Part of this process involves covering the walls of her bedroom with index cards depicting different beats of the story.Īs any good writer - and Coel (who wrote every episode and co-directed most of them with Sam Miller) is one hell of a writer - knows, where you choose to begin your story can say a lot about what kind of story you’re telling. In the penultimate episode, Arabella - with help from, of all people, Zain (Karan Gill), a fellow writer who previously had unprotected sex with Arabella without her consent, then tried to gaslight her about it - tries a different, more structured approach to finishing the novel she has struggled with all season. The show plays around with time and memory, and in hindsight, that opening shot takes place close to the end of the story, even though it’s the first thing we see.
#I may destroy you ben how to#
The series is deliberately confounding in its early chapters(*), the better to capture the sense of disorientation that Arabella feels both on the night she is drugged and raped, and over the ensuing weeks and months, as she realizes what happened to her and struggles with how to live with that knowledge. I admit that I did, and was surprised to see it when I looped back around to the premiere shortly after finishing the show’s remarkable finale. Presented so briefly, and out of context, at the start of a sad, funny, narratively intricate story about consent, sexual assault, and coping with trauma, it’s an easy image to forget. The premiere lingers on this image for only a few seconds before jumping to Italy to meet our heroine, social-media star turned novelist Arabella ( Chewing Gum star Coel). We are in a small, cluttered bedroom, the bedspread filled with notepads, pens, and scraps of paper, the walls covered with index cards.
The very first shot of I May Destroy You occurs, like much of Michaela Coel’s incredible HBO limited series, outside the boundaries of time, and possibly reality.
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This column contains full spoilers for HBO’s I May Destroy You, which aired its finale on Monday night.
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