Lizzie

Lizzie is one of three close friends whose relationship with Taylor and Kath stretches from their shared youth into adulthood. Practical, observant, and capable of turning concern into action, she becomes the group’s chief intermediary: she visits Taylor during a destructive relationship, keeps the friends’ calls going across distance, and helps negotiate the roles they will take in Taylor’s wedding. Her importance lies less in occupying the center of the group than in repeatedly making connection possible.

Identity and Early Friendship

In a scene from the friends’ youth, Taylor wants to watch Pool Boy again, while Lizzie complains that she had planned to play levitation. Kath suspects that Lizzie likes the film as much as Taylor does but is embarrassed to show it. When Taylor asks for everyone’s favorite scene, Lizzie answers that she likes more or less all of them. The exchange offers an early glimpse of Lizzie’s place among the friends: she can voice a mild protest, but she is also part of the shared enthusiasm that Taylor sets in motion.

The three friends later scatter to colleges around the country. Their separation changes the conditions of their friendship without ending it. Lizzie remains close enough to Taylor to learn about her life and to bring those details back to Kath, who is less directly involved. That position gives Lizzie a particular kind of knowledge: she is not simply a messenger but the friend who sees how events are unfolding when the others are apart.

Concern for Taylor and the Work of Staying in Touch

During college, Taylor meets Gabriel at orientation. Lizzie describes their relationship to Kath as a cycle of intense fights and painful reconciliation. When Taylor follows Gabriel to California after he agrees to reconcile, setting college aside, Lizzie visits her and reports that she is doing badly: she has lost ten pounds, drinks vodka tonics one after another, and has dark circles and bruises on her arm. Lizzie asks Kath whether they should persuade Taylor to seek treatment. Kath refuses to get involved, saying Taylor has made her choices. Lizzie’s question makes clear that she sees the situation as serious and wants her friend’s other close companion to share responsibility for responding to it.

Ten years later, Lizzie and Kath live in Brooklyn. Lizzie works for a nonprofit focused on education, while Kath is a contract lawyer. Taylor remains in California, and her relationship with Gabriel has ended after infidelity, suicide attempts, and police involvement. Lizzie knows more of the details than Kath does. The difference does not dissolve the trio, but it shows how unevenly information and intimacy have accumulated among them.

The friends sometimes speak together on Skype. When Taylor and Kath talk, their exchanges come in short, intense bursts, as if little has changed between them. Yet Lizzie is the one who arranges and promotes the calls; when she is too busy to facilitate them, Kath and Taylor may go months without speaking. Her role is therefore both modest and consequential. The friendship persists through old closeness, but its present-day contact often depends on Lizzie’s effort to convene it.

Taylor’s Engagement and the Wedding Roles

After leaving Gabriel, Taylor appears to be doing better: she has changed jobs, found a new analyst, and earned her degree. Lizzie tells Kath that Taylor is seeing Ryan, whom she thinks may be right for her. When Taylor announces on Skype that they will marry, Lizzie reacts with exuberant delight, calling it the best news she has ever heard. Kath, by contrast, experiences a sudden dislocation before composing herself to offer congratulations. The contrast distinguishes Lizzie’s open celebration from Kath’s more complicated response without making Lizzie’s happiness any less sincere.

Taylor invites both friends to the wedding. During the conversation about the reception, shoes, and dresses, Kath senses that Taylor wants to say something she cannot quite bring herself to say. The next morning, over brunch, a message on Kath’s phone reveals that Lizzie believes Kath should have been asked to be maid of honor: Kath, she says, is the one who has always been there for Taylor. Lizzie’s position is striking because it does not put her own place first. Although the maid-of-honor role has gone to her, she argues that the choice should have recognized Kath’s longstanding closeness to Taylor.

Kath resists the expectation that she should simply accept the role, citing her complicated feelings about weddings, money, and work; she also says she fears Lizzie would be hurt. Lizzie insists that Kath is obligated, but Kath is not. After Kath calls Taylor, talks at length around her reluctance, and raises her concern about Lizzie, the friends settle on Lizzie as maid of honor and Kath as a bridesmaid with duties still to be determined. Later, Kath jokes to Lizzie that the wedding industry is capitalist and antifeminist; Lizzie offers a blunter alternative explanation, that Kath is being heartless. Their exchange lets affection and irritation occupy the same conversation.

A Friend Who Makes the Gathering Happen

At a later gathering, Lizzie asks Kath whether she arranged for Jared Nicholas Thompson to come and whether he is there for them. Kath answers that he is there for Taylor, then introduces him to Taylor as her longtime admirer. The question briefly frames the surprise as a gift shared by the friends; Kath’s answer redirects its meaning toward Taylor. Lizzie’s presence in this exchange belongs to the same social pattern seen elsewhere: she is attentive to who has been brought together and what the gesture means to the group.

Across these episodes, Lizzie is neither an omniscient keeper of the trio nor a simple background friend. She knows more than Kath about Taylor’s crises, but she also has to actively arrange the calls that preserve their connection. She celebrates Taylor’s engagement while advocating for Kath’s importance, and her directness can sound teasing or insistent without erasing her care. The group’s continuity is not automatic: it is made, again and again, through Lizzie’s visits, messages, questions, and efforts to bring her friends into the same room or onto the same call.