Tell Me You Love Me: Dare to Be Happy
In 2008, Tell Me You Love Me creator Cynthia Mort decided that she couldn’t come up with a way to continue her HBO series after the first season’s ten episodes. The show was canceled to the dismay of fans. But it was the right move. Everything was wrapped up in the tenth episode (without unnecessary answers to every single problem) and the complete series stands as an excellent example of the kind of piercing, thought-provoking drama that HBO and its collaborators are capable of.
The show was one of several contemporary TV dramas where viewers were invited to be a fly on the wall in a therapist’s office. May Foster (Jane Alexander) had primarily four clients that we followed; Katie (Ally Walker), Palek and Carolyn (Adam Scott, Sonya Walger) and Jamie (Michelle Borth). Katie was in her 40s and had two children together with her husband David (Tim DeKay). Their marriage had been in poor shape for quite some time; their sex life was nonexistent, a fact they couldn’t talk about, but Katie knew that David had taken up sex as a solo act. Eventually, she decided to go to a therapist over David’s objections… but he soon also found himself on May Foster’s couch. Palek and Carolyn were in their 30s, doing quite well financially, but their recent (and in Palek’s case half-hearted) decision to try to have a baby was affecting their sex life. His new role as baby maker not lover caused Palek to consider sex a turn-off, but his reluctance was of course on a much grander scale than simply worrying about feeling like a breed stud. And then there was Jamie, a twentysomething with seemingly hopeless relationship issues. She was dating Hugo (Luke Kirby), a teacher, who wanted to marry her but that turned into a huge commitment problem for Jamie. They painfully split up and May tried to help Jamie understand that she needed to deal with the fact that she was incapable of independence and afraid of long-term commitment.
What initially made the show controversial was its many very explicit sex scenes that led some viewers to believe that the actors were actually having real sex. At first, the constant bedroom action seemed like a cheap trick, but not only did that make the show more genuine, it also helped illustrate the various sexual and emotional problems between the characters. The sex was usually not very good at all for these people; not surprisingly, the sixtysomething therapist and her husband Arthur (David Selby) had the most successful sexual relationship of the bunch. The show made it clear that experience and, as May pointed out, “courage to be happy” are what comes closest to being keys to a great marriage. No clear, simple solutions really and the couples never truly sorted out their many issues. But the superior acting, insightful scripts and the tension created on set in several spellbinding moments of honesty (such as the one where David blurts out to May his deeply hidden feelings about the boredom of life as a suburban dad and husband) became the real core of the show, not the lack of problem-solving or the sensational sex. It was fascinating to get to know these people, understand what drove them – and even though no one was made out to be a villain we couldn’t help but take sides, affected as we are of our own experiences.
In 1973, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage had people all over the world beginning to talk about the state of modern marriage. This TV show has the power to repeat that phenomenon – and the sales of the DVD box could still make it happen.
The YouTube clip shows one of the most gripping scenes.
Tell Me You Love Me 2007-U.S. Made for TV. 10 episodes. Color. Created by Cynthia Mort. Cast: Jane Alexander (May Foster), Ally Walker (Katie), Tim DeKay (David), Adam Scott, Sonya Walger, Michelle Borth, Luke Kirby, David Selby.
Above Average
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