Way back in April of 2023 I ended up
watching HBO Max's Love & Death. At the time I was trying to get
ahead of potential Emmy contenders for the 2022-2023 season (I didn't know that
the labor stoppage that was about to occur was going to last as long as it did)
and the fact that it was a David E. Kelley limited series for HBO seemed like a
sign it would be.
I loved the show and while I didn't
put it on my ten best list for 2023 I still preferred it far more than many of
the series that did get nominated for Best Limited Series such as Fleishman
is in Trouble and Obi Wan-Kenobi. The end of year awards in 2024
would rectify this partially with the Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominated
both the series the best performers for
awards even though there were still no wins.
I was reluctant to do so initially
because, as I wrote at the time:
Hulu’s Candy, with Jessica Biel in the
title role, had been one of many limited series that had received early Emmy
buzz from the streaming service. Dopesick and The Dropout were the ones I ended
up following, I refused to watch Pam and Tommy and I’ve only recently starting
to look at Under the Banner in Heaven.
Indeed Elizabeth Olsen who plays Montgomery here learned about Biel’s
adaptation two months before Love and Death started told her that HBO Max was
planning its own adaptation. Biel thanked her and continued to make her
version.
Now during the strike of 2023 I did
start something I do occasionally and watch streaming series that have aired
one and occasionally two or three years back and review them for my blog. I did
so with Under the Bridge earlier this year. And while I was waiting for
the end-of-year nominations from the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards to
come out so I could start making informed decisions about which new dramas,
comedies and limited series' on streaming to review for my blog in the weeks
and months to come (as well as the recurring favorites I want to get back to) I
found myself with some free time this week. At the same time I saw an article about Hulu's
most critically acclaimed shows. I decided I'd pick a streaming series I'd miss
from that service in previous years, watch it and review it for my blog.
I considered more recent shows such as
Say Nothing and the most recent season of Nine Perfect Strangers (and
I may get back to both later on) but I decided to do Candy for a
couple of reasons. First it was only five episodes compared to the seven or
eight of some of the others and second, because it gave me an opportunity to do
something I've never done in all my years of TV criticism: compare and contrast
two versions of the same story. I found the idea appealing.
Well having seen both my initial glib
reaction would be: if you only see one streaming limited series about Candy
Montgomery's affair, murder and the trial that followed see Love & Death.
But even though that's completely accurate it's worth going into
more detail and making clear what Kelley's version of the story nails in every
respect to make it sing and the version that Jessica Biel adapted does with the
exact same narrative than, even though it's two episodes shorter then the one
we got on HBO Max, it actually seems a lot longer and far less fun.
Warning: Spoilers for Candy and Love
& Death follow.
First of all there's tone. As is the
case with every limited series that he's done during the past decade Kelley
takes his lead character and the subject seriously. He treats Candace
Montgomery as a figure of empathy and compassion at the start, makes her affair
with Allan seem planned and everything that follows reasonably, deals with the
murder and its aftermath and the psychological havoc it wreaks on everyone from
Candy to her husband and especially to her attorney Don with the seriousness it
deserves.
Candy almost from the start plays like the
Lifetime Movie version of the exact same story and it actually gets more
tonally off the further in you get. This is true, I should add when it comes to
the depiction of sex and profanity which Kelley didn't shy away from in his
version. Every sex scene is the series is done with dim lighting and we usually
come around in the aftermath of the sex when we see it. There's very little profanity that could have
been heard on a cable network at the time. And that's before you consider the
dialogue which almost sounds like Biel and her writers only experience with the
1980s Texas was seeing movies made
during that period.
We also have a ridiculous amount of
long pauses with ominous music that don't seem to have anything to do with the
subject and characters repeatedly saying things that would be out of place in a
1990s rom-com. Kelley treated all the characters with respect and dignity from
the start. The first time Candy goes to see Don in his legal office he's doing
push-up shirtless and the next time its in a tanning bed. When she talks to him
about an interview he seems so clueless you get to feeling Saul Goodman would wonder
where he got his law degree.
Then there's the difference in how
both Love & Death and Candy tell their stories. Kelley follows a linear path, beginning with
the Montgomery household at the start, her decision to have an affair with
Allan (which has a different context then in Candy) then moves to its
progression and end in the second episode, then moves to the events of the
murder in the third and its aftermath. The leadup to the case and to the trial
itself takes up the final three episodes of the series and we see the entire
two the same way. There are some flash forwards but by and large Kelley keeps
to this pattern.
Candy begins on the night before the murder
and has the murder occur in the first episode. We then spend the next two
episodes flashing back both to the Montgomery household and the Gore household
spending time with Candy and Betty pretty much equally in each episode. This is
not necessarily a flaw except the writers excessively use captions to tell us
how much time has passed after every commercial break and even while the
episodes are still airing. During the first episode we see four different
captions in the space of fifteen minutes telling us how many hours have passed.
24 was subtler with its ticking clock than Candy is. By the time we get to the fourth episode the
writers are reminding us it's the day Betty died, the day after she died as if
they have as little faith in the intellect of the audience as they do in their
characters.
