TV Review: Netflix’s Gypsy Asks You “Are You Really Free?”
Synopsis: The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Gypsy is a ten-part psychological thriller that follows Jean Holloway (Naomi Watts), a Manhattan therapist who begins to develop intimate and illicit relationships with the people in her patients’ lives. As the borders of Jean’s professional life and personal fantasies become blurred, she descends into a world where the forces of desire and reality are disastrously at odds.
Netflix’s Gypsy is a strange, hypnotic thriller because the thrills come from the motivations of characters rather than their actions. When you think of a thriller, you think of a murder-mystery, of which Gypsy, definitely, displays itself as such cinematically. Yet, Gypsy is about the mysteries we carry within ourselves, and Naomi Watts’ Jean Holloway is the master therapist/ puppeteer of said mysteries.
Gypsy begins with Jean walking around Grand Central marveling at how fake humanity acts. For her, truth is only defined according to perception, and our sub-conscious is more powerful than our “free will”. The darkness of our desires is a hidden drive that comes out when no one is looking, or, at least, it does when Jean presents herself to others as Diane Hart. For the first 4 episodes of Gypsy, the plot may seem slowly paced as director Sam Taylor Johnson and writer Lisa Rubin truly want you to understand Jean as a person bored with always presenting herself as who she should be rather than who she is, which can be vicious. Jean genuinely enjoys manipulating and hurting people, and Watt’s plays her addiction for control like an actual addiction. The actress is brilliant, sexy, fractured, and fierce as Jean, which helps carry viewers through the series unto its more “pay-offed” episodes towards the end. That Jean veils her “darkness” by invasively entering in the lives of her patients under the guise of “therapy”.
From the beginning, a tone of frustration is ingrained into the series. Absolutely, every character struggles with the “notion” of freedom, and how social rules of “prudence” and “control” have failed to heal or show why certain inhibitions should not be entertained. It is in this notion that Watts drives and gears into her patients’ lives with a kind malice. She begins an affair with Sidney (Sophie Cookson); the barista ex-girlfriend of one her patients, Sam (Karl Glusman) as a way to investigate how his relationship with her “broke” him. Sophie Cookson plays Sidney with a charismatic wildness that explains why Jean becomes obsessed with her. The scenes between Watts and Cookson are the best of the series as the audience is trying to uncover what is genuine and what is a game to these women. Both are used to “playing” with others’ feelings for satisfaction, and, when Jean begins to pursue Sidney, it stems from her infatuation with “freedom”. She would love to do whatever she wants without having to answer to others especially her mutually stressed husband Michael. Billy Crudup plays MIchael with an exhausted demeanor; he is both in love and enraged by Jean’s descent from fun-loving to mind-gamer. Yet, he is not innocent. In fact, no one is innocent.
Gypsy thrives as a series because it is a microscope into the hypocrisies and hidden agendas of people. At times, life can feel like a passive aggressive nightmare, and Jean Holloway is not having it anymore, at least, when she is alter ego, Diane Hart. Yet, she is not alone in her search to have control of herself by, ironically, losing control. Some of my favorite scenes of Gypsy are the therapy sessions between Jean and Sam or her other patient Claire (Brenda Vaccaro). Vaccaro and Klusman play Claire and Sam with a mutual brightness and overbearing insecurity. They are two people who have trapped the best of themselves because they cannot be accountable to the worst of themselves. Their attempts to control the ones they love stems from their inability to control themselves, which is something that Jean Holloway understands, so well. In essence, she is an embodiment of the old adage, “Those that cannot do, teach!”. You may find it humorous that Jean is telling others how to live their lives better and foreseeing their behavioral futures. Yet, like a Gypsy, she can tell people their foreseen moves and reactions, but cannot foreshadow the consequences of her own. For More Information On Gypsy Click Here.
