Apples Never Fall Final Assessment

 

Less then two weeks ago when I wrote my initial review of Peacock’s Apples Never Fall I made it clear that, unlike with most adaptions where I try not to read the book before I see the series in order to not bias myself, I had already done so with Lianne Moriarty’s novel. Indeed, I had written as a recommendation for one of my first Book of the Month entries. I said that when I finished watching the series, I would write an assessment going into detail on the differences, whether that affected my enjoyment of the series, and my overall impression of it.

Well I finished the most recent episode today. The fact that I watched all seven episodes in less than two weeks probably means something to those of you who follow my TV reviews over the years; this is as close to binge watching something as I’ve gotten since I completed Dahmer last October  - and it took me a year to even look at that series. That doesn’t necessarily mean Apples Never Fall is a masterpiece at the level of some of the great series of 2024; it just means it was immensely watchable. So now I’ll discuss some of the critical differences between the book and the series, besides the obvious change in the setting

Warning Spoilers for both the book and the movie follow.

For those who might have been disappointed how the mystery resolved itself in the final episode all that means is that showrunner Melanie Marnich was faithful to the original book. There were a couple of changes that in my opinion improved the ending, but I’ll get to those later on. Fundamentally both the series and the book follow the skeleton of the book which is a character study more than a whodunit. Like Big Little Lies (the book and Season 1 of the HBO adaptation) Moriarty uses the structure of a mystery to get below the patina of perfection that exists in an element of our society. In Lies, she looked at the idea of the perfect marriage; in Apples, she looks at the myth of the perfect family.

The series opens with the retirement of Joy and Stan who have spent forty years being the pillar of the Miami community and whose children film a video of how happy their family has been. The entire series tells the story of how much of a lie that this has always been and there are details that have been added that make the changes more obvious.

In the case of Troy (Jake Lacy) he has changed from working to a venture capitalist to working with a charitable foundation. From the beginning of the series he has been having an affair with his boss’ wife and as the show unfolds, it’s clear that he has thought the relationship was far deeper than it actually was. In the episode centering on him Troy gives her a lavish gift which her husband discovers. Out of guilt, he tells him the truth – and her husband explodes on him, for being ungrateful. “I treated you like a son,” he says. Offscreen, Troy beats him to a pulp. But as shocking to him is the fact that the man’s wife is angrier at him for what he’s done and she knows why he did. “You could have a fight with your actual father, so you had one with your surrogate one.” When she walks out the door, Troy is in agony – and that’s when the cops show up.

The story at the center of Troy’s issues with Stan is the same as the book. Stan’s best student, Harry Haddad, was cheating in matches; the two got into a fight and Stan sided with Harry. That night Harry’s father called Stan and told them he was quitting. Harry has become one of the greatest tennis players in history and Stan has never been able to let go of that. In the episode centered on him, Joy reveals that she caused to the split to happen because she was afraid of who Stan was becoming. Just as in the novel, all of the children tend to walk away from both parents in the weeks leading up to Joy’s disappearance. It is for that reason that Troy is now certain that Stan could have killed his mother. “Stan Delaney does not forget,” he tells the cops.

Logan (Connor Merrigan Turner) has changed the most of the characters. In the novel his character is named Roger and he is a college professor, in the series, he works at a marina. In both cases his relationship with a  woman named India has ended before the series begins, mainly because as an adult he is still tied to his parent’s apron strings. He tried to buy the academy but Troy refused to give him the money. He wouldn’t leave Miami because he couldn’t leave his parents behind. And in the weeks leading up to Joy’s disappearance, he keeps trying to play peacemaker but neither Troy nor Stan are willing to accommodate.

Amy (Alison Brie) is more or less the same as she was in the novel, still trying to find a way forward as the oldest child, still clinging to faith in a ridiculous way. When she holds a prayer circle in the episode centered on her, it truly seems to be something that she is making about herself. Most of her story – her relationship with the much younger roommate and her determination to believe her father is innocent – is the same, except for the fact of her depression and the fact that she once tried to kill herself.

Brooke has the biggest shift of all the characters, in regard to the plot. As I mentioned in the original review she is a lesbian who is on the verge of marrying Gina. The biggest shock came when an infuriated Amy tells the police that Brooke “f—ked Savannah. A lot.” And in Brooke’s episode we do see this long-term affair carry on, and that Savannah keeps it going on for much longer than Brooke wants. Eventually we learn Brooke did so because she falsely believed Gina was having an affair when she wasn’t. When Gina learns the truth their relationship is effectively blown up – and in the aftermath of the series, she has the least cheerful future to look forward too.

Another difference is that while in the novel, the Delaney children are divided from the start as to what happened to their mother, as the series progresses all four children increasingly move into the camp that Stan is the murderer to the point that when Stan is arrested at the end of the sixth episode, they are all convinced that their father has killed their mother. It may have come as an anticlimax that Joy was alive at the end of that episode – but when we finally see what has happened from her perspective, we get to see the biggest improvement Marnich makes from Moriarty’s original novel.

