Episode 3

(Episode title:  Kiss and Tell)

“What You Wish For,” by Guster (1999)

Played during the opening narrator’s comment, while WILL tells us how lucky he feels to be at Rawley, and the first scene, set at the boathouse dock, when Paige Bennett first appears.

      Woke up today, to everything gray, 

and all that I saw, just kept going on and on, 

sweep all the pieces under the bed, 

close all the curtains and cover my head, 

and what you wish for won't come true, 

you aren't surprised, love, are you... 

if this serenade, 

(repeat after me, just a little bit closer),

is not what you want, 

(and do what I say, caught up in a lie), 

it's just how it is,

(it won't change a thing, got a little bit colder), 

it keeps going on and on, 

come out come out wherever you are, 

would you do it all over, right from the start, 

and what you wish for, won't come true, 

you aren't surprised, love, are you. 

so what you wish for, won't come true, 

you aren't surprised, love, are you... 

once had this dream, 

crashed down in Oz,

not black and white, 

but where the colors are, 

I never dreamed that I would let it go, 

and I will get what I deserve, 

leave all the secrets under the bed, 

open the curtains forget what I said, 

and what you wish for could come true, 

you aren't surprised, love, are you. 

so what you wish for could come true, 

you act surprised, love, are you?

Comment:  The lyrics continue the drama’s allusions to dreams coming true, and to The Wizard of Oz.

Like “Over the Rainbow,” this second song about Oz in the soundtrack of Young Americans celebrates Will’s love for Rawley – a love story that parallels Jake’s love for Hamilton.  Like Jake, Will is at Rawley under false pretenses – he “cheated on his entrance exam,” a metaphor for his really being decades too old to attend.  And just as Hamilton saves Jake, Rawley saves Will – from his father, with whom Will cannot live, and who seems to represent the complacency that Will hopes to outgrow by “going to Rawley.”  Just as other songs, like “Tender,”  bridge Jake-Hamilton and Bella-Scout scenes, inviting comparison of those contrastive parallel storylines, this song bridges a Rawley-Will scene and a Scout-Bella scene, underscoring that Will and Rawley are a love story, as Will effuses about how lucky he feels to be at Rawley.

“Breaking Me,” by Johnny Lang (1998)

Played during the scene in which Finn kisses Kate Fleming in her art classroom.

Every day I see your face I wish I'd stayed 

Don't even know what made me run away

It's just the way I play the game

Emotional is not a word I'd use to explain myself

But now I'm down upon my knees

Baby please take me back

I don't want to be in love but you're makin' me

Let me up I've had enough. 

Girl you're breakin' me

Here I am just half a man standing alone

Feeling like I lost my only chance

At happiness when I let you go

I don't want to be alone thinkin' bout you girl

I got nothin' left to hold in this lonely world 

The first time my heart was ever touched

Was the day I lost your love

I can feel it in my flesh and blood

My soul can only take it so much

So there it is. Why can't you give us one more try

You and I could find a way to live

If you let me in one more time

I know you lost your faith in me but I still believe

Can I make you understand, can I make you see

That I'm desperate for your love and it's breakin' me

It's breakin' me

 Comment:   This song expresses passion ungoverned by compassion, passion that comes from the groin, not from the heart or the head, as Finn tells the crew team that all passion does on the lake in episode 1.

Finn, although the teacher in a “perfect” school, in this scene acts on that view, which is the antithesis of what Hamilton dramatizes in Young Americans, namely, that compassion can rule passion so completely as to engender it.  In Young Americans, it is not Finn but Hamilton, the Dean’s son, who is the real teacher, the personification of Rawley; Finn, by contrast, is still learning.  With symbolic aptness, it is seeing Hamilton with his mother that moves Finn, later in episode 3, to repent his error, and reconsider his view of passion – Finn repents because he cannot hurt Hamilton, his compassion for Hamilton leads him to give up his passion for Kate.  This inter-generational role reversal is consistent both with the drama’s penchant for irony and its theme of adult rejuvenation by becoming “young,” aware of the need to keep growing, to exceed expectations, rather than becoming complacent.

“Opened Eyes,” written by Luke Ehret and Margot Paige, performed by Idol (on their album, Idol, 1999)

Played during two girl-girl scenes, in episode 3 when Paige drives into Bella’s gas station, and in episode 4 when Bella asks Grace to cover her shift so that she can attend the cotillion with Will. 

The first of three songs by Idol ("Opened Eyes," "The One," and "So Little") played in the soundtrack of Young Americans.

 A 2.5 MB MP3 file of this song is accessible from the bottom of this webpage.

When I first stepped into the night

I kept moving further

And then I sank into those eyes

envisioned a future

And now that you're leaving,

I can't decide if I'll survive 

on those memories

Or if they'll lose to time

With opened eyes I turn to you 

In prayer for an answer,

Yet all in vain for nothing's changed

Reality sours

And now that you're choosing

to keep the past behind

You're offering memories

Don't think I could abide

I wish them away

Who are you to make up my mind?

