'Love Story' Is Actually a Horror Story

Cannonball with Wesley Morris

The New York Times

News, News Commentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.7 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The latest from the Ryan Murphy television fun house is an unquestionable hit. It’s also a ’90s nostalgia bomb. People are trying to eat, shop and dress like John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. They’re obsessed. But with what, exactly? Because at first, “Love Story” has all the hallmarks of a ’90s sitcom — a young working woman in the city, enjoying her freedom till a meet-cute with the one. Only in Murphy’s version, that’s the moment this turns into another one of his American Horror stories. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball today.
0:09.6	I imagine it's tough seeing how unhappy you make me.
0:12.6	You know what?
0:14.1	It is.
0:19.0	Like a lot of people, I am watching Love Story.
0:23.0	It comes out of the Ryan Murphy Fun House.
0:25.6	It's about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset, how she meets this man, had this kind of momentary fairy tale relationship, and then it takes this turn.
0:36.4	And people have just been really obsessed with what a 90s
0:41.2	nostalgia bomb this show turns out to be. The soundtrack, the clothes, the places they ate dinner.
0:50.4	It is just sending people off to dress like JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset.
0:57.0	People have been obsessed.
0:59.7	But, you know, I have been watching this thing and thinking a lot about why we're watching it at all, what it means to watch it, what the show is doing, to try to complicate our relationship to like public love
1:13.7	and this particular relationship especially.
1:17.2	And as this show is ending, I just wanna think about what we watched.
1:22.3	So Sasha Weiss, my friend,
1:24.2	and The New York Times Magazine's culture editor.
1:30.0	She's here, and we're just going to talk about love story.
1:37.6	Sasha, thanks for coming on.
1:38.5	Thanks for doing this.
1:40.2	Oh, thank you for having me.
1:46.5	First of all, we should just sort of like situate ourselves in the world of this show and and the time it is representing, which is the early 90s to basically 1999. What do John F. Kennedy Jr.
1:55.8	And Carolyn Beset Kennedy, what do they mean to you? Where were you? Does it mean anything? And is this show
	...

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