Netflix
Firefly Lane Premiere Review – The Story of Tully and Kate (1×01)
Firefly Lane, based on the bestselling novel by Kristin Hannah, dives into the decades-long friendship between Kate (Sarah Chalke) and Tully (Katherine Heigl).
The show, centered on a female friendship that highlights the highs, lows, and messes, is a good substitute for new seasons of Sweet Magnolias and Virgin River. The pilot episode does a good job of hooking you and making you want to return for more. We’ll get to that cliffhanger eventually, but oof, it’s a lot to unpack.
At times, the transitions between the three different timelines are confusing, but they’re necessary to paint a clear picture of who these women are, their backgrounds, and what inspired their eternal friendship… for now, at least.
Tully’s childhood was tumultuous thanks to a hippie mother, who went by the name of Cloud, and once took her to a protest in a Scooby van and lost her there. That’s really all you need to know about the lack of parental guidance in her life, which later in life fuels plenty of abandonment issues. I don’t really understand why her grandmother kept allowing Cloud to take Tully instead of just getting sole custody of the girl, but regardless, moving in with her mom on Firefly Lane led her to meet her soulmate, Kate.
Their friendship didn’t happen overnight, however.
Unlike Tully, the girl who got all the attention from everyone in school, Kate was a bit of an outcast. As Cloud put it, she looked like she “just walked out of an encyclopedia” with her thick-framed ’70s glasses. But there was something absolutely charming about her that carried over into adulthood, where, you guessed it, she still struggles to “figure it out.”
Kate and Tully were and continue to be polar opposites. But they always say opposites attract, and it’s likely what has allowed their friendship to work so well over the years.
While we don’t actually see them form a friendship during the high school timeline, we do see Kate lying for Tully when she steals cigarettes.
At this point, she also learns that Tully’s mother is a free-spirit and thus, Tully embraces the attention anywhere she can get it, especially from boys.
Meanwhile, Kate’s mother is more maternal and overprotective, which even forces her brother to hide the fact that he’s gay. Props to Tully for keeping that secret!
We also see both the ladies later in life as they dip their toes in the workforce. Tully is working at a local news station and tries to finagle Kate a job by basically ambushing her stud of a boss, Johnny Ryan.
From the moment Kate lays on him, she’s smitten, but he doesn’t immediately take notice of her. Eventually, she reveals her big crush to Tully right before the duo gets pretty handsy on the dance floor during a team outing.
This parallels the local school dance in the present where Kate once again feels like she’s in Tully’s shadow when she sees her cozying up to her PTA crush, Travis.
In the present, Tully’s fame is only amplified as she now hosts her own talk show, “The Girlfriend Hour.” Interestingly, there was a small scene in the past where her mother, high as a kite, was watching the Carol Burnett Show and noted how much she loved her. It gives you a sense that Tully pursued a career in the public eye, specifically as a talk show host, in a desperate attempt to make her mother happy/to be noticed.
But while Tully may be beloved by millions of fans who approach her on the street for hugs and autographs, she’s not happy. It’s a classic case of you can have everything you want in life and still be unhappy.
Due to her abandonment issues, Tully avoided starting a family or getting too close to anyone and instead, invested herself fully into her career.
She made herself unavailable, and that continues on when she has a one-night stand with Max, a 29-year-old she meets at a bar. After they have sex, she’s not interested in the small talk or grabbing dinner because she runs away from any type of emotional connection or commitment.
Kate, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. When we meet her in the adult-stages, she’s a single mom going through a divorce. Her daughter is lashing out by skipping school and she’s on the hunt for a job after years of unemployment.
Firefly Lane Review – A Story of Friendship, Heartbreak and Trauma Spanning Three Decades
She’s a first-hand example of a woman who put her career on hold to have a family. When she arrives at her interview for an assistant editor, audiences get a look at how hard it is for working moms to get back into the game.
The woman doing the hiring, Kimber Watts, is half her age, and not impressed with the gap on her resume. Raising a child doesn’t qualify as “experience” in the workplace.
But since Kate is desperate, she uses her friendship with Tully to land her the gig. So, essentially, she’s still starting from scratch just like she was the first time Tully landed her the job at the local news station.
Tully and Kate both lead very different lives and are in two different stages of their lives, but their struggles are both valid and something we can all relate to on some level.
They envy each other for what the other has, but the audience sees that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side; they’re both messed up in their own ways.
In the final moments of the episode, Kate, who is already upset with Tully for stealing the spotlight at the school dance, sees her daughter’s Planned Parenthood paperwork, and worse, realizes Tully signed off on them without telling her.
While Tully didn’t mean any harm, it’s still a breach of trust from the woman who is supposed to be her friend. And it once again digs into the part of Kate that feels like she can never be as good and as adored as Tully.
Which makes the final scene even harder to swallow. After the dance, Tully goes home to find a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a delivery from Max, who clearly wants to pursue things past the one-night stand. She’s impressed with the gesture when she hears a knock at the door.
You wouldn’t be the only person who thinks it’s Max, but nope, it’s Johnny, Tully’s old boss and… Kate’s ex-husband and baby daddy.