I wish them away 

“Have It All,” by Jeremy Kay (on his album, Jeremy Kay, 2000)

Played in episode 3 while Paige gives Bella a French manicure, and tells her she plans to bed Scout.  Played again near the start of episode 4, when Sean brings Bella lobster rolls, and she calls him a prince.

Some days I feel like crying. 

Don't matter if its rain or shine.

I feel like my heart was broken

At least a million times.

Some days I wake up dreaming,

Feels like I never even 

Answer life's big question

As if it's one big joke.

Maybe it's too soon to be sure but I 

Really do believe that someday we're gonna have it all

So I cry so hard it keeps the rhythm of a train 

Rolling right along when the ride gets rough you got to carry on.

Some days I feel like singing.

I sit back and just the day away.

Maybe I pick up a guitar and play what I want to play.

Maybe it's too soon to be sure but I

Really do believe that someday we're gonna have it all.

So I cry so hard it keeps the rhythm of a train,

Rolling right along when the ride gets rough you got to carry on

Carry on, 

You got to carry on

You got to carry on

You got to carry on.

Today I feel like laughing

Seems to be no reason at all.

And if the world stops spinning

I'm not afraid to fall.

Maybe it's too soon to be sure but I

Really do believe that someday we're gonna have it all.

So I cry so hard it keeps the rhythm of a train,

Rolling right along when the ride gets rough you got to carry on

“Which Will,” by Nick Drake (1972)

Played during the final scenes, and the closing narrator’s comment, of episode 3.

This song plays while Scout, at Bella’s insistence, gives up on relating to her as a lover rather than as a sibling – symbolically wearing a Greek-lettered college fraternity (brotherhood) sweatshirt for the scene – by phoning Paige, whom he doesn’t really like, and asking her out.  (That shirt is not an accident – the same shirt was used for the same symbolic effect in the unaired pilot, shot in Georgia nine months earlier.)  When he tells Bella he’s done that, she feels so sorry for him that she cries.

The song continues during a series of shots – Will riding his bike, Finn looking through his freezer at frozen dinners, Jake staring out her window, Hamilton brooding under a tree, Scout and Bella walking towards the lake, and finally Will and Finn eating at Friendly's – while Will closes the episode with this narrator’s comment:

“When I was little I had this idea that life could be perfect, that if you were careful enough, you'd never make a mistake, never be lonely [Finn at his freezer], never be misunderstood [Jake at her window], never be frightened [Hamilton under the tree].  But it doesn't work that way.  Life is big and messy and you just have to climb in it with your boots on and hope for the best.  Like Thoreau said, ‘Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.’  And at the end of the day, I have to say, I still feel pretty lucky to be here.”

Which will you go for 

Which will you love

Which will you choose from 

From the stars above 

Which will you answer 

Which will you call 

Which will you take for 

For your one and all 

And tell me now 

Which will you love the best. 

Which do you dance for 

Which makes you shine 

Which will you choose now 

If you won't choose mine 

Which will you hope for 

Which can it be 

Which will you take now 

If you won't take me 

And tell now 

Which will you love the best

Comment:  In the Scout-Bella scene in which it begins playing, this song’s lyrics articulate the sadness of settling for second-best, as Bella does with Sean and as Scout does with Paige.  Subsequently, as the shots of Jake, Hamilton and Finn and Will play, it becomes first a prayer for love from Jake to Hamilton, then a meditation by Hamilton on his lack of choice, then an offer of filial love from Will to Finn for having made the right choice in stopping his affair with Hamilton’s mother.   

Will-as-narrator’s closing comment is wickedly ironic:  “When I was little” refers to the drama’s “present,” to Will’s youth in Young Americans, because Will-as-narrator is a mature adult, as his use of the past tense in his final narrative comment of the drama makes clear.  That life can be perfect is precisely what Will says time and again in Young Americans – what this surreally idealistic drama affirms.  Never to be lonely, or misunderstood, or frightened is possible - if one becomes “little,” young, humble enough to “go to Rawley,” to learn to grow by loving truly, by taking risks for love – “jumping in with your boots on and hope for the best.”  In the following episode, Hamilton does just that – because he can’t not respond to Jake's neediness.  

This song, and the ironic narrator’s comment during which it plays, set up YA’s climactic episode, in which Hamilton goes for Jake simply because he has no choice.  In that context, the use of this song about choice in love is no less ironic than the narrative comment during which it plays.  When love has occasion to prove it's true, it isn't about choice.  The king's daughter doesn't choose a frog, beauty doesn't choose a beast, the knight in Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" doesn't choose a loathly lady; they respond to a given need, because they must, because compassion is inexorable, so strong that it can breed passion.  Young Americans seeks to retell that old tale in a way that is credible to moderns.

Ichabod Grubb

Created: April 2014

Last updated: April 2014