This also undercuts any arc the
characters can have during the course of the series. In Love and Death Olsen
portrayed Candy at the start with a kind
of ethereal beauty and an open stare. The perm and the glasses that she becomes
known for at the time of the media circus only happen by the trial and by that
point she is so medicated and withdrawn from reality that we don't recognize
her from the spirited woman we saw at the start. It gave Olsen a great ability
to show enormous range.
Biel by contrast has her wig and perm
from the start of the series and is wearing in the flashback. Any sign of the
ethereal nature we got from Olsen's version is never present and because of the
start at the murder Biel plays Candy as if she were aware of the crime she's
committed. That would be acceptable except there are no difference between
Biel's version in the past then there are in the present. She always seems
harsh and unpleasant, with none of the wondering we frequently see in Olsen.
Biel, frankly, looks like she's trying
the 'glam down' approach that so many actresses have done in films in order to
earn nominations and awards rather than be a natural actress. Considering how
superb a performer she can be in other roles (most notably the first season of The
Sinner) this is a bizarre choice for her as an actress and it's not subtle
at all. But compared to the other actors in this cast she might as well be
Meryl Streep.
Hard as it is not to compare the cast
of Candy unfavorably to their counterparts in Love & Death I
can't help but thing the major problem is the script. That's
particularly true with all the male roles. Paolo Schreiber is at least as a
good an actor as Jesse Plemons (who received an Emmy nomination for his work as
Allan Gore) but where as Plemons' managed to play his opaqueness into a kind of
sympathy Schreiber seems clueless from the start. He keeps telling everybody he
calls in the pilot "This is Allan Gore" to the point you almost
wonder if he's forgotten his own name half the time.
Patrick Fugit's role as Pat Montgomery
was not particularly memorable compared to his fellow actors but he played with
a solid straight forwardness. By contrast from the start Timothy Simons seems
completely miscast as if he think this is a comedy and he's basically just
playing another version of Jonah. There are times he manages to get the kindly
father right but the way he's shown as a clueless idiot around his wife, it
almost seems like the writers are saying: "She has to have an affair! Her
husband's a moron!" Even in the aftermath of the murder when we all know
what happened Simons's seems ridiculous out of touch saying he needs to protect
his family from an intruder, finding out about her affair and buying her a card
and flowers and at the end of the episode trying to swing an axe forty-one
times and after being exhausted going back to bed and snuggling with his wife.
But the worst betrayal is the
character of Don Crowder. In Love & Death Kelley went to great pains
to put Don's character front and center, showed just how seriously he took his
case and the toll it took on him. Tom Pelphrey was magnificent from start to
finish and by making the trial the center it did wonders for it. Raul Esparza
is a superb actor but from the start the show undercuts him by having only
glimpses of the trial during the first few episodes giving Don very little to
do in the first three episode and by the time he shows up for a full appearance
in the penultimate episode he genuinely seems as clueless as everyone else.
When he learns his client is guilty he seems to be salivated about the idea of
a trial rather than nervous about what's to come. The trial seems almost less
important than the crime and that's barely talked about.
The only actress who comes off better
in Candy then in Love & Death is Melanie Lynskey's work as
Betty. She's just as shrill at times as Lily Rabe but its clear the writers
have more compassion for her. When they try to show her as the other side of
the coin as Candy they mostly succeed. (Lynskey did receive a Supporting
Actress nomination from both the Critics Choice and the Astras for her work.)
Yet even then much of the time Lynskey is working against the script
which never makes her sympathetic at home in the second episode and shows her
as something of a fool in the third.
And if you're looking for so many of
the other memorable characters who appeared throughout Love & Death you
won't find them in Candy and when they appear, it's basically as stick
figures. Much of the action in Love & Death had a lot to do with the
struggle over the change in leadership over the church: Jackie, whose divorce
led her to leave the parish and Reverend Ron, whose lack of authority it is
implied led to a gap in both Candy's life and the town. Elizabeth Marvel and Keir Gilchrist
respectively gave a lot of force in their roles. In Candy both the
characters and the role of the church in the community is minimized to theater
for the wives and husbands and much of it plays out like farce rather than
drama.
And that's true across the board. The
children, particularly Candy's daughter had a real presence in Love &
Death; here they're given nothing. Bruce McGill was magnificent as an
autocratic judge in Love & Death; here he's not even really there.
Don's wife was shown to see how much the trial cost him, here she only shows up
at church. And considering that the writers have the time and energy to give
Jason Ritter and Justin Timberlake (Lynskey and Biel's husbands) cameos as the
dumbest and most sexist deputies possible this seems like a case of missing the
forest for the trees.
By the time we get to the trial which
takes 2 episodes Love & Death and only one in Candy it's clear
what the purpose of Biel's story is as opposed to Kelley. Kelley wants to tell
a detailed nuanced story in which he explains the full version of the saga of
Wylie, the circumstances which led to the murder and all of the repercussions
afterwards. Biel clearly believes that Candy Montgomery was guilty of what
happened and the only reason she got away with it was because the town of Wylie
was full of yokels who were shined on by a flashy attorney.
