Kingdom: Cage-fighters in Venice Beach and my unexpected love affair with Jay Kulina
I’m not really the target market for Kingdom, the American TV series that has recently dropped on Netflix in the UK. It’s a soap opera-style programme about mixed martial arts (MMA) cage-fighters* living in Venice Beach, California. It stars a lot of scary-looking people I have never heard of, plus a Jonas brother. And yet…
I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so much I ploughed through all three seasons in the space of a fortnight. However, I was not expecting to fall madly in love with Jay Kulina.
Jay is the eldest son of retired cage-fighter turned trainer Alvey (when not fighting, only ever seen drinking and having very ill-advised sex) and his ex-wife Christina (ageing manic pixie dream girl turned sex worker, often seen in whimsical dresses and taking heroin). In an impassioned speech, Jay tells us that he was ‘raised by wolves’ and couldn’t resist the pull to become one himself.
He’s a gifted fighter, but he’s a loose cannon! He could be the champion, but nobody wants to let him fight! This is mostly because he really, really loves drugs. And he’s always doing things like going missing, punching civilians, and taking loads of cocaine.
But he’s got a heart of gold and he means well! He’s fiercely protective of his younger brother, is always trying to save his mum from her scary Irish pimp, and has a weird flirtatious but nice relationship with his dad’s girlfriend.
The problem is — for me, anyway — he makes taking drugs and getting in fights look really cool.
When I was a teenager, they made us watch Cristiane F at school to show us the evils of taking drugs. Unfortunately, it has a Bowie soundtrack and subtitles and I thought it was the most glamorous thing I’d ever seen. Between that and the Courtney Love poster on my bedroom wall, my will to ‘just say no’ was not strong in my younger years.
Similarly, Jay Kulina has threatened to reignite my taste for bad boys, even after all these years of therapy. In his Elvis sunglasses and powder blue vintage suit, or vest and tattoos on show, he makes being bad look good. Plus, he’s hilarious.
Hot Girl: What do you do for a living?
Jay: I’m a fighter.
HG: Oh yeah, what kind of fighter?
Jay: You know, that kind that gets into cages.
HG: What’s that like?
Jay: Well, hurts like hell but the pay is terrible.
Oh, Jay. If he were real, he’s be a nightmare. Incidentally, a cursory Google search tells me that Jonathan Tucker, the actor who plays him, is in fact the son of a world-renowned art professor who is the leading expert on the life and works of Claude Monet.
With his constant anguish and issues bubbling underneath the fun exterior, Jay is just like every boyfriend you ever hoped you could change and no doubt, in the end, couldn’t. We all want to be the exception, the one who tames the wayward bad boy with our extra-special snowflake charms. It never, ever works.
Thank goodness for growing out of it in real life. But also thank goodness for the fictional bad boy boyfriend Jay Kulina, complete with tattoos, Elvis sunglasses and unresolved daddy issues.
Jay Kulina, don’t go changing.
*I believe this is the technical term. I’m not sure.
Eleanor Wood is the author of STAUNCH (HQ/HarperCollins), a memoir about going travelling in India with her grandmother and great-aunts, and how spending time with her older relatives helped her to overcome late-thirties angst. You can mostly find her on Twitter and Instagram.
