Lessons in Chemistry

Hi everyone an welcome, Today we will be talking about the show Lessons in Chemistry. Fun Fact, Sugar Hill was a real place in California and just like in the show it was occupied by black people who were doing pretty well for themselves and government decided to build the Santa Monica freeway where it was. This show came out in 2023 and stars Brie Larson, Lewis Pullman, and Aja Naomi King and was created by Lee Eisenberg. So without further ado let’s get right into it.

Lessons in Chemistry follows the brilliant chemist Elizabeth Zott who longs to work in the male dominated field of chemistry in the 1960’s . We see her journey of not only trying to be a chemist but we also see what leads her to host her own feminist cooking show and how she ends up helping so many women.

Lessons in Chemistry is a period drama. It has similar vibes to Dickinson, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or The Queens Gambit.

Lessons in Chemistry is based off a book and while I didn’t read the book even though I do have it, I was drawn in because I really enjoy Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman so I decided to give it a try. Dramas for me can be a hit or miss for me sometimes but with this show it was an amazing little show that they put together and had me on the edge of my seat waiting to know what was going to happen.

Brie Larson was the perfect person to lead this show and I loved seeing her characters growth throughout the series from opening up to Calvin to having a child and learning how to become a great mom and an inspiration for women. I love cooking and seeing her mix cooking with her knowledge of chemistry to perfect recipes was so smart to me and I thought it was something that was just so cool. Her cooking eventually leads her to get this show and on that show she gets to further show how good of a cook she is and some of the recipes she’s perfected but also explain why she’s using certain things in her recipe.

While her show focuses on cooking she also incorporates some feminist ideas into the show which would’ve been frowned upon in that time but I loved. We see her wearing pants instead of a dress, She’s wearing a lab coat with no interest of being sexy, she gets Tampax to be her show sponsor, she talks about how hard it is to be a woman and adds in a line for the kids to set up the table so that there mom gets a break after hearing from a mom how tired she is, and encourages more women to chase there dreams even if they’ve been told that there place is home watching the house. We also see her use her platform to bring awareness to the racist attack on her neighborhood and encourages people to go to a protest to help out those in need stop the building of this freeway. I just loved seeing these things because in the beginning of the show she was just annoyed that women would be interested in doing things that entertain men and would kind of judge them but as the show progressed we see how she finds a different way to explain that they have their own life and can do what they want with it.      

I love how they choose the right time to explain certain things that help the viewer to understand Elizabeth because after the first episode you may wonder why she acts the way she does and we see the negative and the positive. In the beginning she hates being in a room with a close door with a man which is not shocking to be honest but we find out that its because she was raped by one when she was trying to get into a PHD program which also explained why she only has a masters because instead of reprimanding him they wanted to scold her, she likes chemistry and is hesitant about religion because of her brother who introduced chemistry to her and let her know that what her preacher dad was doing wasn’t some great religious miracle but a scam and the brother was using chemistry to fool people, and we see how she doesn’t talk to her parents due to them being the reason her brother kills himself by them constantly trying to push him into the closet which led him to kill himself and I think that’s also why she was so closed off. After all that she’s been through and all the women she’s helped I thought it was such a pleasant ending for her to complete a dream that she put on hold in the beginning of the show which was to get her PHD in chemistry and it was just the perfect place to end the show.

Lewis Pullman was great as Calvin who I feel like was perfect for Elizabeth and probably one of the only white men in the show who was decent. He was kind of oblivious to what was going on in the world but he didn’t judge people by what they look like or their background and was really supportive of Elizabeth. I loved how in the later episodes we learn more about his past and even his parents and how even though he didn’t care for religion he became pen pals with someone studying religion and they offered up different perspectives to different things and gave each other some good advice. It was sad that so many saw his fame and tried to take advantage by saying they were his parents even though they weren’t and then when his real mom was writing to him she got lost in the piles with the fakes and she saved everything of his but never got to meet him. It was sad that he never got to see what Elizabeth would accomplish, meet his daughter or meet his mom.  One of the most shocking moments was when he died because I was truly rooting for him and Elizabeth and was so sad that they would not be able to complete a life together and to make it even worse she found a ring in his belongings indicating that he was planning on proposing.

Mad was funny and independent just like her mom. Im glad that she wasn’t afraid to ask questions to learn more about her father which led her to find an old friend of his and her grandmother.

Harriet was brilliantly played by Aja Naomi King and I just loved how her character was so set on making sure her neighbor hood was protected and did so while raising a family and still being so nice to everyone. I love how Calvin and Elizabeth had no one and she really stepped up to be their family and helped them both through many things and she didn’t ask for much in return. Her story of working almost 10 years to stop the freeway from being built only for one man to change his mind last minute even though he said he would support not building it is something that many black protestors have gone through throughout the years while trying to protect their community and try to do things in a peaceful way and think they’re making headway only for someone to come in and crush there dreams. Harriet knew the risk but she was determined and I love how she was willing to fight for what she believed in.

I loved seeing the part of the episode with the dog talking. It was sad to see his perspective but then also made me wonder if our pets feel the sadness that we feel and what it would be like to be in their head.               

I feel like the 60’s was the perfect setting of this show to display the things women and people of color go through and what they have to do to try to change their circumstances even if it is difficult. Nearly every episode ended on a sad note and while that could happen with a show set in  modern times, it was partly  because circumstances surrounding the time period or just the situations that the characters were dealt. There’s a quote at the end that stood out to me which was think of your life, you can’t anticipate the moments , its only when you look backwards when you see how its all connected which was one of my favorite moments because as cliche as it sounds, things happen for a reason and as much as you may want to change things in the past you can’t and some good things come out of that and some bad but if you look back on your life you can see this invisible string that connects it all. I try to live without regretting too much in the past because I can’t change it and so I think that’s why I loved this quote so much.

My fave part of this show is when we see a flash back of Calvin reading Great expectations and we see Elizabeth asking him why does he read the book over and over again because nothing changes. Calvin tells her to look at it from a different angle and explains that the book doesn’t change but there person reading it does. As a person who rewatches and rereads a lot of stuff I connected with that because I may have seen something 50 times but because of how i’ve changed from the last time whether that be minor or major, I notice something different or interpret something differently when I’m digesting the media. I think in this show its important too because it shows that people grow and change and I think Elizabeth connects this to chemistry in then when she is talking about the only constant is change which in the instance of rereading a book the reader changed and is now seeing things a little different.

Lessons in Chemistry was an amazing show and truly one of the best I watched in 2023. The cast is amazing and the story will pull you in and have you wanting to learn more and more about these characters and see where there story will take them.