Daisy Jones & The Six, the Prime Video limited series based on the Taylor Jenkins Reid book of the same name, is out now! Despite the fact that episodes are dropping in batches, I will be recapping each and every one right here for you. From the formation of the band to its eventual collapse, we’re going along on this wild ride together
Daisy Jones and The Six Episode 6, titled “Track 6: Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” is a tough one to leave off on. There’s so much emotional devastation and heartbreak that I felt myself shattering throughout. I just want the best for all these characters, and I know that would ruin the entire story, I already read the book and know roughly how it will go, and yet I cannot stop hoping that these people on my screen will make better choices.
The episode starts with a series of interviews. Interview Daisy shares that they made 8-9 songs in the first two weeks. Yes, they fought constantly, but they were writing incredible songs. The rest of the band says that it went like that for weeks, where the band would record the accompaniment all day, and then at night Billy and Daisy would come into the studio together giggling like schoolgirls.
The interviewer asked Graham if it concerned him, and he said no, not yet, because whatever was happening was clearly working.
We’re treated to a delightful montage of the band playing, Graham and Karen sneaking away to kiss, and Daisy asking the band to play “swampier”. Even Teddy is getting in on the action, calling in a favor to Rolling Stone before the album is even finished. Jonah Berg, a Rolling Stones reporter at the time, says that it was only his 6th assignment ever. The magazine just didn’t think the band was going to be very good when they sent him
Interview Daisy: “Look, I meant it when I said I would tell you everything. But how much of everything do you really wanna know?”
And…. cut to intro sequence!
We typically have been getting the intro sequence up top, with an episode title breaking up the “cold open” and the rest of the episode, but clearly they wanted to give maximal power to Daisy’s words, by placing them at the top of the episode rather than the very end as a cliffhanger.
I can already tell this is going to be a long recap, because we’re just 6 minutes in and my notes already take up an entire page.
The interviewer asks Camila what she was doing during this time, and she lets us know that she was “busy raising a child, pretty much, all by [herself]”. Girlie deserves so much better!
In the middle of the night, she gets up and comes downstairs to find Billy on the phone, cord stretched all the way out the door so that he can talk to Daisy without waking anyone up. Camila finds his notebook, where the words
“Please, I have a family // it’s a terrible disease”
are scrawled. She looks so sad, and just sets the notebook down and goes back to bed.
Billy brings in a verse to ask Daisy to fix it, and she returns the next day with something new. He tells her that she kept the one line that didn’t work, but she says that line was beautiful, it was the rest that was shit.
Jonah Berg is there, and laughs at Billy once Daisy flounces out, clearly assuming there’s something going on, but Billy tells him it’s not like that. They have their own lives outside of this. It’s not an act, necessarily, but it’s not real life either.
Then we’re back to Camila, who’s hard at work developing photos in a dark room with a cute man named Oscar. He’s impressed by her photos, and tells her so in Spanish. She tries to reply back, but stutters, unable to finish what she was saying. This is so sad! She’s been away from her family for so long, surrounded by all of these white people, and now she’s losing what is probably her first language.
Oscar asks her to go to the movies with him, and she hangs up the photo of Billy and Daisy, stating that he’s her husband. Oscar laughs, asking who Daisy is, clearly not believing she’s just “some girl in his band”.
In this house, we support women’s rights and women’s wrongs.
That night, Camila is telling Karen about Oscar. She says it felt nice to speak Spanish and not feel like just a mom. Billy is never around, and he hasn’t even played her any of the songs. Camila thinks she needs something of her own, and Karen supports her.
Camila asks how Karen and Graham are, and Karen is shocked that she knows. But of course Camila does, she’s known Graham since he was 17.
Karen says she likes Graham quite a lot, but when Camila says Graham loves her, she looks a bit panicked, begging the woman not to tell anyone. Camila would never. She’s the best, and she’s also so here for this romance.
When Billy gets home, Camila is in bed and Billy doesn’t appear in the mood to talk. She tells him about the lyrics she read last night, stating that she liked the song, but all Billy says is that Daisy wrote that one. I’m unclear if this is true, but the distance between Billy and Camila is heartbreaking enough to watch even if it is.
