It is almost impossible to get to the end of an episode of Firefly Lane without crying at least once. Whether they are tears of joy or sorrow, Firefly Lane has a way of getting the audiences hooked on the lives of the Firefly Lane girls: Kate Mularkey (played by Sarah Chalke) and Tully Hart (played by Katherine Heigl). And as the show takes us to different points of their lives, the audience finds themselves wishing for a friendship like that off screen.
Kate and Tully share something special: a friendship that is meant to last forever. And yet, they have their downs as much as they have their ups. At the end of the first part of Season Two, we are left heartbroken as Kate and Tully have a falling out. Kate receives bad news. She is diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, and goes in search of Tully, but it’s too late – Tully has left for Antarctica for work.
The second part of Firefly Lane Part Two, the series finale, aired on 27 April and consists of seven episodes. The episodes don’t fail to leave the audience in tears as we see how Kate comes to terms with her health and Tully denies the possibility of her future not involving her best friend.
Without giving too much away about the series finale, it can be said that Firefly Lane shows us the beauty but also the ugly side of a love and bond that is as strong as that shared by Kate and Tully. Not many of us are blessed with friendships like that. We often fall out with our friends from school, unable to maintain the same interests and circles. Our lives take us in different directions, and life’s responsibilities and duties make it difficult to bridge this distance.
However, if we are fortunate enough to have friends who knew our teenage crush, went to college with us, planned a future with us, promised to stay and did, then there is also the fear that we may someday lose them. And an untimely death is among the worst ways to lose someone who is very much a part of our soul – how does one accept such loss? Do you ever stop grieving? Firefly Lane toys with this during the second half of the second season; one minute, it hints that Kate doesn’t make it and at the other, gives us hope that she does.
Firefly Lane gives us an honest take of friendship. It strips it of the laughter and acceptance and promises of forever. As Heigl herself told People, Firefly Lane is not “some fairy tale version of female friendship”. The actor added: “There is a lot of resentment under the surface. There are a lot of things that go unsaid. There is a lot of feeling.”
And this is what makes Firefly Lane such a beautiful story. You see how messy friendship can be. You see how much is swept under the carpet, but you also see how most of life’s challenges and difficulties are made survivable thanks to friends who don’t leave our side.
We see how Kate and Johnny (played by Ben Lawson) deal with marriage and a baby. We see Kate’s struggles with breastfeeding her baby, as well as her feelings of inadequacy or failure as she settles in the role of a mother and housewife. However, we also see how much support and encouragement she gets from Tully, who is making a name for herself in media, but continues to be a great strength to her best friend.
We also see Tully facing her own struggles, especially coming to terms with her feelings for Danny (played by Ignacio Serricchio). We see her loneliness, and her fears when it comes to trusting someone again. We also see her reluctance to invest her time and energy in a relationship when her best friend needs her – the sense of betrayal she feels over choosing her own happiness as her best friend comes up with her last wishes.
One of the key moments in the season is when Tully says she is sorry for putting Kate’s daughter Marah in danger, which is why the two had a falling out in part one of Season Two, but also points out that Kate never apologised for abandoning her. Tully talks about how along with losing Kate, she was also cut out by Johnny, Kate’s parents and her brother – all people Tully considered family, especially since Tully’s mother Cloud was mostly absent during her youth.
This reminds us that as much as Kate felt fear and pain when Marah’s life was at risk, Tully grappled with her own fears and pain. It shows us how selfish friendship can be, the give and the take not always being balanced.
As Firefly Lane ends, the audience is left an ugly, crying mess – you can’t expect anything else from this show. But creator Maggie Friedman, and Kristin Hannah whose novel of the same name the series is based on, also leave us with a story about female friendship in its truest form. And to the show’s creator’s credit, we are provided with some form of closure, allowing us to say a proper goodbye to Kate and Tully, and the story of the Firefly Lane girls.