Starstruck trailer series#
The only downside to Starstruck as a series so far is that it's a watch that goes by so quickly, you'll wish there was more once you're done. Tom's response is to look her right in the eye and say, unflinchingly, "You do know I'm an adult man, don't you?" before kissing her. One scene in the first episode makes this undeniably clear from the jump when Tom invites Jessie up to his apartment the night after they've slept together for the first time, she confesses that she's just started her period that morning and even makes a self-deprecating joke in anticipation of rejection. In the role of the romantic lead (a part that can often be such a tricky tightrope to walk), Patel manages to pair emotional vulnerability with delicious charm. Of course, there's comedy at every turn - Mataleo herself has a successful stand-up career and her talents are front-and-center here, with Jessie serving as a hilarious and lovable heroine - but something else Starstruck has going for it is its undeniable throughline of sexiness. But there's no denying that if these two could get the timing right, they could have something really special. There are always a few external obstacles that occur, like being interrupted by one of Tom's co-stars right when they're about to hook up in his hotel room, or Tom inadvertently eating pot-laced brownies that one of Jessie's friends had made for their Christmas party. Through it all, they never seem to really forget about each other, even if they continue to fall in and out of each other's orbit, bumping into one another at seemingly random moments and picking up right where they left off before. The first season takes place over the course of a year, starting off on Jessie and Tom's fateful New Year's Eve meet and ending by Christmas, with each episode revolving around a certain season in between.
Therefore, Starstruck's dramatic tension doesn't necessarily come from the question of if these two are going to get together, but when - and it's that inevitability that definitely makes the show more reminiscent of a romance novel rather than following more of a typical rom-com format. RELATED: ‘Starstruck’ Trailer for HBO Max Series Shows What Happens After a One-Night Stand With a Celebrity It not only fleshes out the show, but gives both Jessie and Tom a complexity that makes them fully realized characters rather than just romantic archetypes - and at their core, these are two people who are super into each other, but can't seem to figure out the right time to act on those feelings. The bulk of the first season undeniably belongs to Jessie, but the show also spends time with Tom too, in moments like a lunch meeting with his agent (played hilariously by Minnie Driver) or a tense post-press junket conversation with his co-star. That's where Starstruck stands out in a way that other rom-coms might necessarily not. There are some exceptions, books where only one POV occurs throughout the entire narrative, but most of the time, these stories are giving us a way to follow along with both sides of the romantic equation, pinging back and forth like a tennis match until the very end.
Many romance novels, on the other hand, do the work to put readers in the heads of both the lead and their love interest, allowing the audience to get a sense of the emotional stakes from each point of view.
We often don't see inside their heads because the lead character is our in-road to the plot, as well as the one whose emotional and romantic journey is central to the story. Most of the time, the person that the story intends for them to cross paths with is a more mysterious figure, someone who remains largely inscrutable and hard to figure out. Where many rom-coms can and do fall short is only showing us the story from the perspective of its lead - the protagonist constantly unlucky in love, coming back to their small hometown, or just having been dumped and needing to reinvent themselves. It's why I kept coming back to the fact that this show is one of the closest possible representations of a contemporary romance in a viewable format that I've ever seen. There's a lot to love about Starstruck, but one of the things it does so skillfully is put us both inside the heads of our heroine Jessie, as she navigates the ups and downs of her potential new romance, and Tom, who tries to balance both the pressures of fame and the possibility of a normal relationship for himself.
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