In real life, first kisses are agonizing enough: the wait for it to happen, the panic when it is about to, the potential awkwardness when it does. But in the media, first kisses come in a dramatic array of flavors. First, there's the most basic dichotomy of first kisses - the first kiss of a character and the first kiss of a couple. As fascinating as a character's first kiss can be, this column will focus on couples' first kisses.
Our first kind of kiss is the most unsatisfying: the drunk kiss. The characters will be boozy and giddy, possibly rejected by their other love interests, and somehow they'll end up locking lips. A good example of this is Mary (Adelaide Kane) and Bash (Torrance Coombs) on "Reign" (2013-present): a tipsy Mary ends up kissing Bash after a fight with Francis, her fianc?©e. For fans - especially fans who are accustomed to making their ships survive on glances and flirty banter - that kiss counted. For the characters, especially Mary, it didn't - the show just shifted back to focusing on Mary and Francis. In short, the drunk kiss makes promises that it can't deliver.
A second, more satisfying kind of first kiss is the impulse first kiss, and its cousin the "I'm about to die" kiss. A character suddenly realizes that what they're looking for has been there all along, often triggered by a sudden change or a moment of fear. In a very recent example (spoilers ahead) Danny (Chris Messina) on "The Mindy Project" (2012-present) realized that he was in love with Mindy (Mindy Kaling) after he automatically reached for her hand after a moment of turbulence. He promptly found her at the back of the plane and gave her a spectacular, minute-long kiss. The impulse first kiss is usually the most passionate and is practically guaranteed to make fans squeal in glee. But it also has a dark side. An impulse first kiss, especially one prompted by an unnerving moment, can be brushed off by the characters. As they return to their real lives - and their current love interests - they may pretend that the kiss never happened while the fans maintain that they're meant to be together. The "I'm about to die" kiss may be the most awkward of all. Shippers cheer, but what happens if the character survives?
Last, and best, is the kiss when the writers manage to get everything right. The setting, the people and the time all come together to make one perfect, sweet, sexy, happily-ever-after kiss. One of my favorite perfect kisses is Hazel and Gus from "The Fault in Our Stars" (2012). On the surface, everything seems skewed. They're two teens with cancer, both of them know that their time together is short and they're at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. But they kiss, in the middle of a bare room and during a tour; it is a moment of perfection and of happiness in an incredibly sad and incredibly beautiful book. Kisses like that are rare, but worth waiting for, whether they happen on screen, on the page or in real life.
In the end, every first kiss is a leap of faith. We don't know if it'll be something we want to forget, an impulse that haunts us long afterward or the beginning of something amazing. But the fictional people we love keep on doing it, and so do we, letting our dreams play out on screen. Maybe those first kisses that we see, whether we read them or watch them, even give us the courage to take that leap. If the people we invent can do it, surely we can take our hopes out of our heads and put them into our lives, ready to see where this particular leap of faith takes us.
Natalie Girshman is a sophomore majoring in history and drama. She can be reached at Natalie.Girshman@tufts.edu.
