"Strangers on a (Dublin) Train"
"I'll be damned if I miss this one chance for something real for some temporary rules."
— Michael
When COVID-19 Pandemic-induced lockdowns first threaten Ireland in March 2020, bookish medievalism student Paula (Lucy Boynton) takes a train from Galway to stay with her mother Jane (Miranda Richardson) in Dublin. On the train, she has a charming encounter with a young man named Michael (Kit Harington), who is planning to wait out his furlough at the Dublin home of his brother Declan (Jack Reynor).
Spurred by a desire for old-fashioned romance, they make a plan to meet at the train station in two weeks instead of getting each others' contact information. Of course, the lockdowns last much longer.
Based on a 100-word story
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Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Crossed with Celebrity Paradox. When Michael mentions Paula is a medievalist, Declan asks him, "Like Game of Thrones?" Harington played Jon Snow on that show.
- Ambiguous Ending: Michael goes to the street Paula lives at, but it's a long one, and we don't find out if they ever meet again.
- Celebrity Paradox: Declan mentions Game of Thrones, in which Kit Harington played one of the main characters.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Paula encounters a seemingly kooky middle-aged woman with multiple cat carriers on the train and wrinkles up her nose.
- Dramatic Irony: As everyone who lived through 2020 knows, real life will quickly throw a wrench in the hopeful lovebirds' plan to meet up "when it's over in two weeks".
- Meet Cute: Michael and Paula are drawn into conversation on the train and are obviously attracted to each other. Lampshaded — a guitarist on the train sings about how it's a meet cute.
- Shout-Out: Their serendipitous conversation is compared to Before Sunrise, which Michael actually watches later on.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In a show all about love, this episode has two long conversations about how The Power of Love means both Michael and Paula should and will be at the train station in two weeks as promised. After this, the two set out on bike rides to see each other again, with Michael even giving a big speech to a cop monitoring a checkpoint... and both are promptly thwarted by strict lockdown restrictions.
- Tech Bro: The urbanite Michael works in a company that does targeted advertising (Paula notes that he says he works in tech, not advertising). While not much one himself, his brother Declan rips into the bros that do populate the tech industry when Michael tries to break lockdown restrictions. In the end Michael bribes him with rent money.Declan: It's amazing how you tech liberals are always the one to break the rules. They start out all disruptive and cool, and then it's like, "Oh, but we don't want to pay taxes, and we don't want to give our workers their rights, 'cause we're just a scrappy little startup that started over a pizza shop, and the rules don't apply to us now that we have the wealth of a medium-sized country."
- This Is Reality: Declan and Paula separately insist that the other half won't be at the train station if they decide to go, because this is real life in a real pandemic with real consequences. The other persuades them in the name of love. However, this is set during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the police don't let them through the checkpoints.
- Time-Passes Montage: We get a Split Screen montage of how Michael and Paula are spending those two weeks doing typical lockdown things: chores, exercising, etc.
