Lessons in Chemistry

In November 1961, Elizabeth Zott begins each pre-dawn morning convinced her life is over, yet she still prepares exacting lunches and terse encouragements for her five-year-old, Madeline. The pair live in Commons, California, where Elizabeth’s outward success—she hosts a hit television program, Supper at Six—sits in tension with private despair. Madeline, an advanced reader, hides her ability at school to avoid the penalties she sees adults impose on women who stand out.

Weeks earlier, a school lunch conflict launches the show. After discovering that Madeline has been handing over her carefully engineered lunches to classmate Amanda Pine, Elizabeth storms the local TV station to confront Amanda’s father, producer Walter Pine. Her blunt insistence that food is chemistry and fuels brains sparks Walter’s idea. Within a month, Supper at Six debuts; Elizabeth’s no-nonsense lessons and useful, nutrient-dense meals attract a national audience even as sexist branding tries to reduce her to “Luscious Lizzie.”

The present-day success masks a history of struggle. In 1952 at Hastings Research Institute, Elizabeth and renowned chemist Calvin Evans collide—literally over stolen beakers and figuratively over the institution’s sexism. Elizabeth, misjudged as a secretary, resists apology and remembers why she guards herself: at UCLA, her thesis advisor, Dr. Meyers, assaulted her; when she fought back, the university protected him and ejected her. At Hastings, department head Dr. Phil Donatti belittles and sidelines her until an illness-induced meeting with Calvin resets their path. He uses his influence to reinstate her DNA-related work; they agree to collaborate on strict professional terms that soon give way to love.

Elizabeth and Calvin become equal partners in life and science. They move in together but refuse marriage to protect her name and credit. Calvin, an elite rower, coaxes Elizabeth onto the water; she applies physics to improve her technique and endures a hostile boathouse culture. They adopt a brilliant, traumatized dog, Six-Thirty, who becomes their constant companion. Donatti, resentful and threatened, tries to kill Elizabeth’s abiogenesis project, but an unexpected donor forces its reinstatement. Calvin, believing he must secretly shield her—from Donatti to the risk of rowing in a small boat—makes protective decisions that strain trust even as their bond deepens.

Calvin’s past—an Iowa boys’ home, All Saints—left him with a lifelong grudge against the unknown father who abandoned him. One rainy morning, on a predawn run with Six-Thirty, a cascade of small factors—deferred police-car maintenance, explosive backfires, a slick of oil, the taut pull of a brand-new leash—ends in tragedy when a patrol car runs him over. Elizabeth, shattered, faces a perfunctory funeral, an invasive press, and Hastings’s swift seizure of Calvin’s lab notebooks. Alone at his lab bench, she finds a ring in his lunchbox; the moment she realizes she is pregnant recasts the ring as a parting gift and the future as a gauntlet.

Hastings reacts to the loss by turning on Elizabeth. Despite colleagues confirming her leadership, Donatti fires her for being an unwed pregnant woman and orders silence. Grief becomes action: Elizabeth demolishes her kitchen and builds a working lab to consult for cash, charging surcharges for condescension and Calvin name-dropping. Six-Thirty—ever watchful—becomes a local hero after stopping an armed cemetery worker, and the damaged headstone’s fragment revives Calvin’s mantra: “Every day. New.” Dr. Mason, an obstetrician and fellow rower, delivers Elizabeth’s daughter without anesthesia and later invites her back to the boathouse. Neighbor Harriet Sloane, trapped in a bad marriage, steps in with practical help and blunt honesty, becoming family.

As money tightens, Elizabeth enrolls precocious Madeline in kindergarten a bit early and, despite dread, returns to Hastings. Donatti reduces her to a lab tech, rifles her work, and suggests steno school. In a tense restroom exchange, Miss Frask, the personnel gatekeeper, and Elizabeth recognize a shared history of sexual assault, cracking the institute’s veneer. Frask later redeems herself by unlocking storage so Elizabeth can reclaim eight sealed boxes of Calvin’s research. When Donatti publishes Elizabeth’s stolen findings, she resigns. On the same day, Walter—desperate to save an empty afternoon slot—calls with a job Elizabeth doesn’t want: host a cooking show.

Supper at Six takes off because Elizabeth refuses to play a role. She strips the set of frippery, teaches chemistry plainly—spinach’s oxalic acid, why butter foams, the bonds that hold a stew and a family together—and ends each episode with “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.” Viewers flood phone lines to decode chemical shopping lists; sponsors and executives fume at her refusal to be “sexy” or small. She champions women’s ambitions on air, mapping a path to medical school for a self-taught “housewife” and rejecting diet pills as amphetamines while recommending exercise—especially rowing.

Madeline’s questions about her father intensify. At the Carnegie Library, she enlists Reverend Wakely, a minister who once corresponded with Calvin, to help find All Saints. The search uncovers a decades-old lie: the bishop there told a Parker Foundation lawyer, Wilson, that Calvin had died, triggering a “memorial” that funded science and sport at the boys’ home. Madeline notes the dates make death impossible, and Wakely probes further.

Meanwhile, the show’s reach draws ire. Elizabeth declares she is an atheist; picketers and threats escalate. Six-Thirty quietly joins the show and, during a live segment, detects nitroglycerin in a hostile viewer’s handbag, averting a bombing. A Life magazine cover, built from misquotes and gossip—including Madeline’s class family tree—smears Elizabeth as a scandal, boosting ratings while crushing her. In a meeting where station boss Phil Lebensmal fires the team and attempts coercion, he suffers a heart attack. Elizabeth calls an ambulance and finds, in his files, proof of secret syndication and eager sponsors. Walter steps in as acting executive producer, syndicates the show openly, and begins reforming the station.

Journalist Franklin Roth, who had tried to write a truthful piece, delivers a rejected feature celebrating women scientists to Elizabeth via Wakely. It galvanizes allies: Frask publicly exposes Donatti’s theft in a blistering letter; letters of support pour in. Still, Elizabeth feels erased by the TV version of herself. After a hard conversation about grief and blame with Wakely, and encouraged by Harriet’s insistence to “recommit,” Elizabeth resigns on air. She tells viewers chemistry is change, thanks them, and urges women to push beyond labels.

What follows reframes the past. The Parker Foundation takes over Hastings, uncovers Donatti’s misconduct, and offers Elizabeth the head of Chemistry. In a private meeting, Avery Parker reveals the truth withheld for decades: as a teenager she was forced to relinquish a baby, lied to that he died at birth. That baby was Calvin. Madeline’s letter to Wilson unlocked the adoption trail; Avery’s investigation confirms Calvin’s biological father died of tuberculosis before his birth. Misreadings fall away; Avery and Elizabeth embrace each other as family, and Elizabeth invites them all to supper at six.

Back home, with Six-Thirty fetching a fresh notebook, Elizabeth turns to page one and writes a single word—Abiogenesis. After years of detours, grief, and public battles, she chooses, again, the work that started it all and the truth-telling that has always been her method.