Emmy FYC: The writing of "I May Destroy You"

by Cláudio Alves

If loving I May Destroy You was a party, I'd have arrived late, long after most people had left and only a few stragglers remained, sleepily fumbling their way through a dancefloor labyrinth of abandoned bottles and stale sweat. While most of the world was consuming Michaela Coel's staggering tour-de-force June and July last year, I focused my attention on movies and the Emmy-eligible TV for that particular season. Consequently, I only watched I May Destroy You when it came time to vote for the Independent Spirit Awards. I went into it with great expectations that I feared too massive to be met. In the end, I needn't have doubted the show's masterpiece-like quality, its searing power, or visceral confrontation. Even then, I don't think I was fully prepared for how awe-inspiring Coel's writing turned out to be…

Mixing aspects of autobiography, therapy through fiction, and metatextual screenwriting, I May Destroy You's a jagged meditation on the aftermath of sexual assault. That's what's been advertised as, and it's an accurate description. However, it doesn't feel expansive enough to encompass the complexity of Coel's achievement. Because of my identity and personal experience, some aspects of the limited series resonated more than others. I obviously can't say I saw myself perfectly reflected on screen the way so many others did. I'm not a British Black woman writer dealing with sexual assault and the burden of rape culture. Still, some of what the show presented and how it presented it struck me with the triggering jolt of recognition, while others opened windows into different psyches.

Coel's series goes way beyond the immediate trauma of the protagonist, further exploring side narratives, going back and forth in time, following a path of realism before swerving into a crossroads of dangerously dreamy conjecture. It's both about specific characters and broader issues, about how consent remains a thorny issue, how difficult it is to be a good person. In other words, it's a multifaceted text, built both to provoke and elicit intellectual and emotional analysis, if not self-analysis. Picking it apart seems like a daunting Herculean task, and, frankly, I don't feel equipped to write about all of the show's avenues of thought, reflection, and thematic resonance. That's why, in a coward's admission of incompetence, I'd like to limit my writing to just a couple of disparate elements which elicited special adoration from me as a viewer.

My first point of profound admiration is Coel's nifty hand with structure. I May Destroy You is divided into 12 episodes, each lasting around 30 minutes. Generally speaking, this is the sort of television model more readily associated with prestige comedy than whatever chimeric drama of fractured self-expression the show ends up being. The short length of each chapter allows it to work more or less like a stray idea whose definite place in the tapestry of I May Destroy You's theses only becomes apparent a few episodes later. While the macro-structure may present linear reckoning with one horrific inciting incident, the general movement from beginning to end is a swirling line.

In this age of serialization, I was weirdly overjoyed by how much Coel embraced the possibilities of a text that's necessarily broken apart in episodic parts. Furthermore, her willingness to avoid an overt repetition or convention from episode to episode is both disconcerting and sobering. Whether binging I May Destroy You's six hours or consuming it as it was released, there's an overwhelming sense of unexpectedness as a defining tenet. We're never allowed to be comfortable with the series, even at the level of structure. Our alertness is demanded, as is our openness to engage in silent dialogue with the show's ideas. Three episodes stand out in this respect.

One is a hermetically sealed flashback to the troubled youth of a supporting character, the other a long night of the soul type of narrative, and the third is a revolving door of alternative outcomes. These last two are among my favorite episodes of television of the previous few years, maybe ever. The Halloween episode is a remarkable feat of character dissection, using the conflagration of social media overdose and trauma-fueled lashing out to force a shattered mirror in front of the protagonist. Coel delivers an astonishing performance in those miraculous 30-minutes, most of which she spends dressed as a sexy devil. Still, the foundation of her acting fireworks is the daring screenplay she first devised. 

