For Fitzgerald fans, wannabe Fitzgerald fans, or even people who can appreciate a well-done period drama, Z has a lot to offer, even as it gives us lots to think about.

Even though we know this is one love story that doesn’t end well, The Beginning of Everything delivers an entertaining seduction into a fabulous, bygone world.

The show finds a nice groove about halfway through, after husband and wife settle in Roaring '20s Manhattan and proceed to tear the town apart.

The story itself is interesting, if well-known, but the series is overacted, over-accented, and overwritten. [27 Jan 2017, p.55]

While Ricci and Hoflin play well together, the intensity of that primal force, particularly from Scott’s side, doesn’t always come across. He needs a simmering intensity.

The show’s repetitive storytelling would be less of a problem if it had more depth, but its characterizations rarely go beyond the rudimentary, and its dialogue is often clunky.

It’s possible that an acceptable performance could have patched over some of the cavernous inconsistencies in Zelda’s characterization, but Ricci’s performance is abominable.

As someone very interested in both Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, I found the series disappointing. Not too surprisingly, it's more interested in their "dysfunctional" relationship than in their prodigious talents--or the way they briefly embodied a unique (and deeply conflicted) cultural moment. While never uttering pop-psychological buzzwords such as "codependency," the series occasionally seems to treat the protagonists as case studies, even cautionary tales. Toward the end, I half-expected Max Perkins or Zelda's parents to arrange an intervention. Lots has been written about Ricci, and I have to say I give her a about a "5," too. I don't care that she's too old, and I appreciate how hard she tries to nail the performance. But, for me, she's an actor who never disappears into a role; I'm always aware that I'm watching Christina Ricci as whoever. Sometimes that works, but here it's distracting. I'll keep watching because I would probably watch sock puppets play the Fitzgeralds on a cardboard-box stage. Z is better than sock puppets, but it needs to be "more better."

This would have to be one of the most boring plots I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. Dull is not even close to the tepid paced events that slowly crash down upon your mind.