@TaraAriano Published March 13, 2026, 11:30 a.m. ET Where to Stream: Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette Powered by Reelgood Y’all know I’m 90s down, but even I am having a hard time supporting Love Story this week. First of all, mere hours after last week’s episode premiered, Daryl Hannah wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, claiming the character who bears her name has appeared in fabricated storylines, and that the show’s portrayal of the fictional Daryl has led some unwell fans to make death threats against the real one. So: the seeming vandalism of at least one real person’s life story is one problem. Another is that this episode really feels like filler. Here’s the headline: The Media is making John’s and especially Carolyn’s lives hell.
Somehow, Carolyn convinced herself that the one and only wedding photo they officially released would satisfy the “need” for a first shot of her and John together as husband and wife, and it has not. John thinks he can put on a suit, stand in front of their building, and tell the mob (using a very powerful, masculine voice) that Carolyn was a private citizen until the wedding, so they should give her space while she makes that adjustment. But when he brings her out, the prying begins, and at a pitch no one tried to use with John alone. Is Carolyn pregnant? Don’t twins run in her family? Carolyn doesn’t answer, and John ushers her to their waiting car…
…which then remains stuck at the curb because it’s surrounded on all sides by reporters and photographers pressing themselves against it. So much for brunch!
After Ralph Lauren himself called Carolyn personally, she interviews for a job there, which seems to have gone well based on the friendliness of the executives who walk her out. The mood quickly changes when they all arrive at the lobby of the office building and see it’s being swarmed on both sides by paps trying to get a new shot of Carolyn they can sell. So much for her career!
Elsewhere in (presumably) midtown, John and Berman meet with an Allison Menno (Ava Eisenson), who’s full of bad ideas to shore up George‘s rapidly sinking circulation numbers. No, Carolyn won’t pose for the cover; though she did get cover offers from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, she turned them both down. No, John won’t host a hypothetical George TV show. Berman scoffs that John would blow off his own brand, then turn around and narrate Ed’s HBO documentary about his father’s legacy, but this is the first John has heard about it. “Not so fun to be kept in the dark, is it,” Berman snits. Not in front of the trashy consultant, bro!
That night, riding ito a party at Caroline and Ed’s, Carolyn ends up next to a store window display. Part of the official wedding photo has been blown up to life size, but instead of Carolyn’s hand, John is kissing a veil draped around a headless mannequin in a white gown, all of it under a banner that reads “It could have been you.”
Carolyn has scarcely had a chance to recover from seeing herself decapitated, if not erased, from one of the happiest days of her life than they’ve arrived at the Schlossbergs’ building, where another knot of paps is waiting for them. The couple get separated, Carolyn shoved back against the car, meekly saying “I can’t see” as the camera flashes explode in her face. So much for an elegant entrance!
Upstairs and in private, John is disgusted that Ed is trying to capitalize on John Sr.’s legacy; Caroline has anticipated this line of attack, and brandishes a George cover with Drew Barrymore styled as Marilyn Monroe with “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” emblazoned across it. Ed is in the process of backpedaling on the documentary when John blurts that he already talked to HBO and shut it down. Then John returns to the party, where he has the sense to shut down Margaret (Nadia Quinn), a consultant who puts the professional moves on him about the political career she assumes he wants.
The night only gets worse when Carolyn takes one of Caroline’s daughters to the lobby to hang out with Edgar the doorman (Bob Lloyd), getting candy and watching his magic tricks. Carolyn keeps her back to the glass doors and seems to be trying to block her niece from the cameras, but the flashes are relentless anyway, and when Caroline comes down to retrieve them she is livid. Back upstairs Caroline basically tells Carolyn that since it was her choice to marry John, she has no right to complain about the press attention she’s getting now. So much for empathy!
Two months later, Carolyn is basically a hermit, as John tells Caroline over their VERY stiff first lunch since the party. Gossip items about Carolyn call her a drug addict; she even gets papped leaving her therapist’s office. John thought the storm would have blown over by now, and doesn’t like to dwell on things that are out of their control, but Caroline thinks Carolyn probably prefers her husband to tell her the truth, adding that Carolyn’s relationship with the press won’t change until John’s does…
…which doesn’t happen in time for Carolyn to meet Lauren for a celebratory lunch: Lauren’s now a VP at Morgan Stanley. Since their table is visible from the restaurant’s biggest window, both sisters try to keep their faces turned away as Lauren gently tells Carolyn she should call their grandmother, who saw a news story about Carolyn being addicted to Prozac and freaked out. (It’s 1997, so I’ll give Nana a pass for not having hopped online to assure herself that Prozac is not addictive.) Carolyn is upset that Nana wouldn’t have just called her, but Lauren says Carolyn’s so famous that some people might feel like it’s an imposition to call her. Carolyn cries that she’s always known what she wanted in life, and now she feels paralyzed. John tries to be positive, but he can’t understand what it’s been like for her to lose her anonymity because he’s never had it. Lauren takes no pleasure in telling Carolyn that a happy couple doesn’t sell papers: John is obviously the protagonist as far as the public is concerned, which only leaves one role for Carolyn. If she wasn’t sure what it is, an anonymous voice in the crowd outside an event at the Guggenheim later yells it out: “Fucking cunt.”
John, parrying questions about Carolyn’s pregnancy, doesn’t notice she has slipped away from him to get inside and away from the vultures. So much for civility!
As John heads out for work the next day, Carolyn reads a gossip column speculating about her imminent motherhood. They’re not trying to have a baby, but what if they were and she’d had a pregnancy loss? John — for whom “being positive” seems to have evolved into “live in denial” — tells Carolyn not to do this to herself, but he’s not the one who had a stranger call him a slur hours ago. She knows the coverage isn’t real, but she can’t help thinking about everyone who’s ever known or loved her reading it and wondering what happened to her. She hasn’t told John any of this because she loves him so much, but she’s so tired. He’s holding her as she sobs, which is when some monster downstairs starts persistently pounding on their buzzer.
“THEY WON’T LEAVE US ALONE!” screams a desperate Carolyn. So much for common decency!
Understandably, John’s head isn’t really in the game when he gets to the office and is immediately set upon by Berman. John’s always late! Berman doesn’t give a shit about Carolyn! Why won’t John sign the TV deal? John’s nothing but a sympathy case with a pretty smile! A punch turns into a brawl, ending with Berman announcing that he quits: “I can’t wait for the rest of the world to see what a joke you really are.” Defeated and out of ideas, John leans over his desk in the same posture his father has in a framed photo behind John.
And soon John is sliding into a booth with the political consultant from Caroline’s party, who tells him he can throw his hat in the ring whenever he wants.
At home, Carolyn sits in the window in the dark apartment, gazing down at her torturers, not knowing the person she loved and trusted enough to ruin her life for is, at this very moment, betraying his promise to her. So much for trust.
Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.