Throughout the entirety of the episode, the identity of Kate’s husband was kept under wraps, but all signs were pointing to Johnny.
However, Johnny comes to Tully’s to tell her that he made a big mistake in life, which seems to allude to the fact that he’s always had feelings for her.
This might be messier than we ever anticipated.
Kate and Tully’s friendship may be strong, but could it withstand this bombshell? And even if Tully had feelings for Johnny, she’d never do that to the only stable and true relationship in her life, would she?
Ginny and Georgia centers on the heartwarming yet extremely complicated bond between a mother and her daughter after they put down roots in a New England town.
With so many compelling storylines and incredible characters of all ages, it’s no wonder that the coming-of-age drama has become a fan favorite among Netflix audiences.
The second season of Ginny and Georgia premiered on Jan. 5, 2023, which means that a third season is likely far off, especially considering Brianne Howey, who plays Georgia, just announced her first pregnancy, which will possibly delay filming.
View this post on Instagram
Of course, Netflix has to renew the series for a third season. As of March 28, 2023, it has not given the show a green light for additional episodes.
Fans shouldn’t be too worried, however, as a renewal is very likely considering the show’s performance, the rabid fan base, and the fact that season 3 ended on such a cliffhanger—Netflix knows that fans will be clamoring for another season to see how the situation resolves itself.
As for a premiere date, well, there isn’t one just yet. Until the series is renewed and production begins, it’s a bit too difficult to come up with a date for new episodes. The season could likely arrive in February 2024 if we’re looking at the previous premieres for both seasons 1 and 2, which both debuted at the start of 2021 and 2023, respectively.
But with Howey’s pregnancy thrown into the mix, that could delay things a bit, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing if the series returned during the summer when there’s a lull in content and fans are seeking out something to binge-watch and get invested in.
Either way, when Netflix makes an official decision, you’ll be the first to know as we’ll update this article accordingly!
Until then, you can gear up for the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Riverdale, and Firefly Lane!
YOU Season 4 introduced a plethora of new characters as it revamped the series with a murder mystery format.
*Warning – stop reading if you haven’t finished YOU Season 4 – Spoilers Ahead *
The shakeup made sense considering Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) uprooted his life following the fiery events in Madre Linda that killed Love Quinn and started over in London, assuming the identity of Professor Jonathan Moore.
Rather quickly, he got pulled into an elite group thanks to his co-worker and neighbor, Malcolm Harding (Stephen Hagan), who was the season’s first victim. Joe/Jonathan naturally despised Malcolm’s group, though he did find Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), an author running for Mayor of London, to be a bit of a kindred spirit. They came from the same broken background and shared many of the same views.
As the first half of the season unraveled, Joe sought out advice from Rhys on a handful of occasions, engaging in plenty of long heart-to-hearts with him, so it was kind of shocking when it was revealed that Rhys, as audiences have come to know him, was never real.
Rhys Montrose existed, yes, but he was never friends with Joe, nor was he the Eat the Rich Killer. The version of Rhys that Joe bonded with was a hallucination conjured up by his subconscious to protect himself and eliminate his darker, more deranged thoughts.
You. (L-R) Ed Speleers as Rhys, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 410 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
For much of the season, we saw Joe desperately trying to set himself free from Rhys’ grasp. At first, he saw him as public enemy #1, who somehow figured out Joe’s real identity and roped him into a murder spree by threatening to frame him for the deaths if Joe refused to participate.
However, once Joe realized that Rhys was a figment of his imagination, he began to look for ways to silence the evil little voice forever, while also trying to figure out a plan to cover up the death of the real Rhys Montrose.
Joe was tasked with killing the mayoral candidate, who he assumed at the time was the Eat the Rich Killer, by Kate’s (Charlotte Ritchie) father, Tom Lockwood. When he arrived at Rhys’ secret countryside hideout and tied him up, he was infuriated that Rhys claimed not to know who he was, nor would he admit to kidnapping Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). Eventually, Joe’s rage and anger took over, and he “accidentally” killed Rhys, which is when fake Rhys showed up and revealed that Joe was having a semi-psychotic break.
In the end, Joe’s suicide attempt ensured that his hallucinations were forever gone, though he did embrace the darkness he was trying so hard to snuff out, making him more dangerous than ever.
As for the real Rhys Montrose’s killer, he pinned it all on poor Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), a fan of Rhys’s from the beginning, who flew too close to the sun in her attempts to bring down Joe Goldberg. If only she just listened to Marienne’s advice.
A huge congrats to the YOU team for pulling off yet another jaw-dropping twist, and to both Badgley and Speleers for completely immersing themselves in their dual characters.
Just when you thought you figured out where the season was headed, YOU pulls out the rug from under you yet again.
I’m definitely starting to feel the whiplash that Joe/Jonathan must be feeling right about now.
Things have gone from crazy to crazier rather quickly, as Rhys unveiled his true plan—along with how Joe is involved—while Joe came out victorious in front of the elite group once again, and all while a new suspect started piecing things together and realizing that Joe knows way more than he’s led on.
