S01.E03: Danny's Story

[statsgirl]

Quote

A teenager suspects foul play when he discovers his mother's former hospice caretaker is dating his father.

Original air date: January 31, 2023

[AnimeMania]

Rachel Bilson as Alison

Jack Davenport as John

Reid Miller as Danny
August Maturo as Matthew
Michelle Giroux as Maria
Camille James as Ms. Epps
Neil Whitely as Judge Raines
Andi Hubick as Leanna

Next New Episode: February 14, 2023

[Spartan Girl]

So that poor kid was being gaslit all along? Well, now I wish he killed the bitch. What a depressing ending.

I know I should feel sorry for the dad but I don’t. Seriously, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to hook up with your dead wife’s nurse and move her in when she’s not even been dead a year? Grieving or not, even a sane person would side-eye you for that.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Spartan Girl

[psychfan]

I was super pissed at the dad for not questioning why she was so vehemently opposed to their switching plates. 

[Madding crowd]

I hated this episode because it was obvious there was no way out for that poor kid. Not that everything needs to have a happy ending but couldn’t there have been one relative or a family attorney looking into this woman’s background? I can handle things happening to adults but not kids.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Madding crowd

[possibilities]

This was considerably less nuanced than the first two. The kid clearly was right that something was happening, but he could have been more subtle about his plan to get a lab test for the food, also. Maybe no one would have believed him anyway, but the first rule of making an accusation no one believes is to not also act scary at the same time.

[Glade]

Umm, ok...I didn't realize I was watching Tales From The Crypt. 

[PupCal]

They didn't even test the food!

[redpencil]

I really didn't like this one as much as the first two. It almost felt like a completely different show. I would have preferred it to actually be about mental illness, but then they put that last scene in. I was half convinced they were going to show he was imagining her saying things she wasn't.

[Daff]

8 hours ago, Glade said:

Umm, ok...I didn't realize I was watching Tales From The Crypt. 

Or, Twilight Zone. Although, TZ would have ended with the nurse being hit and killed by the car and the dog would have trotted home. 

[gesundheit]

Okay, so every episode is going to be wildly different in tone and style, I see. Perhaps that's the point? I don't know. But this was definitely the Lifetime Movie version of the show. In fact I'm pretty sure I've seen at least three Lifetime movies with that exact plot, just a slightly different protagonist each time. Sometimes the son, sometimes the daughter, sometimes the sister-in-law!

[possibilities]

10 hours ago, PupCal said:

They didn't even test the food!

Another grossly incompetent lawyer. She just had a belief that he was nuts, and didn't explore other possibilities. I suppose she was being paid for by the parents, who had already made up their minds as well.

[Spartan Girl]

2 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Another grossly incompetent lawyer. She just had a belief that he was nuts, and didn't explore other possibilities. I suppose she was being paid for by the parents, who had already made up their minds as well.

That dad was fucking useless. Clearly more concerned about moving on with his life than taking care of his sons, especially Danny.

And it really pisses me off how everyone just shrugged off the fact that the nurse was hooking up with the dad. "Oh, that doesn't mean she's not a bad person." Uh, even if she wasn't a murderer, it doesn't speak highly of someone that they're so quick to move into their former patient's home mere months after her death, let alone have an affair with the husband before the wife was still alive. A decent person would have had more qualms about that kind of behavior.

Not that I excuse the dad's part: it takes two to tango after all. It would be one thing if he just met someone else after his wife died, but the nurse? That's just sleazy and--I'm sorry but there's no other word for it--skanky.

[Chicago Redshirt]

34 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Another grossly incompetent lawyer. She just had a belief that he was nuts, and didn't explore other possibilities. I suppose she was being paid for by the parents, who had already made up their minds as well.

I mean, there are really only two possibilities: Danny was correct that Nurse is evil because she killed Mom, killed Chester, and was poisoning him' or his mental health issues incorrectly led him to those beliefs. 

It is unlikely that there is actual evidence that would likely support any of Danny's suspicions.

