High Fidelity Is a Proper Modern Love Letter to a Gen X Rom-Com Classic
Photo Courtesy of Hulu
There’s a moment in the pilot (“Top Five Heartbreaks”) of Hulu’s High Fidelity where Robin “Rob” Brooks (Zoe Kravitz, also an executive producer on the series), explains to the audience how most people think her Brooklyn-based record store Championship Vinyl is either a “relic” or simply a haven for hipsters. It’s an excellent point to be made in a story about a record store owner in 2020, one that couldn’t have really been made 20 years ago when the High Fidelity feature film came out, even when the film still acknowledged just how difficult it was to make a living off of a record store even then. At this point, it would be nigh impossible if not for the reboom of vinyl (and even audio cassettes now, to an extent), which is why it at least has to be addressed before the show goes on to spend a considerable amount of time inside its version of Championship Vinyl for the next nine episodes.
The other thing that seemingly needs to be addressed when discussing Hulu’s High Fidelity—a television adaptation of both the 1995 Nick Hornby novel and the blueprint-creating 2000 film starring John Cusack—is the fact that the music-loving, list-obsessed, romantic failure known as Rob Gordon in this story is a woman. An African-American, millennial, sexually fluid woman instead of a white, Gen Xer straight man. It’s that specific change that pretty much makes High Fidelity worth revisiting in a modern context, because not only does it open up the dating avenues and backstories a bit more—not only is one of Rob’s Top Five Heartbreaks in this version a woman,* there’s no story about her breaking up with someone because they wouldn’t let her pressure them into sex—it acknowledges in a way how much a character like Cusack’s Rob couldn’t work today in the same presentation. The movie captured a very specific space and time, where a character like Rob made sense as the “alternative” romantic comedy lead (despite being played by anything but, in the form of John Cusack); it is a time capsule that the series rightfully doesn’t try to open or replicate, or worse, replace.
* With this narrative choice, there’s a conversation to be had though about the choice to only show Rob interested in one woman at any point in the season, compared to all the men she’s interested in, hooked up with, or dated. It’s a choice that comes across more like an option just to check off the item of “Rob dating a girl” than of actual representation or making a statement about Rob’s sexuality.
In fact, the 2018 Vice article; ”‘High Fidelity’ Created a Hero for a Generation of Sociopathic ‘Nice Guys’” perfectly explained by a rehash of the film instead of a new take like this wouldn’t have worked. Addressing how much the movie even acknowledged that Cusack’s Rob was not someone to look up to, it added, “Rob Gordon was not a character to be admired. Rob Gordon was, in fact, a terrible human—a sociopathic womanizer, a stalker ex, and a shitty boyfriend.” Of course, because he was played by Cusack, he was much more sympathetic that Hornby had written him, and much more than the story was trying to paint him as, given his actions—even when he tried to make himself look better in his monologues to the audience.
Zoe Kravitz and John Cusack are about as different as two actors could possibly be, but they both share that magnetism that makes you want to follow them down this path, even though you know it won’t end well. Considering how much of High Fidelity—both the series and the movie—is just Rob monologuing to the audience, casting that role was easily the most integral decision made when it came right down to it. Asshole or not, Rob has to be a captivating enough storyteller—even when he or she isn’t even the greatest character—to make people stick around. That exists here just like it did 20 years ago, which is the most necessary part of the equation. In fact, with Hulu’s High Fidelity, it’s almost like a magic trick, as Kravitz is immensely likable as Rob, so much so that the show is able to lull the audience into a false sense of security about the inevitable fact that the character—by nature of the catalyst of the story in the first place—is, in fact, “an asshole,” just like the source material. We know from the very beginning though that she’s a pretentious whiskey drinker—on top of the pretentious music nerd component—who just can’t quit smoking.
The difference is, Kravitz’s Rob isn’t the cantankerous Gen Xer that Cusack’s Rob was, which is for the best, because while there was a perfect time and place for that version of the character in 2000, it reads a whole lot different in 2020. There’s a possibility an updated take on that attitude that could work for Kravitz’s Rob if this were a film remake, but over the span of 10 episodes and then potentially more, the key is to make people want to continue to watch this character. And, to root for her forming healthy attachments, which is where the added inclusion of Jake Lacy’s nice guy character Clyde comes in—as Jake Lacy is the go-to actor for playing nice guys in rom-coms without devolving into the pejorative Nice Guy territory that the original Rob Gordon actually existed in—as the obviously good option in a sea of less good and flat-out wrong options. Instead, while this Rob definitely is prone to fall into those moments of simply checking out from being engaged in humanity, she’s far from a curmudgeon set in her ways. Because, again, this is 2020, and while Rob’s style might suggest Gen Xer at times—and is often even taken directly from the wardrobe Cusack wore in the movie—that detached attitude would be nonexistent for someone like her, as much as people want to conflate being a Millennial with not caring about anything.
Because the vibe of Kravitz’s Rob is a whole lot different from Cusack’s Rob, it also allows for an aspect of the series that’s the perhaps truest objective improvement** over the movie: her friendship with her employees at Championship Vinyl, Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Simon (David Holmes). Unlike in the film, where it seems like Rob barely even likes Barry and Dick (who are the one-to-one comparisons to Cherise and Simon), here, the trio have a genuine friendship that immediately makes the world of the series fuller, even if it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Series showrunners Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka previously wrote for Ugly Betty and Hart of Dixie, two female-led shows that understood both working with rom-com conventions (and subversions) and providing supporting characters with enough characterization and autonomy to make the world truly feel real and lived in. (Hart of Dixie was also, legitimately, the most underrated rom-com series of the past decade.) Those are the learned skills and strengths that they brought to their own series in High Fidelity, despite taking place in a more real, less bright and sunny world than those particular shows.