Camila wants to hear the songs now, but Billy doesn’t want to play anything until it’s ready. It’s the opposite of the way it used to be, and it’s clearly weighing on her mind.
Interview Jonah says that every song is a “coded message” from Billy to Daisy or Daisy to Billy. Interview Eddie laughs. “I’m sorry, did he say coded?”
Daisy and Billy are working on a song when Daisy decides the song isn’t working and feels like she’s hitting a low. She’s about to leave to remedy the situation, but Billy says she doesn’t have to, and she snorts the coke in front of him, while making eye contact.
Daisy thinks she had the song back in the car, and so they get in and go for a drive, Billy taking them to the ocean. It’s dark and they’re the only ones there.
Daisy: Whatever this- this is, this is new for me. Billy: This is new for me too, Daisy. Daisy: My real name is Margaret.
Billy asks her where Daisy came from, and she shares that she wanted to become someone else, to escape that little girl she didn’t like. Billy tells her he has a confession for her also. She made “Honeycomb” better. In fact, she makes everything better.
The tension is endless, the two of them creeping closer and closer together as we cut between Daisy’s eyes and Billy’s.
“We still need to figure out the rest of that song” Billy finally says, and Daisy, who isn’t tired, agrees. Together, they head to Daisy’s house, and Billy is about to walk through the door when he decides that he shouldn’t. He stands there for far too long, and then says, “I shouldn’t. See you tomorrow.”
In interviews, we find out that Billy looked in the room and “saw only temptation”. Daisy’s house is filled with alcohol, drugs, uppers, and downers. Interview Daisy says that it wasn’t that. The temptation “wasn’t the drugs”. It was, of course, her.
Daisy heads outside to smoke by her hotel pool, and that’s when she sees Jonah. She didn’t realize he was staying at the hotel, or so she says, but apparently he told her earlier, leaving her motive up to question.
Jonah says that he could have sworn Daisy and Billy were together, based on the songs. Daisy asks how he knows they’re not. Jonah, of course, got his information directly from Billy, and he tells her what Billy said, as harshly as those words could possibly be translated.
All Daisy says in response is, “do you have any coke?”
The next day, she doesn’t show up to record vocals for the album.
Billy goes off to find her, refusing to take anyone with him. He finds Daisy incredibly high, floating in the pool without a care in the world. Billy is pissed, but Daisy says sorry and then calls Billy to tell him a secret—he’s the most talented person in the world (besides her).
She climbs out of the pool and proceeds to step on glass, foot bleeding while she laughs.
The next time she gets in the studio, Billy has a new song for her to sing. She doesn’t want to do it, instantly refusing.
“They’re just words, what’s the problem?” Billy asks.
The next thing you know, she’s recording, with the whole band watching her. Each time she starts, Billy immediately makes her try again. He eventually pushes her too hard, and she storms out.
The interviewer asks how Billy got Daisy to sing the way she did on the album, and Billy just shakes his head.
In the 70’s, Daisy is losing it, yelling at Billy now, asking him to tell her that there’s nothing going on between them once and for all. She tells him to tell her she’s crazy, and he grabs her head, pulling her close and kissing her.
The scream I let out! It’s a GOOD kiss!
And then she’s back in the studio, singing with a gravelly voice that’s perfect for the song.
Interview Daisy shakes her head in annoyance.
Billy gets home that night to see Julia and Camila in his bed, not leaving any room for him. As he deserves, honestly!
It’s the day of the mountaintop shoot, and Billy brings Camila but immediately proceeds to ignore her in favor of Daisy. Aurora, the song the album is named after, is playing, and Billy barely glances at Camila when she points it out.
He’s struggling to interact with Daisy as well, after the kiss, and looks on worriedly as Daisy heads down the hill to talk to Camila. Daisy compliments her parenting, and then “Please” comes on. Camila asks about it, and Daisy says that Billy was really on a roll the day he wrote it.
This admission that it wasn’t Daisy that wrote it, as Billy claimed, clearly pains Camila, and she stands there bouncing Julia uncomfortably.
