Stream It or Skip It: ‘The Interestings,’ Amazon’s Take on the Acclaimed Novel

Here at Decider, we’ve committed ourselves to watching the pilots of pilot season and reporting back to you on whether or not you should see these brand new shows all the way through. We’ve even drawn up a super specific, highly scientific (totally kidding) rating system. Below, we clue you in on everything you need to know about Amazon’s new pilot The Interestings. Based on the acclaimed novel by Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings tells the story of six friends from a creative arts camp who bond themselves to each other in 1974. By 1995, their relationships have shifted, altered, and in some cases ended entirely. Traversing three separate decades, the pilot starts out examining just how these ambitious, intelligent, highly emotional teens got from one place in their lives to another. All while some of them have harbored a secret for 20 years.

The Interestings pilot is streaming on Prime Video now, part of Amazon’s pilot system, where viewers are asked to stream and review new shows to help determine which ones will make it to series.

A Guide to Our Rating System

Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.

Opening Shot: The pilot begins with an epigram: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” It’s a quote from Kierkegaard, though its not credited as such, and it sets the stage for the multiple timelines of the series. The first shot we get of actual show sees teenage Julie Jacobson being driven by her mom (Jessica Hecht!) and her mean older sister to a creative arts camp in 1974. Janis Ian’s “Seventeen” plays on the 8-track (!!). That’s a lotta nostalgia coming to you at once, plus we learn that Jules recently lost her father. This is a girl searching for a second family.

The Gist: Jules finds that second family in a close-knit group of camp friends. Ash Wolf is the prettiest and kindest of the bunch; she’s dating Jonah, whose mom is a famous singer-songwriter. Ethan is the chubby, funny one who can animate cartoons. Goodman is Ash’s brother, a blond and terribly handsome sort who’s dating Cathy, who wants to be a ballet dancer. At first blush, Jules is too much of a wallflower for these friends, who spout big ideas about living life loudly and importantly — and who dub themselves The Interestings in an only half-ironic bout of self-regard, but she’s soon ingratiated herself into the group.

From there, the story bounces around on three timelines (three and a half, technically): 1974, that summer at camp; a brief flash of 1976, when Goodman has done something (or has been accused of doing something) terrible and is wanted by the police. The Wolfs have sent him away to avoid prosecution, and Jules is the only one Ash lets in on the secret. The 1995 timeline is the show’s “present.” The relationships have changed now. Goodman (Matt Barr) is out of the picture and has been for nearly 20 years; Ash (Jessica Paré) and Jules (Lauren Ambrose) are still the only ones who know he’s hiding in Iceland. Ash is now married to Ethan (David Krumholtz), a wildly successful creator of animated TV. Jonah (Corey Cott) came out of the closet and has eschewed his old music aspirations. Jules, similarly, ditched her acting dreams and is a not-all-that-great psychiatrist. Cathy (Jessica Collins) has been estranged from the group since whenever Goodman did what he did, and she’s also discarded ballet for the banking industry. (That she explicitly mentions getting promoted to VP at Cantor Fitzgerald makes you wonder if things will progress past 1995 and closer to 9/11 at some point.) There’s also an intermittent timeline in 1985, where we see the beginnings of Jules’ relationship with Dennis (Gabriel Ebert), to whom she is unhappily married in 1995.

Our Take: This kind of group-of-intellectual-friends-harbor-dark-secret plot has been carried out a lot (I’m actually reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History as I review The Interestings, a funny coincidence), but I can’t deny that I am very intrigued to find out what Goodman did (or was accused of doing) in ’76 to send him on the run. The pilot — adapted from Wolitzer’s novel by Lynnie Greene and Richard Levine — does a good job of hopping around the timeline, with each jump telling you just a bit more about the relationships between these characters. Ash and Ethan are an unlikely pair; she used to be with Jonah before he came out; Jules was the one Ethan had his eye on, but she wasn’t interested; Jules and Goodman kissed one day at camp, but he was dating Cathy. Crucially, it’s not just the romantic relationships that are at stake here; the pilot seems to be greatly concerned with spiritual matches. Jules’ adult relationship with Dennis is so fraught because he has ambitions far lower than hers. These Interestings all has big dreams, and it’s only Ethan who’s realized them. So while the mystery of Goodman sits at the center of the events that unfold, Greene and Levine place even greater influence on the dimmed aspirations of the characters.

Sex and Skin: For a pilot about the romantic lives of teenagers away at camp, surpringly little. We don’t see anything during Jules and Dennis’ exuberant first sexual encounter, though we see a lotta Gabriel Ebert’s butt post-coitally. It’s pretty good!

Parting Shot: In 1995, Ash has secretly traveled to Iceland to sneak her brother back into the country under an assumed identity so he can see their dying mother. Jules frets to Ethan that she doesn’t think their marriage is going to make it, and we start to wonder if Ethan still harbors old camp feelings for Jules.

Sleeper Star: You can’t really call Lauren Ambrose a sleeper star. Not after five seasons of standout work on Six Feet Under. But it’s very nice to see her back in a featured role. If anything, we’re keeping an eye on Matt Barr, an actor who has thus far been unable to find that breakout role. Goodman seems to have enough secrets to him to qualify.

Most Pilot-y Line: “It’s not like they think they’re better than everyone. They just sort of are.”

Our Call: Call us intrigued. The bonds and fractures among a group of childhood friends should be interesting to examine, and the triple timelines are intriguing without seeming too much like a puzzle box that the audience needs to figure out. Ambrose, Krumholtz, and Paré — who was always better on Mad Men than Megan-hating fans gave her credit for — lead a cast of strong performers, and the acclaimed source material gives us some confidence that it’s not all going to fall apart. Here’s to an Episode 2!