The Undoing: The Undoing Show Only

October 25, 2020 7:50 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

Grace Fraser becomes intrigued by a young mother at her son's school. Later, news of a tragedy rocks the school community. (HBO, adapted from You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz)

The Guardian - The Undoing: like Gossip Girl 40 years on, with added murder

TV Line Recap

Vulture Recap: Profound and Existential Dread

IndieWire Review: Nicole Kidman’s Misguided HBO Drama Throws a Pity Party for the 1 Percent - David E. Kelley's latest courtroom drama acknowledges its privileged perspective, but a slow, reductive murder-mystery stresses its deficient focus on rich people problems.

posted by oh yeah! (4 comments total)

I didn’t find this to be a very compelling pilot, but I’ll probably watch because I enjoy escapist dramas about rich people behaving badly, I like David E. Kelley’s show home interiors, and I very much like Nicole Kidman. Gossip Girl 40 Years Later plus Murder is very much my entertainment demographic, so they got me.

Some stray thoughts after this first episode:

-I love that all the female characters are like “it’s gotta be the husband. It’s always the husband.”
-because of this, I’m assuming that it IS the husband, but Grace’s, rather than Elena’s, who is the killer.
-is Jonathan the father of Theresa, Elena’s baby?
-does Grace have psychic or supernatural powers? When Jonathan is talking to Shelby in her hospital bed we see a figure in green (Grace is almost always in either green or red/purple) appear behind him, and then right before he slips in to bed with Grace we see her cursing softly as if she knows Shelby died/the operation was unsuccessful.
-similarly, what are we to read in to Elena’s studio location right below/behind/part of a psychic’s storefront?
posted by stellaluna at 8:34 PM on October 25, 2020

I didn't find it particularly engaging either, though it didn't help that I was incredibly sleepy - if I hadn't wanted to get a pilot thread up on premiere night I probably would have paused halfway through and finished the next day. As it is, my highlight of the episode was Kidman's fabulous fundraiser outfit.

It's only 6 episodes, so I'll probably give it another go though.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:29 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

I quite enjoyed it and, OMG, that Givenchy dress Grace wore at the fundraiser! Stunning. I was always a bit meh with Nicole Kidman but liked her a lot in Big Little Lies where I thought her performance was outstanding. But I think her inability to move her face - even more so now than in BLL - is a serious limitation in her portrayal of this character who (I assume) is going to be put through the emotional wringer. I'm looking forward to the clothes, though.

I've always been partial to a bit of Hugh Grant, even though he's milked his Posh Englishman schtick to the nth degree. But he has charm and if he really does turn out to be the baddie (I think it's being too set-up for that to be the case though), it'll be a nice change.

It also made me really, really nostalgic for New York and all the friends I'm missing who are there. It was good they didn't film in Toronto, which is the usual (and probably much cheaper) stand-in for NYC.
posted by essexjan at 10:12 AM on November 2, 2020

She's a "scholarship mom" from a disadvantaged background, wearing a dress that costs more than my car, with a $300 haircut? Maybe there are explanations. I'm probably less annoyed by the improbability of that than I am let down because the way this team handled the working mom character (Shailene Woodley) Big Little Lies was a bright spot and this just doesn't feel that thoughtful.

I thought well of virtually all of the individual scenes, but I was still squirming at the amount of setup before the plot kicked in.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:17 PM on November 10, 2020 [1 favorite]