I haven't done a review for a series since Loki and since I have very strong feelings about DJATS, I decided that I had to compile all of my thoughts instead of constantly screaming at starryeyedturtle and silentwishing every time I have a new thought.
I'll organize it the same way that I did for my other reviews (liked, disliked, and other thoughts). I'll try to make it coherent as possible but idk how that will end up being since my brain is still ?????!!!?!!!
Before we start, I'll begin with some ~*Background Info*~ on my thoughts before the series was released. It took me a long ass time to finish the book (aka I started it last August and only finished it in February) mostly because I was thrown off by the transcript style of narration. For me, it was difficult to picture things without any real "scenes"/prose. I understand why it was done — everything the characters say is from their own perspective, so it would be difficult to write something from an omniscient point of view without ruining that. But still, I felt like it made it difficult to get into the groove of the story.
It's why I decided to write Sweet Melody (my Warren fic, in case you are unaware) in the way that it is — actual written scenes intermixed with transcripts. The interview parts mainly serve to show the audience a) how other characters perceived a scene, b) how Rory describes something years later, or c) additional commentary from the other characters. That way it's a nice mix between the past and present.
I was excited for the show because I felt that it would be able to tell the story in a more fluid way than the transcript parts did in some areas. And I was right! I found the backstories for Daisy and The Six to be much more understandable when I saw them played out.
Now. Onto the review.
WHAT I LIKED:
— Literally everyone in the cast was the perfect choice for each character. There wasn't a single moment where I was unimpressed with a casting decision or felt a performance was slacking. Everyone. Was. Outstanding.
— THE MUSIC !!! It's embarasssing how many times I have listened to the Aurora album and songs by The Dunne Brothers. I listened to "Susie Q" (which bothers me bc the original is spelled Suzie Q) eight times in a single week.
Actual text chain between me and nocturnalamp
I'm normal😃 I swear to God I'm normal😃
Also these stats are embarrassing:
My top tracks from the past 6 months:
My top tracks from the past 4 weeks:
Don't mind the Community song. It was a thing.
Like 😭 What can I say, everyone song is a BOP !!
— I can go on and on and on about Sebastian Chacón's performance as Warren. He SOLD THE SHOW. Even if he had the least amount of screentime out of the band members, he put every ounce of his passion into the scenes he was in. He clearly put so much thought into Warren and even helped the writers come up with his name change from Rhodes in the book to Rojas in the show. Plus some of his outfits nodded to his Latin background and I was in LOVE !!
— THE OUTFITS. OH MY GOD THE OUTFITS. ALL SO FREAKING GOOD.
— I loved seeing the band come from nothing and actually struggle to survive (like Eddie's infamous pocket toast) while Daisy came from immense privilege and didn't ~*really*~ struggle money-wise.
— Me for the rest of my life: "TURN AROUND LOOK ME IN THE EEEYYYEEEEEE TURN AROUND LOOK ME IN THE EEEEEYYYEEEE!!! TURN AROUND SAY IT TO MY FAAAAAAAAAACCCEEEE!!!
— "I wasn't naïve. I was a baby." TELL 'EM DAISY!!!
— "I'm not the muse. I am the somebody." YEESSSSSS
— "Great cardigan, Chuck. Very Dentist-like." Why is this my favorite line from the whole show
— The foreshadowing of Billy's addiction was done SO WELL !!! The way they would include little bits of him absentmindedly drinking too much or pouring some alcohol into his coffee, then leading to him struggling to stay sober even for a minute was fantastic.
— The way Billy UGLY SOBBED in the car with Graham as Graham talked about baby Julia. I absolutely loved how he was able to let loose and cry so genuinely upon hearing everything he missed and the things he doesn't know about his own daughter because he wasn't there.
— The scene where Camila is screaming at Billy to pick up his daughter was amazing. The RAW EMOTIONS from both of them,,, absolutely incredible. Sam said he didn't need the help from outside sources to make him cry at all while playing Billy because the emotions truly hit him so hard, and it wasn't even scripted for him to cry in the scene, but he started genuinely sobbing anyway.