While Joe spent numerous hours trying to figure out a plan to get close to Rhys, Rhys just appeared at Joe’s place one night without so much as lifting a finger. Joe may think he’s the invisible one in the city, but for a man who’s so well-known and loved, Rhys seems to get around without anyone noticing.
And he made the rules of the game very clear—either Joe finds someone to frame for all the deaths or he goes down as the Eat-the-Rich killer, which isn’t exactly ideal. A little incentive goes a long way, so while Joe tried to distance himself initially, he couldn’t shake the desire for self-preservation and took the bait. He took the task rather seriously as it was either kill or be killed; he knew someone had to go down for it, but it had to be the right person.
With time running out, he genuinely began to consider Connie, but despite being an irrelevant character, he couldn’t justify pinning it on someone who was struggling with addiction and trying to turn their life around. Connie wasn’t a threat to anyone, except for maybe himself, so Joe couldn’t justify destroying his life.
But Dawn, well, she fell right into his lap. The few times we saw her snapping photos of the elite, and focusing on Joe–including when she spotted him at Rhys’ mayoral rally—I was convinced that she recognized him from his previous life. And that seems to be what the series wanted me to think so that they could pull a fast one on us because when Dawn pulled Phoebe aside to a “safe room” to keep her protected from the killer, it was revealed that Dawn was just an obsessive stalker who was connived that she was friends with the elite, Phoebe in particular. Dawn was a threat to a lot of people, so Joe took advantage of it. He framed her by planting Simon’s ear in her belongings, and since no one would ever believe a word she said over Phoebe’s accounts of what happened, Dawn couldn’t prove her innocence. Plus, she made an ideal suspect since she was at nearly every single event where a murder occurred as she was stalking the group. I mean, it couldn’t have been any more perfect if Joe had tried to plan it himself.
You. Ed Speleers as Rhys in episode 406 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
However, his heroics did raise some questions from Nadia, his student and the lover of all murder mysteries. She noticed that Jonathan seemed to be at the center of every single scenario, oftentimes being championed as a hero, though he’s not actually connected to any of these people in any meaningful way. It’s a dangerous thing to play detective, especially when you’re setting your sights on Joe Goldberg. Jonathan seems to like Nadia, but if she threatened him, I don’t think Joe would hesitate to take her down. Self-preservation is his M.O., remember?
Once Joe thought he finally got Rhys off of his back by framing Dawn, he decided to give into his desires and pursue a relationship with Kate. Honestly, Kate makes some really poor decisions, starting with just accepting Jonathan for who he is now and promising never to ask questions about his past. She wants someone to see her for who she is in the moment so badly that she’s letting logic take a backseat. Why would someone want to deny their past so badly unless they did something truly unforgivable? Kate wants to shed her past because of her connection to her father and she thinks that makes her and Jonathan equal, but they are not the same.
By the time she realizes the truth about who Joe is, it might be too late.
As for Rhys, did Joe think he was really going to get rid of him that easily? Rhys has always wanted a friend to help him get to the finish line so to speak. He believes that they are the same, so he wasn’t going to just let Joe slip away.
And while his motive wasn’t evident at first, he seems hellbent on taking out those who don’t deserve their success and wealth. The three victims, Malcolm, Simon, and Gemma, all threatened his mayoral run in some way, so they were taken care of, and now, he’s setting his sights on the ultimate villain–Kate’s father. She may have a complicated relationship with her tycoon dad, but I don’t think Kate would ever want to see anything bad happen to him, let alone at the hands of the man she’s in love with.
However, Rhys doesn’t seem to give Joe much of a choice as he still holds all of the cards. One might think that Joe could just handle this in the same way he always does, but well, you can’t just try to kill a killer. He’d see that coming from miles away. Joe needs to be strategic and deliberate in his plan, so for now, he has to play along. I, for one, am curious to see what all the hubbub is about Kate’s father–is he really as terrible as she makes him out to be?
As for Rhys, what is the catch? Fans were disappointed with the first half of the season since his reveal as the killer was obvious—and his motives, including his desire to kill Kate’s father–are exactly shocking or game-changing. What are we missing?
What did you think of the episode?
Quiz23 hours agoQUIZ: Which ‘Riverdale’ Villain Are You?
Alaska Daily3 weeks agoAlaska Daily Review – Tell a Reporter Not to Do Something and Suddenly It’s a Party (208)
Abbott Elementary'2 weeks agoAbbott Elementary Recap – A Very Abbott Festival (219)
Coffee Table News3 weeks ago‘Roswell, New Mexico’ Actress Jeanine Mason Shares Engagement News
Alaska Daily2 weeks agoAlaska Daily Review – Rush to Judgment (109)
Superman & Lois2 weeks agoSuperman & Lois Season 3 Premiere Review – Closer
Netflix2 days agoWhen Is Season 3 of ‘Ginny and Georgia’ Coming Out?
Superman & Lois1 week agoSuperman & Lois Review – Uncontrollable Forces (302)