'Mammals' and the Fine Art of Foreshadowing
I am shamed to have enjoyed something starring James Corden.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER (that I often forget to include): This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
Back when the world was young, James Corden guest-starred on an episode of Doctor Who, playing The Doctor’s confused, temporary roommate who was crushing on a girl. I thought him delightful in the role, and thought well of him1. Over the years since, of course, I’ve seen plenty of reliable reporting that Corden is, in fact, a bit of a jerk2, which has soured me a little on him. But I am nothing if not a magnanimous man, and also sometimes you just need a TV show to watch while you’re eating dinner, so I tuned into Mammals on Amazon Prime despite Corden’s presence.
And it’s good! Not great, but actually pretty interesting, and fairly well-done. Corden plays an up-and-coming chef named Jamie married to a beautiful woman named Amandine (Melia Kreiling). While on a vacation, Jamie discovers that Amandine has been having multiple affairs with at least three different men, and this sends their lives into a tailspin3.
Initially, Jamie pursues a secret investigation, enlisting his brother-in-law and best friend Jeff4 to find out what he can about Amandine’s lovers. We get a flashback to how they met: Jamie was working in the kitchen of a billionaire’s yacht when Amandine, engaged to the billionaire’s son, arrived for a party. After realizing her billionaire boyfriend might not be so great and having a magical moment of connection with Jamie, she texts him and invites him to her hotel room even though he has a significant other5. After their assignation, she goes home and pulls a slick trick, making her billionaire boyfriend confess his infidelity, and races off to begin a “magical” life with Jamie.
The show is essentially a mystery, but it works well. It meanders a bit and there are some aspects of it that don’t quite land, but overall it’s a good effort. And it’s elevated by one fact: Jez Butterworth understands foreshadowing.
The Whale
Jamie and Amandine share a whale-specific moment that lines up with Amandine’s obsession with her favorite book, Moby Dick, so Mammals is remembered by many as the crazy show that ends with a whale landing in the middle of a London street and it’s difficult to tell if it’s something we’re meant to believe really happened or if it’s purely metaphor and imagination6. And yes, the use of extended fantasy and metaphorical elements is a bit heavy-handed, but the core of this show is a mystery about infidelity and how it can cause you to question your entire existence.
But the show also plays a bit of sleight-of-hand with the audience. Initially, Jamie seems like the wronged hero, a good guy whose beautiful wife has betrayed him. In fact, we’re collectively eager to buy into this dynamic because Jamie is so much less attractive and worldly than Amandine, which means of course she must ruin him—he’s essentially Icarus, flying too close to the Sun7.
When we get to the backstory of the relationship, this is reinforced: Amandine pursues Jamie, convinced by cryptic signs that they are meant to be, and only tricks her fiance into admitting his cheating when it’s convenient for her to do so. In these flashbacks, Jamie is presented as an easygoing doofus of sorts, clearly amazed that an attractive woman like Amandine would take an interest in him8.
This serves to bury two important pieces of information that become crucial at the denouement of the story, when Amandine coldly tells Jamie why she chose the men she slept with, and then shows him video of him cheating on her from a year before. It recontextualizes the entire story, suddenly thrusting Jamie into the role of villain—he’s a man who not only cheated on his wife, but then acted incredibly butthurt when she cheated on him, without once acknowledging that perhaps he was living in an enormous glass house9.
But it also makes perfect sense, because we’ve already seen that this is exactly how the characters behave. It’s all been shown to us.
The Doom of Men
When Jamie and Amandine meet, Jamie has a significant other—who he then cheats on with Amandine, if only for one night. He and Amandine sleep together and then, presumably, he breaks up with his girlfriend.
When Jamie and Amandine meet, she’s in a long-term relationship with the billionaire’s son, and she ends things by grifting him: She takes off her own panties, shows them to him, claims she found them in their bathroom and demands to know who he’s sleeping with. When he offers sputtering apologies it no longer matters that she’s tricking him, she’s heard the truth10.
When Jamie and Amandine end, it’s the same scenario. Jamie cheats on the woman he’s committed to, Amandine tricks the man she’s committed to. It’s a wonderful moment of bookending, and it shows the writers (Jez Butterworth and James Richardson) had a firm grasp on their characters. Jamie is a man who has cheated, so the fact that he does cheat makes sense, and is only a plot twist because of how skillfully we, the audience have been fooled11. Amandine is a woman who hangs back and gathers evidence before launching a sting operation when she thinks she’s been betrayed, and the only reason we don’t suspect a sting when she’s making Jamie miserable is because we’re tied to Jamie’s POV, and thus see only the monstrousness of her infidelity—not the reasons that might have driven it.
It’s a solid piece of writing. Mammals isn’t exactly brilliant, but it’s pretty damn good. The characters feel like real people, but they don’t simply offer us a simple, straightforward narrative—like annoying real people everywhere, they keep secrets and offer up the narrative they want us to see. And yes, sometimes that involves a lot of whales and also too for some reason an extended Coco Chanel reverie, but hey, they can’t all be winners12.13
I know that if I ever cheated on The Duchess I would be murdered. That’s it—there would be no extended metaphors or attempts to hide the crime. She would murder me and then sit there with blood dripping until the cops showed up. It’s surprisingly freeing knowledge.
Next week: The Menu and the failed lampshade.
The fact that it’s so easy to confuse an actor’s practiced charm and dialog written for them by professional writers for actual charm and other things (like wit or morality) is the Doom of Men.
Although, to be fair, I am pretty sure if I ever become even mildly famous I will very quickly be revealed as a grade-A jerk as well. Because, in case I’m being too subtle, I am a grade-A jerk. It’s just hidden by obscurity and poverty right now.
To be fair to Corden, the casting of this show is clearly meant to convey that Amandine is miles and miles out of Jamie’s league, so I can imagine how demoralizing those convos with his agent must be. “Hello, Jim? They need someone to play a pudgy loser no one would believe for a hot second could snag Melia. You’re perfect for it, YOU PUDGY LOSER!” I might also be verbally abusive to wait staff if I had to hear that every damn second of my life.
We Jeffs make the best best friendos, trust me. We’re terrific, unlike the evil Geoffs, who you cannot—and should not—trust.
I am contractually required by The Duchess to say here that if you show up at the hotel room in this scenario, you have already cheated and can expect to have all of your manuscripts burned by the time you return, whether or not you actually have sex.
This also describes my weekends.
Like me last year when I attempted to drink an entire bottle of Japanese whiskey. I came very close, and almost died, but in the end failed, to my eternal shame.
This part hit me, because I am a doofus who can’t believe The Duchess took an interest in him.
What’s great about this is that not only does Jamie not consider for one second that Amandine might have a reason for her behavior, but neither do we, the audience. We’re psychically linked to Jamie and hoisted on a shared petard.
The Duchess pulls similar stings on me, but instead of infidelity she’s always trying to determine whether I ate all of her cinnamon rolls or if our cat Prince Harry has developed opposable thumbs as I have claimed. We’re essentially a Disney cartoon around here. Except with whiskey.
The Duchess once told me she doesn’t worry about me cheating on her because I am too lazy to have an affair. She is not wrong.
Like many scripted entertainments in the Age of the Algo, a lot of Mammals feels like 15 minutes of vamping because a server somewhere demands that each episode be a certain length.
This is also the title of my memoir: JEFF SOMERS, WRITER: THEY CAN’T ALL BE WINNERS.
For no particular reason I feel like listening to The Fine Art of Surfacing by The Boomtown Rats.
Dates and times when you finished off The Duchess’s cinnamon rolls. I’m sure it’s a long list.