I started watching ‘One Day’ with a cynicism similar to Emily’s. The first episode felt like a cliché. The sexual tension between the two is milked for the sake of telling a story about two young adults. On the very last day of University, the prince charming finally looks upon the “average” brown girl. The audience, identifying with the character of Emily, desperately wants them to be together because how else we, average-looking downtrodden audience, would know that we too have a real chance at having our own Cinderella endings?! Even if we look average or brown and come from the most possibly lower-income bracket. The Internet is filled with videos and opinion pieces that talk about ‘Pretty privileges’.
Dexter epitomizes what it’s like to be a handsome man and come from money at the same time. At times, I took sick pleasure in the suffering of Dexter and really wanted Emily to achieve her dreams. Yet I cannot help but admire that Dexter, a handsome, seemingly perfect-looking man, is portrayed with vulnerabilities, serious character flaws. His flaws are portrayed as flaws; nowhere is it portrayed as funny quirky, masculine traits that add to the charm of the male protagonist. The accident and death of Emily at the end again feel like expected and predictable. It was also a time where their domestic bliss started moving towards boredom. I wonder how the story would have been received if their married life were equally as long as their longing to be together period.
After witnessing two massive economic recessions, a global pandemic, AI threatening to take away even creative jobs, how do older millennials look at romantic, coming-of-age Netflix series? We are also the generation that has seen the demise of rom-com zondra. We tried to live our twenties dreaming that our lives would somehow work out to be like the ones we saw in those movies. If anything, we have learned from the realities of our lives is that Art can rarely accurately express the truth of our lives, neither does it promise to do so. Yet ‘One Day’ successfully made me reminisce my journey from twenties to my mid-thirties. Who among us were closet writers, closet artists suffering through our monotonous day jobs so that one day we could tell ourselves that we are Writers and Artists or perhaps Actors? Some reach their destination soon, some painfully toil towards it. ‘One Day’ is a beautiful reminder that we too have a real chance at making our lives meaningful even if our twenties were full of mistakes.
