Daisy Jones & The Six

I'm only a month late.

Last month a little show called Daisy Jones & the Six aired. I’m sure you’ve at least heard of it. It’s adapted from a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Throughout the four weeks in which it aired I had no intention of discussing the series in long form whatsoever… but then it ended, and it has CONSUMED me ever since. All I can think about is what went right, what went wrong, what I have mixed feelings about. Unfortunately, as soon as the show ended, so did the timeline discussion. Problem is, if I didn’t write this, it would DRIVE ME INSANE. I must get all of my thoughts out in the open before I spontaneously combust.

There will be spoilers ahead, but I did want to give a spoiler-free review of my thoughts for people who might want to know whether I recommend DJATS or not. I do! I am about to mainly focus on my criticisms for both the book and the show, but I have criticisms because of my investment to begin with. I’d say check it out if you have prior interest. You should be able to make a judgment call on whether or not you’d enjoy either the book or the show very quickly based on vibe alone. Is mockumentary Fleetwood Mac fan-fiction something you’d be interested in? Check it out! Half-heartedly joking. Celebrity melodrama, star-crossed lovers, are concepts I naturally gravitate towards. I wouldn’t consider it a guilty pleasure, but you do have to engage with the material in a soap operatic lens. It’s about the drama, the theatrics, the grandeur.

I do prefer the book to the show, but if you want to enjoy the show, perhaps not reading the book is for the better. I will be getting into spoilers soon, but some of the changes to the material… grind my gears, just a bit. If you know, you know! There are some things that I prefer in the show, though I’d say that’s more the exception than the rule. 

Spoilers from beyond this point! If you haven’t read the book or watched the show… you will be so confused going forward. I do not do well at contextualizing anything.

I didn’t have the attention span to re-read the book, so although I did fact-check and verify some things I suspected were adaptational changes or omissions, I don’t have the freshest memory of the novel. I’m only going to be pointing out things that were truly jarring to me when it comes to the series as an adaptation. Other than that, this will be mostly about the show, and not as much about the novel.

Daisy Jones.

If you are familiar with my page, you might mistakenly take me for a Daisy Jones hater, considering Camila is my favorite character. I’m pleased to report, I love both Daisy and Camila, and I actually think their few scenes of interaction are highlights for both the show and book. I never really understood the rivalry between fandoms, considering the book practically begs you to love them both. It’s very clear Taylor Jenkins Reid put so much care into their arc and dynamic, which…. sometimes got lost in adaptation. Their dynamic in the finale is easily my main issue with the show, it drives me insane just thinking about it. Put a pin in that, we will circle back.

Daisy’s journey is obviously the heart of the story, and I quite like it in both iterations, even with the changes made. I mostly credit my love for the Daisy we get on the show to Riley Keough being a stellar casting choice who takes great care in portraying the layers to the character from beginning to the end. She’s not my top choice for the Emmy, but if she were to be nominated for her work here, you wouldn’t see me complaining.

Camila Dunne.

Camila Alvarez-Dunne is, and always has been, my favorite character. Nobody should be surprised to hear that. It was true when I read the book, it’s true while watching the series. 

Before the show had aired, I read some reviews without context and I was concerned for the direction they were going to have for her. I had worried that they would take her character and make her a less sympathetic role in favor of making Billy look “better” in comparison. My biggest fear would be they would have her cheat first to make Billy’s actions seem more redeemable, which was luckily a baseless concern. Upon watching it became clear… I could never hate Camila. I appreciate her more present role in the show. The finale is the only place where I have any standing criticisms of her portrayal in the series, and still I was on her side. Camila Morrone gave, what I consider to be, the star-making performance of the series.

Billy Dunne.

I don’t like that man very much. Next question!

Okay, in all seriousness, it’s true I will never be a Billy Dunne enjoyer. I do think both the show and the book take great effort in grounding you into his reality and struggle, and his arc was given great importance… I respect that! He is certainly the co-lead to Daisy, and I think he’s generally well written.

