Better Late Than Never - Feud: Bette & Joan

When the latest collaboration between FX and showrunner Ryan Murphy debuted this March, I more than understand how big a deal it was going to be. Murphy was taking a look at Hollywood during the days of the studio system to use as a mirror for the roles of women in the world. Even if I was iffy about the principle, the cast listing alone, with four Academy Award winners (believe me, we'll get to them) would've been enough for me to want to see it. Add to that, the fact that it deals with an era that I have studied even longer than I have been studying television, and it was clear I had to see it. But it was scheduled against American Crime, which I have spent three years advocating for, and which frankly needed more viewers than this series would. So I watched that show, ABC canceled it anyway, and for reasons which boggle the imagination, Crime was nominated for only three Emmys. So finally, I found myself turning towards Feud: Bette & Joan, a series which got nearly as many Emmy nods as Murphy's The People V. O.J. Simpson did last year.  And while the series doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance or the Zeitgeist that this series did, one can hardly deny that it's incredible television nevertheless.

For those of you who didn't bother to watch, the series deals with two of Hollywood's greatest actresses: Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) Feud begins in the 1960s, where both actresses, considered past their prime by the studios are looking for anything resembling a great role. Crawford finds it in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She convinces down on his luck director Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) to direct it, and then lands her arch rival Bette Davis to play the co-lead, even though it's pretty clear the two of them have casually disliked each other for more than twenty years.

Aldrich jumps through hoops to get funding, finally ending up at Warner Brothers. Stanley Tucci does a magnificent job as Jack Warner, a man who doesn't even try to hide his disdain for talent in general and these actresses in particular. As the movie begins filming, Crawford and Davis seem to be getting along well, but Warner pushes a reluctant Aldrich into setting the two against each other, supposedly to get good publicity and to make the picture work better,  but the subtext is, he wants to make it clear he controls the picture. To that end, he has no trouble using one of the most acid-tongued writers in history, Hedda Hopper (a superb Judy Davis) who measures equal part bully and friend depending on who and when she's talking to someone. In just two episodes, Davis and Crawford are at each other throats. It's also clear that it wouldn't have taken that much to push them there.

There are clearly messages that Murphy is trying to say about Hollywood through the story of these two women. Considering all the obstacles that both Crawford and Davis faced just getting to the top of the profession, the problems that still exist to this day of women over fifty trying to get roles of any value, and the manipulations of executives treating actors like cattle, its clear that the two women should've been trying to support each other, especially at this point.  Instead, they spent their whole lives hating each other. He tries to tell this story through a documentary interviewing some of the other people of the day (Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Olivia De Haviland and Murphy stalwart Kathy Bates plays Joan Blondell.) And its very clear, from the scenes we see of them with their families that they basically gave their lives to a system that ate them up and had no use for them. (Special mention should be paid to Kieran Shpika, who plays Davis' daughter, and in one spine-tingling monologue, reminds you that she can steal the show from any actor.) In that sense, Feud works particularly well. What's not clear yet is if manages to hold a mirror to the country and women's issues the same way that O.J. Simpson held one to racial issues.

But even if you care nothing for that particular idea, one can't deny that this a triumph on almost every other level. Sarandon and Lange are exceptional playing two screen legends, which will no doubt make the already difficult job of choosing Best Actress in a Limited Series even harder for voters. But they are more than ably supporting by just about everybody in the entire cast, from Tucci and Davis, down to Jackie Hoffman as Mamacita, Crawford's loyal aide de camp.  I'm still not sure whether this series is at the level of Fargo or Big Little Lies, but it is very clear that Murphy is moving farther away from the campy excesses of so many of his FX projects to becoming one of the most extraordinary talents in TV today.

My score: 4.5 stars.