When dealing with underrepresented communities and identities, sensitive subject matters, and traumatic events from one's own life, there may manifest an insistence on unilateral positivity. It's easy to fall into the temptation of sanding off the sharp edges, smooth out the roughness, flatten the rollercoaster of inherent contradictions. Of course, as one may have surmised at this point, Michaela Coel refutes such simplifications. Instead of capitulating to what's easy, her writing dares to shine a revealing light on top of her protagonist's barbed interior. It's a feat of demolition and rebuilding of the self, both in terms of one's relationship to public image, private self-awareness, and dependable friendship.

I'd be ready to claim that as the crown jewel of I May Destroy You were it not for its glorious final chapter. I won't spoil you the specificities of the episode, sufficing to say that it makes remarkably clear why the show's protagonist needs to be a writer, for the series' and her sake. Instead of simply answering tough questions the previous hours have built upon, Coel makes the series' conclusion into an exercise of creativity as an engine of infinite possibility. She offers one answer, then another, and another still. Multiple realities and unrealities, all crashing into each other. One supposes the collision would make an awful noise, but there's no cacophony, only a symphony of salvation (maybe) and the silence of an absent catharsis.

The episode, titled "Ego Death," is a heady treatise on the role of storytelling as an outward-going expression and a means of processing life to ourselves. Life, after all, isn't bound by narrative rules though, in the end, it may be through these same tools, broken and reformatted, that one can better articulate the messiness of existing and persevering after unimaginable pain. Coel plays with our expectations, she stretches the limits of her chosen medium. She creates one mighty coda to her masterwork. I'd like to imagine that I May Destroy You is the frontrunner in the Emmy race of Best Writing for a Limited Series or TV Movie, but after some notable snubs here and there, I'm concerned. May my fears be proven wrong, once again. Here's hoping Michaela Coel can add some Emmy gold to her accolades.

more on the upcoming Emmys

• COMEDY
• Actress Comedy
• Actor Comedy
• Supporting Actress, Comedy
• Supporting Actor, Comedy
• DRAMA
• Actress Drama
• Actor Drama
• Supporting Actress, Drama
• Supporting Actor, Drama
• MORE...
• Emmy Ballots
• FYC The Handmaid's Tale
• FYC Marielle Heller, Queen's Gambit
• FYC Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso
• FYC I May Destroy You
• FYC For All Mankind

Comments

[beyaccount]

Best TV series I've ever seen.

[goran]

I only watched it very recently too.

On a macro level it's a strong, multi-layered and thought-provoking show and perfectly worthy of awards.

But on a micro level it's so often amateurish - especially the first 4 or so episodes - that my mind just can't grasp how this became The Greatest Most Perfect Artwork Our Age Will See.

For me, there was so much flat acting, clunky dialogue and zeitgeist-courting cliche plotting - in terms of apps, drugs, 'finding yourself' and dating culture, not in terms of intersectionality or rape culture - as to make whole chunks of the show basically unwatchable.

But no one else I know or read seems to see any flaws here whatsoever.

[Lucky]

Would be so deserving. Not only the topics the show tackles are as urgent and underexplored as they come, but the form in which they are handled is creative and unique. Perfect in substance and style.

[goran]

Rereading, my comment above came off way more critical than I meant

I actually agree with just about everything you've written here Claudio, and especially the episodes you highlight.

The 'Italy' episode and the gay triangle one are the ones that bugged me. The devil costume and especially the 'alternate-scenarios' one are the when the show won me over

[ben1283]

Head and shoulders above everything else on TV last year - and there was a lot of good TV last year! - this struck so specifically because of the pandemic. I thought Coel's interview on Louis Theroux's podcast does a good job of picking apart why this show's many layers and complexities made it such a talking point last summer.

[/3rtful]

I May Destroy You might be the best Me Too era art ever created. What fascinated me was the American twitter response to it. Considering how European its sexual mores are. An American artist could never create this in the states nor center the story there. So much of how the people behave was culturally specific even if you can argue human overlap elsewhere.

[Avi]

Everything about this show should be nominated! I hope Michaela gets a best actress nom.