I was not sold on Sam Claflin’s casting at first. I still don’t think they styled him well in the interview clips of the show, and that alone might’ve hurt my perception of him in the first episode particularly. My opinion changed drastically during the first scene with him and Daisy in the studio, I think at the end of episode 3. He really sold me at that moment, and his performance warmed up to me, and he had his standout scenes throughout the series. Don’t get me wrong, I never doubted for a second he was a good actor. It was almost exclusively just how much I hated his hair in the interview portion of the series.

Karen Sirko (and Graham).

I won’t lie to you right now, when reading the book I might have skipped over a lot of the Karen and Graham stuff. I remembered the beats of their storyline, and I immediately took notice that the scene where Karen reveals her relationship with Graham on the tour bus was… wrong. After watching the show, I actually want to revisit the book more because, and I feel as though this is a hot take, Suki Waterhouse really made Karen a highlight of the season. Suki has this natural cool girl energy that really made Karen’s personality shine through in a way I hadn’t appreciated before.

I’ve seen people criticize Suki’s acting. I won’t defend it too much, but I have to say that for some of the dialogue she has to deliver, I have to respect her for even keeping a straight face. She also sells a lot of it. Again, that tour bus scene (if you know, you know) really got me, but besides that… Suki made some pretty corny dialogue still sound so cool just through her presence alone. I respect it! I also have to say her moments with Camila in episode 9 were particularly impactful. She does well at conveying emotion in quiet scenes. Being said, I still wish Karen and Camila were allowed to speak to each other, both in those scenes and throughout the season more. I get what the show was trying to do, a quiet understanding in a moment of solidarity, but when you consider the season as a whole, it does just feel as though it was a cop-out to avoid writing a dynamic relationship between women, especially when the book does share key dialogue for their characters.

Karen’s character as a whole wasn’t very well treated by the series. I get she was a supporting character, but the show had 10 hours, and if they had put a bit more into her relationships with the other girls, it would’ve hit harder in moments such as her comforting Daisy after that confrontation with her husband, or her leaning on Camila during her time of need. When Karen says, “she was the reason I joined the band, she was the reason I stayed,” in the finale, it just would’ve hit harder if the show had left in a talk between them in episode 9, or replaced it with something else just as meaningful. I also think her subplot with Graham could’ve been paced in a way where their conflict didn’t begin in episode 9 and end in episode 10, but I don’t have an alternate recommendation for that right now, so I won’t dwell on it.

I kind of overlooked Graham. I liked him! Did I support him at all times? Absolutely not. But Will Harrison worked well with Suki and Sam, and his performance made him likable enough so that when he said things (you know!!!) that aren’t very… forgivable (you know!!!), it can be easier to still like him in the grand scheme of the story.

Eddie.

I don’t love Eddie as much as some other members of Camila hive do, I’m sorry. He’s kind of a loser. But I will say… the scene where he tells Camila  “I would choose you over everyone,” … it’s just so good. IN THAT MOMENT? I understood what you all were talking about. IN THAT MOMENT? Something shifted. It does almost make me wish we had gotten an ending where DaisyBilly and CamilaEddie got their endgame. Oh well.

Warren Rojas.

I have the least to say about Warren because what do you expect me to say about his role in the show? Still, I love him. Sebastian Chacon really bodied the role with the material he did get. A star!

Simone Jackson.

Simone’s role in the show is by and large the best case for making changes to the text, because her role in the book was… horrible. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she’s masterfully written in the show or anything, it’s very tropey,  but she actually… has things going on. And that’s just not something I can say for the book. Episode 7 could be seen as a weaker episode because it has nothing to do with The Six, but Simone and Bernie’s love story could’ve been a movie all within itself, and it’d be a great movie! Nabiyah Be was excellent in the role, her music sounded the best, and I also quite liked her styling, which I can’t say for everybody else. All around, a delightful surprise of the series for me.

I don’t have much to say about Teddy Price or Rod Reyes, they don’t get much of their own story, but Tom Wright and Timothy Olyphant round out the show very well.

FINAL THOUGHTS.

