4. Samantha’s backstory and its effect
While throughout the series, we are treated to insights into the girls’ past and families, it is not until season three that we pull back the curtain on Samantha’s backstory. From the pieces of the puzzle we are given, Alderton feels it has the tone of ‘small town girl who broke out’. Over two episodes, we know that, at Samantha’s age, her mother had three children and a drunk husband (as well as a rather foul cough remedy); during their time in L.A.—having been invited to a party at the Playboy Mansion (of course)—Samantha reveals that she used to read her father’s Playboys. Easy enough would it be to call these biographical details random, the hosts view them instead as details that flesh out the character of Samantha. Reading her father’s Playboys, we can imagine the images she’d have seen as an external locus of identity, modelling her own image of sexual freedom and attractiveness from them. By relating to her father and the images of his own sexual desire, Samantha identifies with him (possibly a precursor to her ‘sex like a man’ attitude in the pilot). This subsequently frees herself from the potential shackles of a life like her mother’s. “It’s all very Truman Capote,” Alderton remarks.
Concludes over the page…