Doing an autopsy on Mom is doubtful to show foul play if Dad would even allow it and it's possible months later (she could have been cremated, for instance). The food that Nurse prepared is long gone so it can't be analyzed. Trying to find eyewitnesses to Chester's death at this point seems futile.

And yes, while we as genre-savvy people realize that those are things that could happen, that's a long way from showing to a jury or judge that they did happen.

And even if you spot Danny that he was correct or at least reasonable in his belief that Nurse was evil, it'd be hard to justify stabbing Nurse as a valid reaction to that.

The one thing that strikes me as ringing false was the notion that Danny would face prison for a long time. He committed this stabbing as a juvenile. So even if he got the most fire-breathing judge possible, it seems like he at most could get sentenced to Juvie for like 3-4 years (I think he was supposed to be about 14), and then maybe a couple of adult years after that. But as a first time offender and with the combination of grief over mom and mental health issues, plus a victim who made a full recovery and who was playing the "I forgive you" card, I don't think that he would likely get time beyond juvie.

[HelloooKitty]

I don’t know if it’s bc they are trying to tell a story that most shows would take probably half a season or more to tell in a less than an hour, or if the writing is just bad, or what, but I’m not really enjoying this. It feels very formulaic. There’s not enough character development to make me care about the characters I’m supposed to care about or to understand anyone’s motives. Why did the nurse want to kill everyone? At first it seemed like she wanted a family and that justified why she killed off mom and I could understand that Danny was a problem and that’s why she wanted him out of the picture, but what was the motivation to kill dad and brother? Money? 
 

42 minutes is just not enough time to tell a story with nuance and layers like this. Or, the writers aren’t talented enough to make it happen. 
 

this is the third episode and that’s usually how many I give a show before opting out. I might give it one more bc while I thought the ending to episode two was dumb and unrealistic, I liked the deaf representation. But the quality needs to be stepped up considerably. 
 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

That dad was fucking useless. Clearly more concerned about moving on with his life than taking care of his sons, especially Danny.

And it really pisses me off how everyone just shrugged off the fact that the nurse was hooking up with the dad. "Oh, that doesn't mean she's not a bad person." Uh, even if she wasn't a murderer, it doesn't speak highly of someone that they're so quick to move into their former patient's home mere months after her death, let alone have an affair with the husband before the wife was still alive. A decent person would have had more qualms about that kind of behavior.

Not that I excuse the dad's part: it takes two to tango after all. It would be one thing if he just met someone else after his wife died, but the nurse? That's just sleazy and--I'm sorry but there's no other word for it--skanky.

Seriously as to the dad. I will give him the benefit of the notion that the heart wants what the heart wants (as do other body parts). But at some point, one would think that moving Nurse into the home was too soon; that some of his friends or Mom's friends would have been "dude, you are disrespecting Mom by moving on this quickly;" and that when it was clear that Nurse's ongoing presence was alienating Danny that he should have said, "My sons are the most important thing to me, and let's slow this down."

To actually get married after Danny has just stabbed her (presumably) shows incredibly bad judgment.

It's also ridiculous that no other adult (or for that matter, Brother) told Danny about the honeymoon death of Daddy.

[possibilities]

I thought money was the clear and obvious motive.

---

When I was in college, taking a sociology course, we read an article called "On Being Sane In Insane Places"-- it's a classic in sociology... this was decades ago and I am not sure but I think the lead author of the study was named Rosen...something (thal?berg?). 

Anyway, what they did was have people from their research team claim to be hearing voices, in order to get admitted to a psychiatric hospital undercover, to observe. Once they were admitted, they behaved completely normal, said they didn't hear the voices again, etc. They took notes on what they experienced, because they were part of a research project. 

It was found that once they were admitted, everything they did was interpreted through the lens of insanity. Taking notes was described as "writing behavior". No one cared what the notes said or why they were taking them. The institutional bias was: these people are insane, nothing they do or say can make sense and everything about it is a symptom of their disease.

