'Rachel''s end was one of the most frustrating things about the first season. This is a weird analogue, but I felt a lot like I did the first time I finished reading the book
Nineteen Eighty-Four: I wanted to throw the book across the room I was so mad.
Alexandra Daddario does a fantastic job of playing a beautiful woman who has an existential crisis about people only liking her because she's beautiful (maybe one of the most perfect casting choices possible...?), and she quickly goes through a period of grief and despondence and I think realizes, deep down: "pretty privilege" is very very real, and she's been benefitting from it her whole life. When she tells Shane she's made a mistake marrying him I so wanted to cheer for her realizing what a petulant man-child her husband is and how soul-crushingly unfulfilling her life is going to be with him. She seeks comfort and solace in talking to her mother on the phone, who quickly brushes her off saying that she's out grocery shopping and has bad reception and will call her later: no comfort and solace there. She tries to find comfort and solace talking to Belinda, who, after feeling like she's been strung along like a fool by the flighty Ms. McQuoid, gives her nothing but cold shoulder. "Just another spoiled, rich, white twit..."
I think Rachel came away from that with the terrifying truth: nobody really gives a #### about her anyway. In the same way the vast majority of people you meet will never give a flying #### about you. And so, faced with the scary authentic life she could live wherein she'll never get recognized for personal achievement in her work (by all accounts Nicole Mossbacher's earlier assessment that Rachel is a crap excuse for a journalist anyway was entirely true), and no man will ever really want to get to know "the real her" because they're only interested in ####ing her and having her as arm-candy, and most women will treat her like dirt because they're envious of the spoiled life she lives: she chose to come crawling back to Shane the wealthy narcissist man-child. The choice was really not "live a boring trophy wife's existence, or live a 'real' life wherein people respect her independence"; it never was. It was "live a boring trophy wife's existence in the lap of luxury, or live the exact same sort of boring existence but poor too." She chose the money. She realized that her earlier assessment—that Shane just wants to #### her because she's pretty and will make a great trophy wife as such—was bang-on, and deep down she likely knows that as her youth and beauty fade he'll divorce her for someone younger and prettier, but she might as well get in on the luxurious lifestyle while she can. She's sentenced herself to a banal purgatory, but at least it'll be really nice along the way.
'Mark Mossbacher' (Steve Zahn) reminds me a lot of a really good dude I used to work with. Someone who is very... I don't know how to put it, very 'zen' about a lot of life? Someone who actually cares quite a bit about his kids and who I had some really insightful conversations about the nature of being a father and trying not to #### up his kids. But if I'm perfectly honest, and I think he'd admit it too: he's also a bit of a goof.
I mean it in the most complimentary way possible. He's like a stoner teenager who grew up to actually not be a ####-up of an adult, and doesn't want his kids to have to go about life in such a roundabout way before figuring out what's important.
Mark is also "emasculated" by the fact his wife is the breadwinner of the family, and thus is left feeling listless and purposeless. He's a prisoner of the ideas he was brought up with about what it is that makes a man a man, and it's
especially driving him into a spiral when he finds out his father was living a closeted life.
'Nicole' (Connie Britton) is like so many workaholic parents I know who means well but sacrifices too much of her personality and her life to work to make her a good parent and spouse. (I'd likely be one of the worst of the lot of these people, if I was married and had kids...) At the same time she's absolutely correct and entitled to the feelings she has about her husband and his infidelity, and her kids and their complete unappreciation for the sacrifices she makes to make their lifestyle possible. It's a catch-22: her daughter is a conniving, catty ##### and her son is a spineless goof in large part because she's an absent parent, but if not for the career their lifestyle would be far less privileged and there's a non-zero chance her kids would be similar anyway.
Speaking of the kids, 'Olivia' (Sydney Sweeney) is like so many spoiled, bratty rich-girls I've met, who entertains herself by being ####ty to other people because there are no repercussions for the little budding sociopath. She's like the Rachel character, in that she'll skate through life on "easy mode" because she's a pretty, rich, white girl, but where Rachel had to go through an existential crisis to figure this out Olivia already knows it. She also already knows that people have transactional relationships with her, but unlike Tanya she doesn't care. She gets fulfillment out of these relationships by "winning" said transactions, by twisting them to her favour. 'Paula' too realizes that she's getting access to a luxurious lifestyle she wouldn't otherwise have by being 'friends' with Olivia, and just goes along with it because she knows the alternative is poverty and poverty sucks. So Olivia gets to be a bitch to her and everyone else, and Paula gets to tag along on Hawaiian vacations, and they're both cool with it. Sadly neither are capable of deeper, healthier relationships at this point, so when Olivia confirms her suspicions that Paula helped 'Kai' try to steal her mother's bracelets, Olivia still ultimately forgives and embraces Paula. It's the exact same sort of crap Olivia would've tried to pull if the circumstances were different.
'Quinn' (the son; Fred Hechinger) is far too much like his father, in that he's wanting to be a lot more than what society things a young man ought to be, that he wants to be 'better' and just doesn't know how, but has the disadvantage of being a dopey teenaged boy that no one respects. His mother's analysis that "boys/men have it tough these days" is I think actually quite true in this respect: on the one hand traditional ideas about masculinity stifled generations of men and turned them into ####ty fathers and husbands, but not following that template doesn't lead them to better lives. It's actual quite sad that Quinn has basically already decided his life has no meaning or purpose, and so wants to just bum around Hawaii for the rest of his life. It's... maybe very healthy? One of the healthiest attitudes of any of these characters?
'Armand' (Murray Bartlett) was the funniest character to me. Irreverent to a fault. As much as Shane was an irredeemable narcissistic ######bag, he wasn't fundamentally wrong in any of his interactions with Armand: Armand was totally in the wrong, pretty much all along the way, and was actual quite terrible at his job. But Bartlett played him so well for laughs it was hard not to root for him. Even when he did something as off-the-rails disgusting as taking a dump in Shane's luggage, I couldn't help but laugh. (I also laughed when Shane was on the phone and exclaimed "I'm sure it wasn't my wife!" I mean... she had left the room completely despondent... so how would he know? Although I think Shane is the kind of oblivious doofus guy who's thoroughly convinced women don't poop, especially his pretty trophy wife. That and I don't think the production team would have the balls to film Alexandra Daddario or a similarly beautiful actress dropping trou and plopping a couple turds into a suitcase.
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