2008. Each episode (with the last two as exceptions) covers one July 15 at a time. Nicole Taylor, the writer and creator of the TV adaptation uses intimate snapshots of Emma’s relationships, Dexter’s relationships, and their relationship to each other to paint the picture of where things stand each year.
We watch as moments like arriving three hours late and desperately hungover show Dexter’s self-involvement slowly unraveling his life and sense of self. Emma, sturdy, taken for granted, and unfailingly loyal stands to the sideline, in love and waiting at first, then growing up and pursuing her own life. The relationship ebbs and flows in a decades long will they-won’t they that would be too heart wrenching to bare if the show played out in real-time.
What makes this show so compelling are the textured performances of Leo Woodall (Dexter) and Ambika Mod (Emma). Dexter could easily be the generic “I can fix him” guy of every best friend’s nightmares. But in Woodall’s hands he becomes a person who breaks his own heart over and over again and loses the one person who could keep him from falling off the path.
Mod’s Emma is strong and charismatic, with a deep, biting wit that hides a lack of self-confidence that has been wrought almost entirely by her and Dexter’s closeness. The viewer roots for her as well, even as we watch her settle for crumbs and keep herself from saying what she needs to say.
Watching these twenty somethings turn into thirty somethings, you ache for the both of them, angrier at Dexter as time goes by, prouder of Emma. You want to beg Dexter to grow up and take responsibility; for Emma to talk about her feelings instead of hiding behind sarcasm-laden fear.
ONE DAY teaches us again that time is unforgiving and immovable. Dexter, chasing a dream of fame and money, lets precious years pass by in drunken stupor. Emma stays in a relationship with a man who adores her and whom she only just likes. The scale of the story is crucial to the point: years can go by if you let them.
When I was in my early twenties, I was in an intensive outpatient treatment program that happened to be filled with people who were at least twice my age. They told me over and over again how lucky I was to be broken to pieces at 21, because the person who came out would live a life that didn’t happen to them by accident.
In their stories I heard over and over again about how their choices, or lack of choices, had piled up over their own decades. How navigating life on autopilot had led them to a place where they were haunted by years they had missed, time they could never get back. I learned then to start thinking of life in terms of decades, of building habits and making choices that future me would support.
I met my husband at 20 years old, and for many years I worried that I had wasted my youth on being married, given up some ineffable life experience that I couldn’t get back. But when I look back on the ten years we’ve been together now, I am glad that I didn’t waste a single second in building a life with him. How sad it would be to know that I had denied myself love and friendship and support because I needed to live out someone else’s idea of a decade.
In ONE DAY, I can almost see the alternate universe that awaited me. Dexter spends time that he could have spent with someone who loved him chasing after the fickle, unforgiving love of the masses. Some people would say he had to go through that to know what he wanted, but I think the point of the show is exactly the opposite.
In Taylor and crew’s hands, we get the sense being the person we need to be to love others well is the only capacity for change that exists within us all. There are so many forks in the road, and when Dexter finally takes the one where he truly sees the people closest to him, he finds happiness. Emma, in giving up her dreams of Dexter and creating her own life, becomes the woman who can accept Dexter’s love.
I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who dare to enter here. I will say that this is a cautionary tale and not a romance novel come to life. I actually used an entire box of Kleenex up.
What I learned from my group those years ago, and again from Dexter and Emma in ONE DAY is that more time than you think can pass you by while you wait for something to happen. Time is not money, it is not productivity, it is not on our side. Time is an accumulation of moments, moments where we can choose to show up completely or waste them entirely.
ONE DAY, in all its charming, romantic, intimate beauty, has so many feel-good, fall in love all over again moments. If you’re like me, you’ll likely not be able to stop until the end. But like the book, the series doesn’t sugar coat that Dexter and Emma’s story is one of deep, truthful love, and also one of wasted time. In the end it is as much as a love story as it is a shoulder shake for the viewer.
Decades can pass without any external force pushing you into action. If we hold on for someone else to tell us to be brave or to move at all, we may spend our entire lives in the waiting room of what could have been.