It’s been two weeks since The Five Star Weekend dropped on Peacock, and while fans await an answer on whether Season 2 is a go, they are also longing for more of the five-star chemistry between Jennifer Garner and Timothy Olyphant.
In the series adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand‘s 2023 novel, Garner’s Hollis Shaw assembles three friends from different stages of her life — and a fourth surprise new friend — for a girls’ weekend on Nantucket, where she grew up. Not only is she forced to confront her complicated grief over losing her husband Matthew (Josh Hamilton), but she also reunites with her former flame, Jack (Olyphant), and it’s devastatingly obvious that the two still have the hots for each other.
It’s a slow-burn kind of romantic reunion over the course of eight episodes, with the two finally sharing a kiss at the end of Episode 5, “Saturday Night: Nice Dinner Out,” after being reminded of their song—”More Than Words” by Extreme—when it plays on the radio. Jack gets out of the car, requesting that Hollis do the same.
“Alright, c’mon. We’ve never not danced to this song,” he says.
However, after their lips meet in the midst of their moonlit slow dance, Matthew floods her thoughts, and tells Jack that she “can’t do this.”
But Jack remains a constant, silent support system, picking up Hollis’ daughter Caroline (Harlow Jane) from the police station, and eventually, cleaning out her gutters. When Hollis catches him doing the latter in The Five Star Weekend‘s Season 1 finale, “Monday Morning: Departures,” Jack admits that he initially thought her intentions might not have been the most genuine, and that she was looking for a “rebound” following Matthew’s passing. However, he tells her that he found the message she had sent him a year prior, ahead of Matthew’s death, that solidified that she had been thinking about him for some time.
While Hollis concedes that she was the one who “ended” things between them so long ago, Jack thinks he wasn’t good enough for her at the time. However, times have changed. The tension between them finally culminates, leading to a hot hook-up, but more than that, a heartwarming reunion between two people who never stopped caring about each other.
The chemistry between Garner and Olyphant is apparent, and according to series showrunner Bekah Brunstetter, was fueled by a sense of comfort that she had with the actor. Brunstetter told DECIDER that Garner was instrumental in Olyphant’s casting, explaining that for both the actors playing Jack and Matthew, the 13 Going on 30 star wanted to “work with some people she had worked with before that she had a level of familiarity and comfort with.” In fact, Brunstetter said that Garner “floated [Olyphant’s] name early on because they did Catch and Release together years ago, which has a hilariously similar plot” to The Five Star Weekend.
“But he just, again, read the material and from the beginning was really just invested in it,” she continued of Olyphant. “And really, you don’t always find this. How cool it is to find a guy who just wants to play the love interest and and play like like not a tertiary character but like play a smaller part with these like five amazing women?”
Not only was Olyphant “generous with his time,” but also “so swoony,” according to Brunstetter.
“It’s like give the people what they want,” she teased. “Like he steps on screen and you’re just like, ‘Oh Tim,’ and it just gives you butterflies and reminds you of all the boys you’ve ever had crushes on. He just serves that and is also a really lovely guy to have around, so we felt really lucky to get him.”
The Five Star Weekend is streaming on Peacock.
