{"id":5052,"date":"2026-02-25T23:20:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/?p=5052"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:01:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:01:19","slug":"theyre-both-fucked-up-dove-cameron-avan-jogia-on-the-red-flags-we-excuse-in-56-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/theyre-both-fucked-up-dove-cameron-avan-jogia-on-the-red-flags-we-excuse-in-56-days\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThey\u2019re Both Fucked Up\u201d: Dove Cameron & Avan Jogia On The Red Flags We Excuse In 56 Days"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spoilers ahead<\/em><\/strong>: There\u2019s a moment in 56 Days<\/em> when the show\u2019s central con is revealed: Ciara (Dove Cameron) didn\u2019t meet Oliver (Avan Jogia) by chance at the supermarket. She planned it. She\u2019d been watching him, taking photos<\/a>, keeping notes. She orchestrated the entire encounter to get close to a man she had reason to hate. By any definition, this is manipulation. This is the setup for a love bombing<\/a> scenario, or worse. And yet, by the end of the show, we\u2019re supposed to be rooting for them to stay together. To build a life and to have their happy ending.<\/p>\n

Dove Cameron is aware of this contradiction. When asked directly if audiences will excuse the red flags<\/a> both characters exhibit, she doesn\u2019t hesitate: \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019ll excuse any of it. They shouldn\u2019t.\u201d But then she pauses, because she knows what actually happens.<\/p>\n

The attractiveness loophole<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s this recurring theme in 56 Days<\/em>: one where Oliver does something genuinely alarming, or Ciara reveals another layer of her deception, and the camera lingers on their faces. Both of them are beautiful, the tension is unbearable, and somewhere in that moment, the audience\u2019s moral objections start to soften.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the audience will completely brush it off,\u201d Cameron says when asked about whether attractiveness gives characters a pass. She\u2019s repeating herself because she knows it\u2019s not true. Or rather, she knows the nuance: audiences shouldn\u2019t<\/em> excuse it, but they will. \u201cBut I do think they\u2019ll start to excuse it more and more as it is clear that they\u2019re both exhibiting red flags,\u201d she continues. <\/p>\n

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I think when the playing field gets more levelled, it\u2019ll be like, oh, so these two are just fucked up. They\u2019re perfect for each other.<\/p>\n

DOVE CAMERON<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

This is the moment the show wins; the psychological shift happens for the audience when both people are compromised equally. When neither one is the victim, and neither one is the villain, audiences stop trying to pick a side. And in that refusal to judge, they actually end up rooting for the relationship<\/a>, not despite the red flags, but because of them.<\/p>\n

The con works because we want it to<\/h3>\n

Ciara\u2019s plan to get revenge on Oliver, the man she believes destroyed her family, doesn\u2019t survive first contact with reality. She falls for him, or she decides to love him anyway. The show intentionally leaves this deliberately ambiguous. But what\u2019s not ambiguous is what happens next: she kills his abusive therapist to protect him and then she chooses him and they run. Oliver, meanwhile, carries his own devastating secret: he killed someone in high school and let his best friend take the fall. Oliver\u2019s been living a lie his entire life, with his abusive therapist weaponising that secret to control him.<\/p>\n

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Neither of them is redeemable in any conventional sense; both have done deeply unforgivable things. And yet the show ends with them together, with a child, living in hiding. Not because they\u2019ve been punished or because they\u2019ve atoned, but because they\u2019ve chosen each other.<\/p>\n

That confusion in that inability to pin down who\u2019s hurting whom, who\u2019s the predator and who\u2019s the prey, is precisely where the audience\u2019s judgment collapses. We\u2019re not meant to figure it out; we\u2019re meant to accept the ambiguity, and we do. Because they\u2019re beautiful and they\u2019re damaged in interesting ways, where we as the audience almost want to save them. But to be blunt, that\u2019s because they\u2019re hot and the chemistry between them is undeniable.<\/p>\n

The moral we\u2019re actually learning<\/h3>\n

The uncomfortable truth 56 Days<\/em> presents is this: we say we want to identify red flags and that we want to protect ourselves from manipulation. But when presented with two attractive, deeply flawed people who are essentially destroying each other and everyone around them, we don\u2019t actually want to look away, and we don\u2019t necessarily want them to be held accountable.<\/p>\n

Cameron\u2019s honesty about this is refreshing. She doesn\u2019t pretend the show is teaching us something virtuous. She doesn\u2019t argue that we should<\/em> root for these characters. She just acknowledges what\u2019s actually happening: \u201cI think that\u2019s when we\u2019ll get into a zone of more, like, I have no idea who\u2019s got the upper hand here.\u201d Jogia agrees and goes further. \u201cYou can have all the red flags in the world, but sometimes it doesn\u2019t matter who they are,\u201d he says. \u201cIn some cases, they usually go hand in hand with a real connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jogia points out that he\u2019s not saying to ignore the flags, he\u2019s highlighting that the presence of red flags doesn\u2019t automatically disqualify a relationship from being real. That genuine feeling can coexist with genuine danger, and that when both people are compromised, when both are beautiful and broken in the same ways, the red flags become almost irrelevant to whether we believe in the connection. We reach a point where the question of who\u2019s manipulating whom stops mattering. And at that point of moral surrender, the show achieves something genuinely dark: it makes us complicit in the fiction that love, real, genuine love, can exist in a space of pure mutual corruption.<\/p>\n

Maybe it can. Maybe that\u2019s even true in real life, sometimes. But 56 Days<\/em> doesn\u2019t let us off easy by pretending it\u2019s beautiful. It just shows us that we\u2019ll accept it anyway. As long as everyone involved is attractive enough.<\/p>\n

You can stream 56 Days on Prime Video.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting Comfortable In A Relationship Isn’t Bad<\/a><\/p>\n

The Anxious To Avoidant Pipeline In Dating Is Real<\/a><\/p>\n

Spanish YA Romance Culpa Tuya Is a Prime Video Hit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spoilers ahead: There\u2019s a moment in 56 Days when the show\u2019s central con is revealed: Ciara (Dove Cameron) didn\u2019t meet Oliver (Avan Jogia) by chance at the supermarket. She planned it. She\u2019d been watching him, taking photos, keeping notes. She orchestrated the entire encounter to get close to a man she had reason to hate….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5057,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions\/5057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}