And as if to drive the point home in
the climatic summation Betty is in the courtroom for Candy's testimony making
it very clear that she (and by extension the writers) thinks that not only is lying
but that's she's also a whore. The townspeople basically take on the role of a
Greek chorus of idiots who completely believe everything Candy and Crowder are
telling them. That was not the case in the version Kelley told and he made it
clear in his version. He also makes Crowder seem like a showboat attorney who
is a publicity hound who doesn't care about anything. This isn't the case in Love
& Death where Pelphrey's Crowder cares very much about Candy and we see
the burden of it.
Just as tellingly the only bit of the
cross-examination we see is when the D.A. asks if Montgomery had another affair
at the end of this. There was a lot more to the cross-examination but the point
of Biel is clear: she was a loose woman who is a completely unreliable
narrator. In Kelley's version he goes in a linear fashion and by showing the
circumstances of the crime makes it clear that he's more interested in telling
Candy's story. Biel doesn't really care about how things played out in real
life; she has her own version to tell and it's where Candy doesn't just get
away with murder, she's clueless at the end.
And that's telling when it comes to
the epilogue. In Kelley's version he goes into great detail about what happened
to everybody in the aftermath of the trial and shows the entire story for all of the major players. In Biel's
version, not only does she only tell three bits of it she omits a lot. She
acknowledges that Allan got remarried not long after the trial, but omits the
fact there was a divorce a few years later. Biel points out Crowder ran for
governor of Texas afterwards and omits not only that he lost but that he
committed suicide – by implication because he couldn't let go of the baggage of
the case.
Worst of all she acknowledges that
Candy did divorce Pat changed her name and now works as a mental health
counselor but in her mind it’s a toxic joke: Candy not only got away with
murder but its another sign that an insane woman is guiding the sane.
Hell even the sense of setting is off.
Kelley's went to a great deal of trouble to put the music and choices of
television in context. Here all we get is a recording of David Soul and the
entire town seems more interested in discussing what's going on during Dallas
as well as other 1970s TV shows thrown in as reference.
I know why Kelley was drawn to the
story of Candy Montgomery: he saw the chance to tell a true life story of a
woman who was trapped in the world that had few options for her, saw her try to
reach out and was forced into a series of choices no one should make. He used Love
& Death to fill out that narrative and with his usual touchstones made
it sing and tell a deep and measured limited series like he usually does.
In Candy I think Biel saw the
exact same story and thought of a chance to talk about the worst aspects of American
society in a cookie cutter version. We see her contempt for the small town and
its values in every scene of the episode, particularly when it comes to the town
focusing around the church. She sees the models of middle America basically
just being hypocrisy for the worst kinds of adultery. She sees all the people
in the town as uneducated yokels where the men are all ignorant and the women
high-strung and whoring around. And she clearly sees Candy Montgomery's trial
as just another metaphor for how flawed the jury system and how people can be
fooled by flashy lawyers. There isn't a single person in Candy that Biel
has any respect for except Betty and critically it's only after she's dead and
can serve as a voice for the narrator that she has any purpose.
Godard famously once said that the
best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. We see a version of
this with Love & Death which was still being filmed by the time Candy
debuted on Hulu in May of 2022. I'm pretty sure that Kelley didn't see this
version until after he finished making Love & Death and if he did he
no doubt is gracious enough to keep his opinions to himself. I'm not bound by
those parameters and I'll be blunt.
I have seen some bad limited series
over my career watching television, some are just pretentions (the most recent
season of True Detective fits that parameter) some have no real quality
(The Regime is the most recent example of this) and some are badly done
to begin with (Under the Bridge) Candy, however, is laughably ludicrously
awful and a complete waste of all the talent assembled in front of the screen.
This isn't just a case of it paling in comparison to Love & Death, on
its own merits Candy utterly and completely stinks. It would rise to the
level of camp were I not certain that Biel and her writings were approaching
the subject with at least some seriousness. It's the kind of show that actually
gets worse with each new episode. I would have abandoned it had I not
made a commitment to get through the whole thing and were it not merely five
relatively short episodes. By the time I got to the last one I was almost
walking out of the room during much of it because it was so unwatchable.
I have been lucky that I've seen so
few missteps in my career of criticism for television and I'm definitely
fortunate to have seen Love & Death without watching Candy. Not just because the former was a near
masterpiece and this is so terrible but because of the contrast. Love &
Death was one of those shows that made me glad I'd subscribed to HBO Max. Candy
is the kind of product that makes you want to cancel streaming subscriptions
altogether.
In the words of Roger Ebert, I hated,
hated, hated, hated Candy. If you haven't seen Love & Death yet,
it will be playing on Netflix this month and I urge you to seek it out. I'm
grateful that Lynskey and Simons moved on to projects more worthy of them and
the same goes for Jason Ritter. As
for Jessica Biel, she didn't do anything for the next three years and only this
past spring has she done another project: The Better Sister. I may look
at it down the road but only because I want to see how Janel Moloney and Matthew
Modine look.
I'm not even going to rate Candy mainly
because I don't think zero stars would be too many to dignify it with. All I'll
say is if you turn on Hulu and your algorithm shows it immediately type
in something that doesn't start with C.
You're welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment