Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Kristoffer Borgli, ‘The Drama‘ begins with a happy ending for Charlie and Emma. Their meet-cute at a cafe turned into a seemingly perfect relationship, and soon, they are engaged. With just one week left in their wedding, there are a lot of things on their mind. For the most part, things seem to be going well, but then everything changes when they share the worst thing they have done. From here, things spiral pretty quickly. By the end, things get so much worse that one can’t help but wonder how their relationship will ever survive this drama. Still, the story ends on a more hopeful note than one could have expected.
Charlie and Emma’s Relationship Has Survived the Worst
As the events of the wedding week unfold, it becomes clear that Charlie and Emma have never been at such a chaotic point in their relationship. All this time, Emma kept the part about her almost going forward with a school shooting a secret because she worried how it might affect her relationship. Now that her worst secret is out, the entire thing is out of her hands. In fact, the majority of what happens next depends on how Charlie reacts to this information. As if the stress of the wedding wasn’t enough, the revelation of Emma’s worst secret throws him into a crisis, as he wonders whether he even knows who Emma really is. And interestingly, it is his spiraling that actually worsens an otherwise resolvable situation.
Charlie’s stressing over how he should react to Emma’s revelation leads him to kiss his colleague, though he stops before things can get further. And then everything falls apart at the wedding, when the part about his cheating comes to light right when Emma is gripped by the paranoia that Rachel has told everyone about her secret. Charlie makes things worse in his speech when he reveals his infidelity while also almost outing Emma’s secret to everyone. As a result, he is hit by his colleague’s boyfriend, and Emma is nowhere to be seen. She is not at home, she doesn’t answer his calls, and Charlie believes that he has truly lost her at this point. Because even with all the spiraling and the doubts and whatnot, he still loved Emma.
In the end, he goes to the diner where he and Emma had decided to go after their wedding. As he sits down, he keeps hoping for her to show up. But when she does, she passes by him, completely disregarding him. Then she sits next to him, and he begins to apologize. She introduces herself, showing that she is ready to give him another chance. The fact that Emma came to the diner shows that she has decided to overlook his infidelity. She knows how people can get when they are at their lowest, showing the empathy that Charlie talked about in his wedding speech (but then erased). However, things can move forward only when Charlie, too, is ready to let the past be in the past, to forgive and forget Emma’s transgressions, and not to spiral anymore.
Emma and Charlie Give Their Relationship Another Chance
Emma and Charlie’s story begins with a second chance. When Charlie spots Emma in a cafe, he tries to talk to her about a book she’s reading. He doesn’t know she is deaf in one ear, which is why she doesn’t listen to a word he says. He walks away awkwardly, but then returns to apologize, worried that he may have made her uncomfortable. She notices him in the middle of his apology, realizing that he has been talking to her all this time. Once the confusion is cleared, Charlie feels better and is ready to back off. He would have walked away, relieved that she didn’t think he was some creep and mostly embarrassed for how it all went down. The story would have ended here if it weren’t for Emma giving him another chance.
She asks him to try his line again, and this time, she will get the earbud out of her good ear and listen to him. The conversation turns into a date, which is where another awkward thing pops up. Charlie had approached Emma under the guise of having read the same book she was reading. So, when she starts talking about the book’s ending, he has no idea how to contribute to the conversation. He tries to come up with some generic answers, but eventually, he confesses that he never really read the book. This is when Emma offers him another clean slate. They reintroduce themselves, and the part about the book is forgotten. It is fair to assume that this becomes a thing in their relationship, where one (especially Emma) keeps giving the other a chance to do over when they have messed up.
This becomes more evident when Emma tries to do so when their sexual life is affected by the revelation she made about the worst thing she had done, or rather, almost done. But the thing is that this do-over thing only works when Charlie goes along with it. And this time, he refuses to do it. With all that is going on in his mind, he knows it is not easy to simply get it out of his mind and begin anew. And perhaps because they couldn’t do it this time, things unravel to the point that it seems the end of their relationship. In the end, however, Emma gives Charlie another do-over, and as they reintroduce themselves, it becomes clear that they are ready for the next phase of their lives together.
Read More: Where Was The Drama Filmed? All Shooting Locations
You must be logged in to post a comment.