— Warren: *giggling* "A girl flashed me😄"
— Karen walking into absolute chaos in the Laurel Canyon house.
— "Ahoy!"
— SIMONNEEEEEEEEE !!!!!! EVERYTHING ABOUT HER !!!!!! I love that they made her LGBTQ because it added another layer of dimensionality to her character and the representation matters so much !!! Her being so shy around Bernie was ADORABLE.
— Whoever cast the younger versions of the characters needs a raise because holy shit it was all perfect. Especially young Chuck ??? Holy moly.
— "What are you doing" "Writing" SAME
— "They're not all about my wife" 👀 "Well, pick another one" ...👀 "You know what? Give me that"
— When they found Teddy and Graham was like "GIVE ME THE SHIT! GIVE ME THE SHIT!"
— When Daisy didn't know Eddie's name and just called him "that guy" and Eddie shrugged like "fair enough" ??? 😭😭
— God bless the costume designers who decided to put Sebastian Chacon in vests with no shirt. And overalls with no shirt. Just. God Bless.
— Camila starting to lose her Spanish after not practicing it as much as she used to was done very realistically, but I wish there had been more scenes of her and Warren speaking it together + them teaching it to Julia
— WHEN NICKY WENT TO PUSH DAISY AND WARREN, EDDIE, AND GRAHAM IMMEDIATELY SQUARED UP
— Karen hugging Daisy as she sobbed </3
— Lisa and Warren were the only pure relationship in this whole ass show
— I thought the camera work in the show was excellent; how it swung around in a single shot to record each band member playing their instruments during the Aurora album recording was AMAZING
— The continuous playing of "The River", especially the part toward the end when Daisy is singing "THE RIVER .... YOUR REFLECTION .... IS A PROMISE ... YOU COULDN'T KEEP... IKNOWIKNOWIKNOWIKNOWIKNOW"
as she spiraled downhill >>>> The music matched her mental state and I loved it
— I have Thoughts about how they styled Josh as Eddie but I have More Thoughts about this shot specifically:
— The interview with Teddy where he said he didn't want kids and then later it continues and he mentions that life has a funny way of working out because he views Billy as his son 😭😭😭
— THE REVEAL OF JULIA AS THE INTERVIEWER WAS SO WELL DONE
— Also the reveal of Camila's illness made me want to literally go roll into the lake
— "I would give it all back just for one more second with her." That hit me right in the heart and I was a puddle of tears on the floor. Like literally I cannot express how much I resonated with this part.
— "No one asks me to sign their tits anymore. Well, sometimes Lisa will... you know, just to be nice." I LOVE WARREN SO MUCH.
— When Warren chewed Eddie out and said he should be grateful to be playing in a world-famous band and for how far he's come instead of focusing on not having exactly what he wants.
— Watching Simone becoming more and more famous made me so proud !!! LIGHT THOSE DISCOS UP QUEEN !!
— The scene with Chuck saying he has financial stability and how it can't be that much split all those ways... right? And the guys were like
AND THEN IT CUTTING TO PRESENT-DAY CHUCK THROWING HIS HEAD BACK IN DISMAY IN THE INTERVIEW !!! Nothing was said but it was comedic gold.
— CHUCK IN THE CROWD SUPPORTING THEM AT THEIR PITTSBURGH SHOW
— The bond shown between Camila and Karen >> To the point where Karen didn't even have to say a word and Camila already knew what was wrong.
— Daisy just showing up to the housewarming party with a pineapple
— The way the finale was set up so it showed bits of the Chicago show and then went back to earlier in the day so you wondered how things ended up that way and then got to see it revealed over time. I thought it was a great choice to add suspense !!
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
— Fair disclaimer, most of these are show/book differences.