At the end of Moriarty’s book, it is revealed that Joy has essentially gone on a walkabout with Savannah for two weeks, even while knowing she’s not a good person and makes no effort to even try to contact her family during the two weeks she’s missing. Joy more or less just pops up near the end as sort of deux ex machina when things are looking at their darkest for Stan.

In the series we get a more interesting approach. Like in the book Joy did try to call her children the day of the accident and no one picked up, she and Stan did get into a loud argument the day of the fight and Stan did walk out, and Joy and Savannah do go off together when Joy ends up calling Savannah. But it is clear from the moment Savannah takes Joy to her home that Savannah’s intentions are not the least the bit benign. She is lying about no cell service and she cuts the landline on the first day.

Joy is on vacation the way that she was during those two weeks. She wanted to walk out on her husband, she felt that she had lost the part of her that she was and she wanted her children to miss her. But Joy actually wanted to go back to her family earlier than expected and once she learns about the hurricane that devastated her hometown (it is the center of the episode focused on Brooke) she immediately needs to get back in touch with them. Savannah immediately starts to dawdle, and it’s clear she knows about Stan being arrested when she comes back to see Joy. But by that time, Joy knows who Savannah really is – and so do we.

I don’t recall if this is in the original novel, but in the series Savannah is Harry Haddad’s younger sister. Harry is not the quite the factor he was in the book but in his one scene with the Delaneys, he makes it very clear why he was so devoted to tennis. His mother and sister Lydia were horrible people to be around and Lydia increasingly extorted him for money throughout his career. At one point she came after him with a gun and that is why he got a restraining order against her and retired. Lydia targeted the Delaneys because she blamed them for destroying her life and while she seemed more benevolent at the end of the novel towards Joy, it is only because we know that she left her mother to die and feels no remorse about it.

In the final episode it is clear at last how disturbed Lydia is. Whether she was kidnapping Joy with the intention of doing her harm or whether she was deluded enough to believe she would stay with her, by the end of their series Joy knows just how dangerous Savannah is. It’s not clear what Savannah’s intentions were in the final scene between her and Joy but it seemed she was determined to complete what she had intended at the start of the novel. That Joy came out alive and relatively unharmed may have been pure luck than anything else.

Apples Never Fall ends on the same optimistic note that the book did – more because the characters have faced their demons in a way that just wasn’t’ clear the same way. Troy does the right thing and signs over the embryos to his ex-wife. Logan has decided to move to Seattle with India. Brooke has gotten closer to getting her life together and Amy has begun to realize how destructive her personality is. And Stan has finally realized the trauma of his father (that too is part of the original novel.) That the novel ends with the Delaney family working together to clear up the tennis court that has been the foundation of their childhoods is parallel to the story – they have spent their lives making a mess for their mother, and now they are working together to clean it up.

I think, particularly in the final episode, the changes that Marnich and her staff have made to Moriarty’s book make for a more interesting and deeper study that certain elements of the novel were. In that sense Apples Never Fall the series enters the rare category of limited series adaptations that improve on their source material such as the Hulu adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere and Showtime’s recent adaptation of Fellow Travelers. Whether that will be enough to allow Apples to contend for Emmys in the next few months in a different question: the field is already ridiculously strong. Among adaptations of novels alone we already have Fellow Travelers, Lessons in Chemistry and FX’s Shogun. The first two have been dominant among the Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations, almost always a precursor to Emmy nods later on, and the latter is a near certainty.

However I think there is a strong argument for many of the actors to receive Emmy nomination down the road. Annette Bening seems a near lock for a Best Actress  nomination even though we mostly see her character in flashbacks until the final episode. Personally I hope Sam Neill is considered for Best Actor. It’s not just his health issues that make me root for him; it’s the fact that in his entire career on film and TV he has always been one of the most undervalued and unrecognized character actors in the world. This is one of the best performances he’s given in his long career and it deserves recognition, if not the prize itself.

I would like to see Jake Lacy and Alison Brie considered for supporting awards. Lacy, for the first time in a while, gets to play a character with more layers than we’ve seen and in the final episode we see a self-realization his character in The White Lotus never came close to. Brie’s work is just as brilliant, particularly because her performance is entirely against the type she’s been playing for the last decade. Considering how little recognition she got for GLOW I think she’s due.

I’m not prepared to say that this is one of the best shows of 2024 yet because it isn’t. It’s a very good and watchable show but in comparison to say Capote Vs. The Swans, it’s not  in the same league. But in comparison to other limited series this year that will likely contend -  Night Country and possibly The Regime – Apples is superior in every way. I was certainly more upset to be done with Apples then I am hyped to watch Night Country on my DVR and if there’s any decision about which series driven by a nominee from Nyad deserves to be contending, well Bening’s beats Foster’s in straight sets, no contest.

My Final Score: 4.5 stars.