TV Review: FINALLY A GOOD ROM-COM in One Day

Time is insane. There are days when I look at myself, and I’m like… woah…. when did I become an adult? Aging can feel like an out of body experience, where our literal body grows wrinkles and grays, but our spirit is still stuck in the schoolyard trying to figure out how to make a friendship bracelet/ an actual friendship. What makes the series, One Day, actually work, is that it speaks time´s nostalgic unfriendliness: flowing like water, and making us always thirst for when we felt more hydrated. 

Ambika Mod as Em and Leo Woodall as Dex meet at college and sparks fly. Part of why the movie flopped is that there was not so much chemistry or time between its characters. After all, 20 years of pining for and pushing the other way passes between Em and Dex, which is why THANK GOD for its cast.  Mod makes Em hilariously snarky, fiercely intelligent, and odd blend of sheer determination and bleeding vulnerability. It is hard to watch her and NOT see your own college/ post grad experience; assuming the world will be your oyster because you made yourself the pearl it would have rejected. She emanates the triumphs and anxieties of feeling you need to succeed, where as Woodall makes Dex an observance of how success can still leave you in ¨need.¨

You ever won something you really wanted, and 5 minutes later felt…..meh. For days, minutes, months, or even years you dreamt of this moment and it came, and did not ¨save your life¨ like you thought. While Mod´s Em is perfect as a working class gal that has had to earn her stripes like the tigress she is, and  Woodall makes Dex charming as the typical, wealthier kid who has way more nuance then what his shiny appearance would show. Yet, the show thrives on displaying how we judge others that do not come from our world; only for time to reveal to us that no one is from ¨your world.¨ Hence, Dex´s journey fascinates. He was born at a level where he could only rise, and yet his moments of delusion and love for Em land him in an existential emptiness that swings in and out of him for 2 decades. 

What I loved about One Day is that it captures time is fleeting, and why every day on my TikTok feed I will see at least one person say, ¨This is why I left my job at 52, and decided to pursue my dream of being a French Baker!¨ It is amazing to see how much of our life we can stay in ¨what ifs¨ until we get the courage to turn them into ¨what is.¨ Created by Nicole Taylor, the specialness of One Day is how it reveals nostalgia is not about missing what was as much as knowing there was what could have been…. If you has just unpacked it.