You may think, considering I adore Camila, that I hate Daisy and Billy as a couple… but as I mentioned earlier, I love a forbidden romance, I love star-crossed lovers, I love celebrity grandeur. They really fit the brand of romance I love consuming. I don’t mind the wrong-doing as much as others… because ultimately, it’s still fiction. Plus, Camila got her lick back, and stood up for herself when it came time. I’m not the biggest supporter of DaisyBilly as a ship or anything, it’s honestly more so just my slight bias against Billy more than anything else, which might be a bit irrational, I haven’t decided yet. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin work wonders together. I think I prefer the show making the cheating more explicit, though some of the other changes I suspect they made in response to that I don’t appreciate as much.

I never loved the ending to the book. I didn’t hate it, I mean… I definitely cried, so it was emotionally effective. It tied everything into a nice little bow.  It also isn’t as though it was out of character for Camila to be selfless to a fault even in death… I just feel as though the ending falls cheap. Personally, I think tying things into a nice little bow kind of worked to its detriment. It feels… forced to have a plot-twist death reveal that her dying wish was for Billy to slide into Daisy’s DM’s. I’m not the first person to criticize this, but I do bring this up because I think it’s done even worse in its adaptation.

Around the premiere date for the show, there was a tweet that referred to Daisy and Camila’s Big Talk in the third act as Camila’s “mean girl monologue” and the Camila shooters of Twitter made sure to call that take out. It’s a misogynistic interpretation of the book, to say the least. It was a dialogue filled with nothing but mutual respect between two women in the text… but, I fear as though the showrunners interpreted the scene in the misguided “mean girl monologue” way. Gone was mutual respect, and present was almost a sense of mutual dislike, honestly. It wasn’t a pleasant scene to sit through, because it felt as though it fundamentally misunderstood Camila as a character. Even if we just look at the show’s writing of Camila in any other episode and throw away the book. She says “I was always her biggest fan,” in the finale, and just the episode prior said to Daisy “don’t count yourself out just yet,” because she, in Daisy’s words, “saw a future for me that I couldn’t see for myself.” I don’t get how we got from point A to point B. Far away we are from “Camila Dunne saved my life.” and that is so sad to me, because it was such an interesting dynamic to read.

That is why the ending in the show makes even less sense. I don’t hate that the show made Daisy and Billy’s romantic relationship more fleshed out. That much makes sense, considering the book was entirely compiled of interviews. That left room for several different interpretations of scenes, and playing with narrative. I just fear them going this route is what led to the tone of the “confrontation” with Daisy and Camila to feel more combative. But, if they are going to change… all of that… I think this should’ve made them change the ending even more so. I really disliked Daisy saying Camila “saw a future for me that I couldn’t see for myself,” in the context of the series. The scene where Camila talks to Daisy about children and how she “shouldn’t count herself out” is there, yes… but in the book Camila literally “saved her life,” her words not mine!!! Changing this dynamic comes off as so strange when Camila, from the afterlife, tells Billy to call Daisy up… it doesn’t hit the same, especially if you haven’t read the book. Does it not read as strange from a viewer’s perspective, who doesn’t know the context from the novel? You need the one scene to include the other in a way that makes sense. I feel as though had Camila and Billy just separated and he went back to Daisy on his own volition, it would’ve made for a more satisfying ending for the series version of events.

While I was doing my final edits of this piece, a lot of discussion of a season 2 had erupted, and apparently it’s being seriously considered. I know I don’t have a say in its production, but if anybody that is happens to be reading this… I vote no! I do not think a season 2 would be a good idea. At all. This series tells a full story on its own, and managed to add more to the main story than anything else. As I said, the ending ties everything into a nice little bow as is. A season 2 wouldn’t be inherently disappointing, but it would be unnecessary.

I do fear I lost focus in this issue, and you might not know my exact thoughts on the show as a whole. I think that’s because… I am not overwhelmingly pro or against the show. In terms of the quality of the show itself… I like things, I dislike other things. It evens out to be a mostly average experience, and hit or miss as an adaptation. Daisy Jones & The Six out of tens, if you will.