The patients in Danny's facility were all drugged to near catatonia. There have been reforms in psychiatric care since the article I'm citing was written, but the place he was, and his story, reminded me of that scenario. People just being put away because they are inconvenient. Not taken seriously because they've been labeled delusional and/or dangerous. Nobody even trying to help them. Just kind of warehoused out of sight.

Nowadays, funding (if nothing else) means people get discharged ASAP, rather than held a long time, but that would not apply in this case because Danny's family had a lot of money and wouldn't need to rely on insurance. They could afford to put him wherever they want for however long they want, if the institution would go along with it. The penal system probably would allow that, if they deemed him a minor incapable of standing trial, wouldn't they? With the proviso that they get reports on his mental state and if he's every sane enough for trial, they turn  him over rather than just releasing him?

In the 1990s I knew someone who had been put in a psych ward by her parents when she was a teenager, because they said she "used drugs" (marijuana). While she was in there, there was another patient who claimed to be Jesus Christ. The pot user was totally lucid and kept telling the Jesus Christ patient that if she wants to get off the closed ward, she should just stop talking about being Jesus, because as long as she says that, the people in charge were going to keep her locked down, whether she was Jesus or not. The pot user eventually got out by (in her words) "playing the game" and convincing her parents and the doctors that she would behave and not "use drugs" anymore. 

Like the "I'm Jesus" patient, Danny wasn't willing/able to act the way people wanted him to act in order to get believed. Yes, once the food was gone, there was no testing to be done. But even when he was approaching his friend to test the oatmeal, or wanting to test the dinner, he was acting in a way that scared people, and he wasn't able to calm himself down and modulate his approach in order to reassure them. Same thing happened when he was saying he wanted to see his brother. He went from calm to yelling really fast. He kept trying to get the murdering step-mom to respond to his request rather than trying to convince someone else. He gave her fodder by yelling, which she used to underline how irrational he supposedly was.

I'm not saying what happened to him was right. I'm not saying it wasn't understandable that he was freaking out. And even his brother, who "played the game" was not safe, as was shown at the end of the episode. But his incapacity for "playing the game" surprised me, because he had a lot of time to think it over and come up with a different approach, and he didn't get there.

12 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

It's also ridiculous that no other adult (or for that matter, Brother) told Danny about the honeymoon death of Daddy.

I assume stepmom/murderer was preventing others from visiting. My understanding of psych hospitals is that the visitor list has to be approved by whoever is supervising. For a minor, that would be the dad and when he was gone, probably the murdering step-mom inherited the guardianship.  

[Madding crowd]

I was thinking about this and Danny jumped to the conclusion the nurse was a “death tourist” who enjoyed death rather than wonder if she was just after dad’s money. Again I wish we knew more because there are certainly wonderful hospice workers who want to help people not gawk at their death. Now I do agree there are people like the girl at the bowling alley who just like to gossip about tragedy.

This wasn’t the right story for 48 minutes or so. Even the scene with the nurse killing the dog was weird because no mention was made of who hit the dog, the person coming forward or getting their license plate. And of course we knew that would happen when she volunteered to walk the dog. I also think the actress acted creepy throughout the show and wondered what the dad saw in her especially when his sons were hurting.

[hilaryvm]

I'm not so sure we were meant to believe the nurse was actually evil.  My impression was that we were seeing everything from Danny's point of view, so we weren't necessarily getting an accurate presentation of what the nurse said/how she acted but how Danny saw it all.  I think that the show meant to leave the question open as to whether he was actually crazy or not.  If that was the point, I'm not so sure they did a great job of making that clear.  But I could be wrong and we were supposed to believe Danny and that she was evil.

[eel21788]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Doing an autopsy on Mom is doubtful to show foul play if Dad would even allow it and it's possible months later (she could have been cremated, for instance). 

I'm sure Nurse Evil would have seen to it that the mom was cremated. Danny himself said she knew how to make sure the evidence wasn't available.

[possibilities]

I think it was ambiguous for a lot of the episode, but in the scene at the hospital in the end, when she tells him about his father dying, and he wants to see his brother, she doesn't say "of course! I'll bring him to visit you" -- she denies him-- and as he becomes upset, she tells the staff that she has no idea why he's upset, that he just went off for no reason.

