Enmities don't talk about hate, they talk about pain.
With this sentence at the beginning of the first episode of the first season of
Feud
, Olivia de Havilland played by Catherine Zeta Jones defined the
leitmotiv
of an extraordinary season, which told us about the rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
A perfect warning to sailors: we were going to witness a story that revealed that the conflict between its two protagonists was born from the frustrations of each of them.
The real Olivia de Havilland sued Ryan Murphy for defamation.
He won the producer, in what he considered “a victory for the creative community and the First Amendment.”
If Truman Capote were still alive, he could have sued Ryan Murphy for the second season of
Feud
, not before a civil or criminal court, but before a hypothetical narrative court.
It has been a long time since such promising plots (a brilliant cast playing fascinating characters and an environment with so many possibilities) did not lead to such a disappointing result.
The bill is excellent, the budget is generous and the cast is great, where is the problem?
In the script, in all its layers.
First, in the structure: we are going to witness the breakup between Capote and his friends after he revealed his secrets in
La côte basque
, but to understand the betrayal that entailed, there are two alternatives: either develop it before the stab comes or count it in parallel after this one.
Neither of the two possibilities happens effectively, which is detrimental to the conflicts that are pointed out (intimacy vs. creation, misogyny, homophobia, class conflict, etc.): they are not concluded or delved into.
The drawing of the characters is not better: we do not know any of those upper class New York ladies in depth, their personalities seem limited to our ideas about the actresses who play them.
A writer who aspired to become the American Proust would never have forgiven this vagueness, nor would he have approved of dialogues that often err on the side of explanatory and presentist.
Ryan Murphy has achieved what almost no current American producer has achieved (and something that unfortunately too many Spaniards aspire to): that many attribute him the creation of the series he produces even when he does not write them.
He is the Aaron Spelling of the 21st century.
But very often the Murphy seal is not a guarantee of quality.
This is just the latest example.
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