By Narayan Saimbi
Romance is tricky, that much is certain. But in the last five years, there has not been a better love story to bless our tiny screens than that of Connell and Marianne’s. So when I saw that Normal People had been re-released on Netflix, I took it as a chance to binge-watch the series in its complete entirety. Only 12 episodes, but it’s some of the best TV you’ll watch.
The show opens up in an Irish high school, where we meet our two protagonists. Marianne, a social outcast, and Conell, the shy but popular rugby lad. The pair start talking after Connell comes to pick up his mother from Marianne’s house, who is employed as a cleaner there. Feelings quickly develop, with a relationship blossoming between the two of them at the end of the first episode. The catch is, Connell wants to keep it a secret from his friends in school, out of fear of being judged. At the end of their school years, their relationship ends when Connell does not ask Marianne to the end-of-school dance.
Fast forward to university, and Connell and Marianne find companionship in each other once again. But it’s not that simple. Through miscommunication and poor timing, the couple is on-again, off-again throughout almost all of their college years. But there’s one thing that is a constant in their lives. Everyone else comes and goes. But they keep coming back to each other.
I have to note that there’s a beautiful scene at the start of their college years, where Marianne says that Connell must be “telepathic”, as he says he could read her mind when they were together. “Maybe that’s normal”, Connell remarks. Marianne softly states that it’s not.
(Image Credits: BBC Three)
It’s scenes like this which really cement Connell and Marianne’s love in our minds. No matter who they date, no matter how many times they split up, they know in themselves that they want each other. I’d even go so far as to say they need each other. Ever since they were in school, they both had these feelings (even if Connell did treat her pretty poorly in the beginning). And those feelings don’t change even when university ends. Throughout Gareth, Jamie, Helen and Lukas, Connell and Marianne constantly find each other through the gaps in their college years, finding the love and affection that they both require only in each other’s arms. Whilst the show’s ending does leave an ambiguous taste in the mouth, there is no denying that there remains a strong connection between the two of them.
Connell and Marianne’s relationship journey is far from what I would call conventional. Since the show’s airing, words like “situationship” have been thrown about, in order to try and explain the dynamic between our two protagonists. But I strongly dislike that attempt to describe what’s happening here. You can’t simply throw every emotion and every connection, that both of these two feel under that one blanket word. Sally Rooney herself doesn’t make these characters one-dimensional. They each have their own swings and roundabouts to go through. Their own trials and tribulations. The Connell x Marianne stint is not something that only happens once, and then each party moves on. So how is it fair to put what they have under this one blanket term?
(Image Credits: BBC Three)
I think this confusing middle ground between relationship, friendship and situationship is what Normal People so expertly sets out on our screens. Love is, in fact, not one-dimensional. There is no cookie cutter for how we get from A to B in our lives. People fall in and out of favour with us for practically all our lives. Steve Nicks and Lindsay Cunningham have been on-and-off for practically 50 years. Maybe Connell and Marianne end up doing the same.
What I think the show can teach us is that it’s normal for young love to not be straightforward and simple. Granted, it does not have to be an embrace next to a pool in an Italian mansion. It does not have to boil down to choosing between New York and Carricklea. But it does not equally have to be linear. Twists and turns in our romantic feelings are normal as we grow. Maybe some of us have simple relationships. Maybe some of us don’t. Normal People tells us that either of those options are completely okay.
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