That isn’t the only relationship on the rocks while on the (mountaintop) rocks. Graham goes to kiss Karen, and then asks if she’s ashamed of him when she pulls away. Karen says no, she’s not ashamed, but she’s worked too hard to just be treated as the “girlfriend of a member of The Six”. Graham says he understands, and he’ll never bring it up again, but he says it in a sad way, knowing it means it’ll never work out for them for real.
It’s time for the photoshoot, and the photographer takes a few photos of the whole group and then asks for some of just Billy and Daisy. They do what is essentially a couples shoot, Daisy dressed in the see-through white dress referenced in the book.
After the shoot, Jonah goes to Billy to fact check him on a few questions. First, the spelling of the town he grew up in. Oh, and the name of the rehab facility. Daisy told him about it, including the fact that he missed his daughter’s Christening because he was too coked out. Of course, that’s not true. He missed his daughter’s birth. Billy’s pissed, and storms off to find Daisy.
They get in a heated fight, Daisy yelling about him bringing “his wife” to the shoot, while Camila looks on from below, seeing all of it. Unable to do anything else, she takes photos.
Billy says that the only reason he kissed her was so that she would get back on the mic. Daisy says he’s a liar, and she goes home, images of Billy flashing through her mind the whole time she drives. She’s distracted, leaning over to find a pen and write down lyrics, when she crashes into a parked car.
It doesn’t matter to Daisy. She has lyrics in her head, and she doesn’t even roll down the window to talk to the owner of the other car when he appears.
Camila is unwinding as well. She heads out to a party by herself, drinking heavily, and then spies Eddie across the bar. He heads over to say hi, but she tells him to go off and have fun on his own.
He does, and then seconds later comes back, having told his “sure thing like that” he was no longer interested. Eddie would choose Camila over “everything”, and it’s clear these words have an impact on her.
She takes her time getting home, wiping away tears in the car, while Billy sits inside in front of Chinese food, tapping his chopsticks impatiently.
Interview Camila says there were so many “secrets” she felt she needed one of her own.
When she walks inside, she tells Billy that she already had dinner with a friend, and then goes to bed.
At the studio, Daisy wrote her own version of “More Fun to Miss”, one for Billy this time. It’s about being unable to handle your liquor or the truth, and regretting someone just as much as they regret you. He doesn’t want it to go on the album, but everyone else knows that it’s good, and he leaves the building. Not going to lie, Daisy was a much better sport about it than he was.
If Billy thought the day couldn’t get any worse, he was wrong, because Jonah shows up. Billy begs him not to put Julia in the story, and Jonah agrees as long as Billy can give him something better.
And that’s the end of recording Aurora!
Between the end of recording the album and going on tour, the band each went their separate ways. Minus Graham and Karen, who spent the time in domestic bliss, curled up together and hearing “Aurora” play on the radio.
Daisy was the only one unhappy. She kept hearing her mother’s voice in her head, telling her how terrible and unworthy she was. That’s when she gets the letter from Jonah. It’s a copy of the article he’s filed, titled “Love Lust & Hatred”. In it, he writes about Daisy being high and late to rehearsals, and Daisy herself looks devastated.
Meanwhile, Billy is going through the photos from their Aurora shoot and looking for one that fits for the album cover. He can’t seem to settle on one, shuffling them and regretting his choice of photographer. That’s when Camila throws down one of her own photos in front of him. It’s the one she took of Billy and Daisy fighting, when they thought nobody could see them.
“We used to fight like that,” she says, and my heart shatters into a million pieces.
Camila says that she doesn’t need to know everything, but if and when Billy ever loves Daisy, “that is when this ends”. It’s an ultimatum, laid out by the most forgiving wife of all time.
Billy reaches out and grabs her, pulling her to him and promising that it will always be the two of them.
Interview Billy: “History is what happens, not what almost happened. Not why you did what you did but what you did, that’s what matters.”
As these words play, Billy knocks on the door where Daisy formerly resided, only to find that she moved out. Daisy Jones up and moved to Greece without telling a soul.
And that’s the episode!