— WHY WAS EDDIE'S SURNAME CHANGED TO ROUNDTREE ??? WHY DID THEY GIVE "LOVING" TO CHUCK INSTEAD ??? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH CHUCK WILLIAMS. AND WHY "ROUNDTREE" OF ALL THINGS IT MAKES NO SENSE
— Part of me is glad that Chuck got to live in the show, but the fact that he was drafted and killed in the book had such a profound impact. For those of you not from the U.S., it's hard to explain the impact of the Vietnam War. It's something that is still prevalent today. All of my grandma's brothers fought and one lost an eye. It was a completely unnecessary war that the majority of Americans did not want. Men — and boys, who had barely turned eighteen — were plucked out of their lives and forced to fight.
Over 58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and it dragged on for nine years. According to Vietnam's records, over 2 million civilians were killed across both sides and around 1.1 million Vietnamese fighters died.
The fact that Chuck was drafted and killed in combat emphasized the despair and fear going on in the country over the course of those nine years. To me, changing his fate lessens that impact and makes things less realistic. Billy briefly mentioned boys being drafted in his classes but it doesn't have the same sense of hopelessness and unfairness as one of his close friends and band members being among the casualties.
Idk, changing that aspect of the storyline, to me, kinda glorified the late 60s and 70s and made them feel like more of a party zone where everyone was carefree rather than touching on why so many people were getting high all the time: because life was pretty much a nightmare.
— Billy's absolute lack of control in the show. One of his most prevalent characteristics in the book was his ability to rein himself in, though it seemed almost impossible at times, and say "no." For example, Daisy tries to kiss him first, but he pulls away and says he can't. Then, he immediately goes home to Camila and Julia and they go to Disneyland.
Literally just look at these book quotes from after that scene, copy and pasted, and compare them with show!Billy:
"BILLY: I shudder thinking about it. About that time. How I could have made one small mistake that would have thrown my whole life away."
"BILLY: When Graham and I were kids, our mom used to take us to this community pool during the summer. And this one time, Graham was sitting on the edge of the pool, toward the deep end. And this was before he could swim.
And I stood there next to him, and my brain went, I could push him in. And that terrified the hell out of me. I didn't want to push him in. I would never push him in but ... it scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it. That really tripped me out, that everyone's life was that precarious. That there wasn't some all-knowing mechanism in place that stopped things that shouldn't happen from happening.
That's something that had always scared me.
And that's how it felt being around Daisy Jones."
"BILLY: I had hurt Camila. God knows I had. But loving somebody isn't perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it's a gut punch. That's why it's a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn't deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else's. It's sacred.
I have no tolerance for people that waste other people's faith in them. None at all."
"BILLY: Camila and I promised to put our marriage first. To put our family first. And we promised to trust each other in how best to do that.
Do you know what you do with that level of trust? When someone says, "I trust you so much I can tolerate you having secrets"?
You cherish it. You remind yourself how lucky you are to have been given that trust every day. And when you have moments when you think, I want to do something that would break that trust, whatever that is— loving a woman you shouldn't be loving, drinking a beer you shouldn't be drinking— do you know what you do?
You get your ass up onto your two feet, and you take your kids to Disneyland with their mother."
Meanwhile, in the show, Billy literally made out with Daisy in the parking lot of Sound City, made out with her backstage at the Chicago show, told Daisy he wanted to be with her and basically would be if he wasn't married. That sense of restraint that he built up over the course of his struggle with addiction was completely erased. I feel like it was mostly to add drama and sell DaisyBilly more.
By the end, it didn't even feel like Billy loved Camila beyond feeling like he had to because she was his wife. He directly contradicts book!Billy's quote of wasting people's trust in them by making out with Daisy as soon as he thinks Camila didn't come to the show. He gives up immediately and doesn't try to fight for his family until it's almost too late. And even then... it just feels superficial. Billy and Camila's love for each other was palpable in the book, but it felt extremely one-sided in the show.
ESPECIALLY SINCE HE TELLS CAMILA HE WANTS TO TRY FOR MORE KIDS WITH HER AND THEN IMMEDIATELY JUST ... BETRAYS HER TRUST AGAIN AND AGAIN ???
