Love and Death Episode 1 Review: The HBO Max miniseries is a true-crime story starring Elizabeth Olsen as Candy Montgomery, Jesse Plemons as Allan Gore, Lily Rabe as Betty Gore, Krysten Ritter as Sherry Cleckler, Elizabeth Marvel as Jackie Ponder, Patrick Fugit as Pat Montgomery and others. The series has been written by David E Kelley, and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter. In addition to the two crew members, Nicole Kidman and Per Saari are also few of the executive producers of the show.
Love and Death Episode 1 Review Contains Spoilers
Premiering on April 27, 2023, Love and Death Episode 1 is titled ‘The Huntress’ and has a runtime of 56 minutes. Based on Texas Monthly articles and the book Evidence of Love by Jim Atkinson and John Bloom, this series maps out the real life story of a Texan housewife, who was ultimately accused of brutally murdering her friend in the ’80s. With Nicole Kidman as one of the executive producers of the show, it’s quite likely that the thematic thrust of the series will take you back to her own former show Big Little Lies.
Love and Death Episode 1 Review: Discussion
The first episode takes time to build into the main character of this true story – Candy Montgomery, played by Elizabeth Olsen. After the rather montage-ic credits roll out, the first shot itself gives us the image of the fateful day of June 13, 1980, when the gory tragedy unfolded. It’s not a spoiler as to what happens to these characters since true reports have already made known what occurred on that day in Wylie, Texas, in 1980. The bloodstained visuals of a bathroom are only briefly presented to us before the series switches its vision to a day two years before that.
Placing Olsen’s Candy in a hymn-singing choir of a church, the series strategically digs into the initial self of her character years before she finally became the Axe Murderer. Lending insight into the small community of family and friends that surrounds Candy, the show introduces us further to other people like Allan Gore, Pat Montgomery, Betty Gore, Jackie Ponder, Sherry Cleckler and others, all of whom play major roles in their lives being intertwined with the other in this close-knit community.
Candy’s crisis is soon unveiled as the existential crisis that leads her to raise valid questions about her being a woman and playing her roles suited to the domestic sphere. Her desperation to break out of this norm peaks when she finally decides to engage in a well-planned affair that almost resembles a contractual agreement with Allan. Herein the similarities between the two people kick in as they both wish for that sense of impulsivity to break their rather linear and static lives.
During the endless sessions of their discussions of the matter, Olsen’s character slips out a line that stays well beyond the episode’s runtime – “I just want to enjoy myself without hurting myself or anyone else” – but we all know how that will turn out in the end. The naturalist foreshadowing in this moment is impeccable, just like the actors’ performance.
Allan’s wife, Betty, is instantly portrayed as a starkly contrasting character to Candy. While the former has the drive to take control of everything, from how her husband is in bed with her to her daughter dressing up as the leather-clad Olivia Newton-John character from Grease for Halloween. At the same time, Candy aims at channelling her repressed reckless innate desires. Furthermore, Candy going for Allan as the unlikely choice for this affair may confuse some viewers.
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However, that’s the point of it all. For Candy, it’s not so much about who is with her when all of this unravelling, rather it’s more about her digging into the side of herself that she’s kept buried inside, one that feels stifled in this supposed happy-go-lucky setting of the late ’70s where religion, morals and the society are the foremost factors determining one’s conduct and identity. And so, her poems, the bare means of expression and voicing out these thoughts, are exactly that – bare and inadequate – until she finally makes room for them to take shape in reality.
Final Thoughts
The seemingly never-ending meetings between Candy and Allan somewhat hilariously flesh out. Despite them resorting to a “reckless” means of breaking out of the paradigm they’ve been posited in, their meticulous convening to cover all the dos and don’ts of this arrangement are far from that very word they’re hoping to settle into.
Also, this wasn’t the Krysten Ritter-Elizabeth Olsen team-up that my inner Marvelite had hoped for. However, seeing them together outside their Jessica Jones and Wanda alter egos from the MCU surely felt good. As far as the show’s onset goes, the premiere keeps it composed and mellow. However, the final moments of the episode that draw a parallel between Candy blissfully taking a shower right after her first time with Allan and the eventual cut to her petrified self taking a shower after the grim incident changes the mood and sets the tone for episodes to come ahead.
New episodes of Love and Death will stream on every Thursday till May 25, 2023.
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