Sophia Michaels
The miniseries adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel “Daisy Jones & The Six” is one of the most-anticipated TV shows of the year. The book follows the evolution of a fictional 1970s rock band (loosely based on Fleetwood Mac) from their earliest beginnings to their meteoric rise and all the drama along the way.
The story is framed as a transcript of a behind-the-scenes oral history, similar to MTV’s “Behind the Music” docuseries. We meet our main characters in the late 1960s, before they all meet. Daisy, the daughter of a painter and a model, grows up in Los Angeles around the art and music scene and is encouraged by her friend Simone to pursue her singing and songwriting. Across the country in Pittsburgh, brothers Billy and Graham Dunne form a music group, the Dunne Brothers. They add more members to their band: drummer Warren Rhodes, guitarist Chuck Williams, and bassist Pete Loving.
At a wedding where the Dunne Brothers are hired to play, Billy meets Camila, whom he later falls in love with. Chuck is drafted to go to war, where he is ultimately killed, and Pete’s brother Eddie joins as the new guitarist. After adding one more member, keyboardist Karen Sirko, the band renames themselves “The Six” and is eventually signed by a music producer, Teddy Price, in Los Angeles.
The band records their first album and goes on tour, but a personal twist hits: Camila is pregnant, so she and Billy get married quickly. While on tour, Billy’s worse side comes out as he uses drugs heavily and cheats on Camila repeatedly. Teddy ultimately has to take Billy to rehab, and Daisy joins the band when they are featured on the cover of “Rolling Stone”.
Billy and Daisy clash over tweaking lyrics and Daisy’s substance use disorder, but they eventually reconcile. Karen and Graham begin a secret relationship, while Daisy impulsively gets married in Thailand. At a fateful Chicago show in 1979, Daisy gets drunk and sad after seeing Camila and Julia at the show, and Camila helps her realize that she needs to leave the band to get clean in order to move on. Billy nearly starts drinking again, but is saved by the intervention of a fan asking about his family, and he decides Camila is who he really wants.
It’s then revealed that the “author” of the story is Julia, all grown up and writing about her family’s legacy. We learn that the band never played together again, but all went on to lives that made them happy. Billy and Camila stay together until Camila dies from lupus around five years before the documentary. The story ends with Camila’s letter to Julia before she died, telling her to give Billy some time to mourn, then tell him to call Daisy.