— No scene where Billy shows "Aurora" to Camila before he shows it to anyone else ??? "Because Camila... she was my aurora. She was my new dawn, my daybreak, my sun peeking over the horizon. She was all of it." Did he ever say anything like this in the show????
— Billy getting wasted in the finale. Again, in the book, he grapples with whether or not he should drink after the show. He meets this guy whose girlfriend is a fan of the band and talks to him. He gives into the temptation a little, taking a "taste, not even a sip" at first, and then actually drinking a finger's-width sip. He desperately wants to gulp it down but the guy keeps asking him about his family. It's the thing that makes him strong enough not to slip up:
"BILLY: I pulled out my wallet and I showed the man the photos I had of my daughters. And as I did, he took my glass from in front of me and put it on the bar on the other side of him.
He said, 'Gorgeous girls.'
I said, 'Thank you.'
And he said, 'Makes you want to live to fight another day, doesn't it?'
And I said, 'Yes. It does.'
He looked at me and I stared at the glass and I felt strong enough. To walk away from it. And I didn't know how much longer I'd feel that strong. So I put down a twenty and I said, 'Thank you.'"
Again and again, in the book, it's the memories of his wife and daughters who pull him away from the lure of addiction and back into himself. Because, in his core, that's who he is— a family man. It's why, even though what he had with Daisy may be considered an emotional affair, nothing was ever physical.
— The part when Billy walked into Sound City the day after Camila and Eddie hooked up and Eddie immediately ran away was funny, but I didn't like that it meant Eddie was not in the scene where they all voted for "Regret Me" to be on the album. In the book, it's basically the first time someone asks for his opinion on something, and he's the first to raise his hand and say it should be on the album. He was robbed of that choice in the show.
— NO IMPOSSIBLE WOMAN ON THE ALBUM😭
— No part of Graham writing "The Canyon" and wanting it on the album but Billy saying no because "It's a generic love song" (as if that wasn't what Billy was doing when all of his songs were about Camila at the start lmfao) and then Graham selling it and it becoming a HIT because he is TALENTED !!!!!!!
— The way that Catherine basically existed to push Karen and Graham together and she was just sitting in the car as they hooked up in the house ??? Poor girl.
— I wish they had stuck to KarenGraham's first kiss from the book because Graham's excitement was ADORABLE.
— I get why they had to cut Pete from the band because he had one (1) actual line in the book and it was him saying he didn't give a fuck but it made me sad that Eddie didn't have that support system in the show. Though I suppose he kinda had it with Warren, but it wasn't the same as always having his brother around.
— THEY TOOK "AND WHEN YOU THINK OF ME, I HOPE IT RUINS ROCK 'N' ROLL" OUT OF "REGRET ME"
— The way that Simone and Rod didn't also show up to the party where Daisy was when she accidentally skipped rehearsal. It meant that one of my favorite Simone quotes didn't make it into the show: "In that moment, I thought, She's going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her."
Daisy did remember Simone and Rod trying to help her and didn't realize Billy was even there. I felt like this, again, was them pushing the DaisyBilly drama :/
— I felt like the conflict between Graham and Karen in the finale was brushed aside, again, to focus more on Daisy/Billy. It was much more prominent in the book, with pages of dialogue from Karen and Graham depicting their feelings about what happened.
To me, Graham was always in love with a part of Karen that didn't actually exist. He knew he wanted a wife and family like Billy had, but Karen never wanted that. And Graham was like "Why couldn't she see that we would be perfect together?" without truly taking into consideration that Karen wouldn't give up her career to stay at home and take care of kids. This was briefly touched on when she asked him if he would quit the band to help her raise a kid, and he fell silent, but that was it.
But the "You're gonna be alone forever" HURT.
I didn't feel like the tension was as high between them in the show as it was in the book. When I was reading, I was literally FUMING with rage on Karen's behalf but while watching, I barely had time to get mad because then we were moving back to Daisy and Billy.
— The conversation between Daisy and Camila, where Camila said that if Daisy wanted to heal herself and get clean, she should leave the band, because Billy would always choose his family, was completely cut.
