There's a certain magic to the idea of New Year's Eve as a holiday dedicated to new beginnings and fresh starts. Although there are far fewer television episodes revolving around New Year's Eve than Christmas, the few New Year's Eve episodes that exist tend to take a more positive route. Two examples are The O.C.and Friends, which used their themed installments to explore romance and comedy, respectively. Hulu's 2024 comedy series, How to Die Alone, however, goes in a drastically different direction with its New Year's Eve episode, "Kill Your Darlings."
How to Die Alone follows Mel (Natasha Rothwell), a JFK airport employee who generally feels lost and discontent with her life. On her thirty-fifth birthday, Mel briefly dies when a shelving unit collapses on her and leads her to choke on a piece of crab rangoon. After her brush with death, Mel starts to make changes to her life, including joining a management program and booking her first flight. Unfortunately, the flight takes Mel to the wedding of her ex-boyfriend, Alex (Jocko Simms), for whom she still has unresolved feelings. "Kill Your Darlings" brings Mel and Alex together on New Year's Eve for a bittersweet episode with a heartbreaking ending.
"Kill Your Darlings" Shows How Well Mel and Alex Fit Together
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The previous episode of How to Die Alone ends with Mel realizing that she still has feelings for Alex and deciding to tell him how she feels before he gets married. "Kill Your Darlings" starts with Mel running to catch Alex before his flight, only to arrive right as his plane is taking off. Mel ends up spending her New Year's Eve dinner alone at a restaurant where she used to work, and where she and Alex used to eat together all the time. It is there that Mel runs into Alex, who has just missed his flight to his wedding. What starts as the two eating dinner together turns into an entire evening.
Mel and Alex have a deep conversation at dinner, where she apologizes to him for how she ended things. He encourages her to eat crab rangoon again for the first time since it briefly killed her, and he ultimately tells her that he missed his flight on purpose. Leading up to this episode, it is both mortifying and frustrating to see Mel preparing to break up the wedding of someone she had dumped two years ago. It seems to be a deeply misguided decision that will only end in heartbreak.
After seeing Mel and Alex together in "Kill Your Darlings," though, it all suddenly makes sense. Their connection is so strong, and Rothwell and Simms' chemistry is so palpable, that it is easy to get lost in the episode and to forget, alongside Mel, that Alex is flying to his wedding the following morning. They spend the rest of the evening together, where they shop for a tie for said wedding, sing a karaoke duet together, and eat black-eyed peas to ring in the new year. It's a beautiful evening, but the looming presence of the upcoming wedding hangs over the whole episode.
Jocko Sims also discusses shooting his ‘Before Sunrise’ episode, and KeiLyn Durrel Jones reveals who he initially auditioned for.
'How to Die Alone' Uses New Year's Eve to Symbolize the End of Mel and Alex's Relationship
While New Year's Eve can certainly be a time of new beginnings, it is also a time of endings. How to Die Alone takes this concept and uses it to parallel the end of Mel and Alex's relationship, for good. At the end of the night, Alex convinces Mel to walk on a frozen pond with him, and it is a nice moment, until she spontaneously kisses him. For the whole episode leading up to that point, there is this sense of dread as Mel and Alex get closer, with the knowledge that everything good between them will be destroyed if she tries to reignite their romantic relationship.
Mel and Alex teeter on the line of romance and friendship for all of "Kill Your Darlings" until she finally crosses it. Alex is understandably angry because she dumped him two years ago and then waited until right before his wedding to tell him how she feels. The episode seems to be leading to Alex flat-out rejecting her, but it subverts expectations in a truly gut-wrenching way. After initially being upset, Alex then asks Mel if she loves him.
The meaning of this moment is clear: if Mel can say that she loves him, then Alex will give up on his wedding to be with her. While Mel's ultimate decision is too good to spoil, let's just say that it successfully subverts every expectation we have while watching a seemingly romantic moment like this one. After spending the bulk of its runtime playing into the fantasy of what could be, How to Die Alone forces its main character to rethink the possibility of new beginnings as she is faced with the harsh reality that she's the only one standing in the way of what could have been.
How to Die Alone is available to stream on Hulu.
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After a near-death experience, Mel, a broke JFK airport worker, embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Determined to live life on her own terms, she navigates through comedic and heartfelt moments while confronting her fears and redefining her sense of self-worth in this bold, character-driven comedy.
Image via Hulu
Image via Hulu
English (US) ·