“Go ahead and regret me but I’m beating you to it dude,” repeats in my head at least forty times a day, and no, that is not a hyperbole.
As of March 23, Prime Video’s TV adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel, Daisy Jones and the Six, came to an end. As someone who read the book first (aren’t I so much cooler than you), I have some thoughts I would like to share, specifically in regard to the changes made from the source material. But first, I must usher a warning — do not read any further unless you want to know every spoiler. Yes, that includes you mom so look away until you watched it, which I already asked you ten times to do.
Okay, disclaimer is made. We can carry on now.
Let’s just start off with the obvious and why you’re probably all here: Daisy and Billy’s relationship. In Reid’s book, the two main characters never, and I mean never even kiss. And those of you who watched the show know that that is… not the case there. They kiss a total of three (amazing and beautiful) times, all of which had me closing my laptop for a few minutes as I paced around the house.
Now, before the show even aired, I could tell this was going to be a change they implemented. While the novel has a more mature, allusive take on Daisy and Billy, Amazon Prime was not going to put out a show with a love triangle and not have the main pair kiss at least once. The general audience would be bored with that – unfortunate, but true.
That love triangle, consisting also of Billy’s wife (yikes) Camila, is the main point of the adaptation, whereas the novel focuses more on addiction and the characters choosing their path, not letting others choose it for you. Reid made Billy and Camila an actual happy couple, having Billy always choose his wife at the end of the day, refusing to have any sort of intimacy with Daisy despite his feelings, because, again he chooses her. TV show Billy is not that Billy. This Billy is clearly more in love with Daisy than he ever admitted in the novel, which then leads him to act on it.
And this is where I’m going to lose a lot of you — I simply don’t care. I loved watching Daisy and Billy act on their feelings for each other. I loved watching them make out behind the curtains when he thinks his wife left him. I am a Daisy Billy shipper for life, and I don’t feel bad about it.
But let me at least tell you why. In the book, sure, I think them not ever physically touching each other is the right decision. It matches the tone of the book way more than them having any sort of affair. This is because, as much as they feel for each other, Billy clearly always loved Camila more. In the show, that is not the case, even if Billy’s lying self said it was. Not once did he make her a real priority or show that he loved her more than Daisy, and I’m okay with that only because I still have the book to read when I want the version where he does.
I’m a hopeless romantic. I can’t help it. If there’s a couple in a form of media I’m watching and they have good chemistry, sorry but my morals are just out the window. However! That is not to say I don’t feel terrible for Camila. She doesn’t deserve what Billy did to her in the show, that is one hundred percent true. My take? Clearly Daisy and Billy had some connection that he couldn’t have with Camila, and Camila should have just left him in the dust so they can both be with people better suited for them. It’s almost like the show had Billy stay with her just because she is the mother of his child, which I will say I don’t love. I think they could have made Daisy and Billy be physical/the main focus while also not diminishing Camila’s character.
That brings me to my next point. Camila Dunne. The heart and soul of the show, and I say that as an obvious Daisy lover. Not a lot made me angry in the show; I got my DaisyBilly endgame and about a million outfit ideas out of the costumes. What I was not okay with was how they portrayed Camila. In the book (take a shot every time I say that), she is a secure, powerful, takes no-BS kind of woman who lives well into her 60s. But while show Camila is still not weak in any way, they completely made her character the reason Daisy and Billy “just can’t be together” and kill her off twenty years earlier. It’s ridiculous.
They made her a segway for Daisy and Billy to live happily ever after sooner than in the novel, using her as the crutch Billy needs to fix himself until he’s “healed” enough to be with Daisy. And guess what! Camila gets cancer so woot woot, he can now spend the rest of his life with Miss Jones. And, yeah, I want them together, but not because Camila gets cancer at forty and dies. Maybe if she’s 60 and dies, sure. But they changed the age she died just so the other two can still be young and hot in the epilogue. And like I said, I want them together! But this addition just felt like another slap in the face for Camila.
But the most disgusting change about her in the whole show is one I really can’t forgive. The reason Daisy leaves the band in the book was that Camila told her she has the potential to find a happier, better life and that she needs to accept that Billy is going to choose her always. It’s a very intimate moment between the two characters where we see that even though they both love the same person, womanhood is stronger than any man. Daisy leaves because Camila asks her. To find a better life away from the drugs and chaos. That moment changes Daisy’s life, something that Daisy thanks Camila for forever.
This did not happen on Amazon Prime! Quite the opposite, really! Instead of a vulnerable, uplifting moment between two women, they fight over the man who clearly is the problem. They fight over a man!!! It’s disgusting. “You two deserve each other,” Camila says to Daisy as my smile fades softly as I realize this is not going in the direction I thought it was. Dread filled my body as Daisy goes, “He’s always gonna be yours, and I just have to live with that,” and I just knew I wasn’t going to get one of the most important scenes of the whole book. Epic. And don’t get me wrong, I like how Daisy is the one at the end to tell Billy to go to Camila, but they didn’t have to pit the two women against each other for that to happen. Whatever, it’s fine.
As for the rest of the changes, I don’t care enough to complain. It’s an adaptation, so obviously there will be things that are different. But, actually, I enjoyed the majority of them! Sure, Chuck not going to war is a weird change, specifically because his death in that war is what pushed the band to take the music so seriously in the first place. But Daisy being found by Billy during her overdose, clearly put in to give us a glimpse of how much she means to Billy, I was a fan of. Daisy having a girl instead of boys I also loved, because it gives Daisy the opportunity to stop the cycle of generational trauma with her daughter (something her mother clearly did not do with her).
My advice – watch the show. Read the book. They are each enjoyable for different reasons. One is a gripping love triangle filled with heartbreak, chaos, and a couple you can’t take your eyes off of. Another is a grueling story of addiction, love, and pain in a more mature, devastating way. But both are a love letter to the music scene of the 70s. A lesson on love, loss, and choosing to better yourself. I guess it just depends on which one you’re in the mood for.