— "I have loved you since I was 18 years old" Timeline error y'all met when you were at LEAST 20-21 so these are LIES.
— Teddy's heart attack basically having no long-term purpose because he died a year after the band split anyway. Instead of his death causing Daisy to struggle even more with her addiction when she was on the brink of trying for sobriety or even rehab, and putting a halt on the whole band's lives, changing everything for them... it was just a shocking thing and then everyone moved on.
— Daisy was not an opening act for The Six so "Honeycomb" was hardly played live. At least people got to hear it on that tour instead of them not wanting to play it on the Aurora one and everyone being shit out of luck. Also that meant that Daisy had basically no professional musical experience since she didn't have a debut album under her belt when she joined them.
— NO TITTY BUS
— No "We were named The Six because it sounds like sex"
— Daisy not adopting her two boys 😭😭😭 I loved that part in the book and wish they'd kept it
— Literally Billy did not deserve Camila one single bit and the fact that they're meeting again as relatively young people instead of being old and wrinkly made me angry. It felt like he overcame the "obstacle" that was Camila and no longer has a wife, so...
— According to the show's timeline, Graham, Eddie, Karen, and Warren would have only been about 43 during the interviews. SO EXPLAIN TO ME HOW GRAHAM HAD A FULL HEAD OF GRAY HAIR AND BOTH HE AND EDDIE LOOKED OLDER THAN MY DAD, WHO IS 50. Was it the drugs? The cigarettes? They looked SO much older than their early 40s.
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
— Here's some psychoanalysis for you today: "Please" is the perfect look into show!Billy's psyche because the lyrics involve him begging the other person to be the one to say "no" since he cannot. Unlike book!Billy who says no to Daisy and goes to his family, he always needs someone else to stop him from wrecking his life.
— It absolutely baffles me how Sam Claflin had no singing or guitar experience before this show. They truly just cast him based on vibes and I love that.
— The fact that NONE of them were very serious with music before band camp is CRAZY. I thought that Riley Keough had been singing for her entire life (especially given the fact that she's literally Elvis's granddaughter) only to find out that no ??? and Sebastian and Josh had only dabbled in their insteuments in high school/childhood ??? WHAT. Take me to this band camp. I want to come out of it shredding the guitar and singing without sounding like a New York City rat that's just been stepped on.
— Daisy made me so angry when she came to rehearsal and was trying to make decisions for them about the order... like GIRL, you were gone for MONTHS and missed a bunch of rehearsal time. You threw away the option to change shit when you were going to quit.
— I wish that Simone had pointed out Daisy's privilege when she was going to quit the band. Especially in the show, since she didn't get pushed around by her record label during her first album and have to actually work a bit, she basically did not have to try. She was able to turn down Teddy Price again and again. She was able to say, "Maybe I don't want to be put in a box, Teddy," and not face repercussions.
Meanwhile, Simone and other artists who are people of color and/or part of the LGBTQ+ community would probably have killed to be sought after by a producer like that. They usually didn't have a say because they couldn't afford to have one. Being themselves vs listening to a label's desires might mean the difference between keeping their career and having it ruined. Daisy had immense privilege in this matter and it was never brought up.
Plus she didn't have to try, she was just naturally gifted with her voice, and didn't know the names of any notes or chords or know vocal techniques. But she was still a star. Most people wouldn't get that far being so inexperienced and not wanting or caring enough to educate themselves on these matters.
Take another book!Billy quote: "That's the problem with people who don't have to work for things. They don't know how to work for things."
I would've cheered if these things had gotten thrown in her face. I'm not sure if Daisy turning Teddy down was supposed to be a girlboss girl power moment, but to me it just came across as her being very privileged.
— I will leave off with some of my favorite photos of the cast:
I wish I could include videos in here that aren't from YouTube because I have so many screen recordings of the cast's Instagram stories where they're being hilarious <3
I probably have many more thoughts than this, but these are the main ones. Please let me know if you have any other opinions that I didn't mention, I'd love to hear them!!