To me, that sealed it. She's evil.

[Sweet-n-Snarky]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

I thought money was the clear and obvious motive.

---

When I was in college, taking a sociology course, we read an article called "On Being Sane In Insane Places"-- it's a classic in sociology... this was decades ago and I am not sure but I think the lead author of the study was named Rosen...something (thal?berg?). 

Anyway, what they did was have people from their research team claim to be hearing voices, in order to get admitted to a psychiatric hospital undercover, to observe. Once they were admitted, they behaved completely normal, said they didn't hear the voices again, etc. They took notes on what they experienced, because they were part of a research project. 

It was found that once they were admitted, everything they did was interpreted through the lens of insanity. Taking notes was described as "writing behavior". No one cared what the notes said or why they were taking them. The institutional bias was: these people are insane, nothing they do or say can make sense and everything about it is a symptom of their disease.

The patients in Danny's facility were all drugged to near catatonia. There have been reforms in psychiatric care since the article I'm citing was written, but the place he was, and his story, reminded me of that scenario. People just being put away because they are inconvenient. Not taken seriously because they've been labeled delusional and/or dangerous. Nobody even trying to help them. Just kind of warehoused out of sight.

Nowadays, funding (if nothing else) means people get discharged ASAP, rather than held a long time, but that would not apply in this case because Danny's family had a lot of money and wouldn't need to rely on insurance. They could afford to put him wherever they want for however long they want, if the institution would go along with it. The penal system probably would allow that, if they deemed him a minor incapable of standing trial, wouldn't they? With the proviso that they get reports on his mental state and if he's every sane enough for trial, they turn  him over rather than just releasing him?

In the 1990s I knew someone who had been put in a psych ward by her parents when she was a teenager, because they said she "used drugs" (marijuana). While she was in there, there was another patient who claimed to be Jesus Christ. The pot user was totally lucid and kept telling the Jesus Christ patient that if she wants to get off the closed ward, she should just stop talking about being Jesus, because as long as she says that, the people in charge were going to keep her locked down, whether she was Jesus or not. The pot user eventually got out by (in her words) "playing the game" and convincing her parents and the doctors that she would behave and not "use drugs" anymore. 

Like the "I'm Jesus" patient, Danny wasn't willing/able to act the way people wanted him to act in order to get believed. Yes, once the food was gone, there was no testing to be done. But even when he was approaching his friend to test the oatmeal, or wanting to test the dinner, he was acting in a way that scared people, and he wasn't able to calm himself down and modulate his approach in order to reassure them. Same thing happened when he was saying he wanted to see his brother. He went from calm to yelling really fast. He kept trying to get the murdering step-mom to respond to his request rather than trying to convince someone else. He gave her fodder by yelling, which she used to underline how irrational he supposedly was.

I'm not saying what happened to him was right. I'm not saying it wasn't understandable that he was freaking out. And even his brother, who "played the game" was not safe, as was shown at the end of the episode. But his incapacity for "playing the game" surprised me, because he had a lot of time to think it over and come up with a different approach, and he didn't get there.

I assume stepmom/murderer was preventing others from visiting. My understanding of psych hospitals is that the visitor list has to be approved by whoever is supervising. For a minor, that would be the dad and when he was gone, probably the murdering step-mom inherited the guardianship.  

The psychology nerd in me loved everything about this post and you had me nodding along the whole way.

There really was a lot of indicting him as 

 

[possibilities]

Rosenhan! I looked it up because it annoyed me that I couldn't remember. "On Being Sane In Insane Places" was directed by Rosenhan. More info here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

[Madding crowd]

This was fascinating information possibilities ! All those movies about people being held by mistake in mental hospitals used to scare the heck out of me. In this show I never doubted Danny since the first incident when the dying mother said she loved to look at the sky and the nurse pulled shut the curtains as soon as the family left. In fact, I would have liked some ambiguity but it was just a horror story.

[psychfan]

1 hour ago, Madding crowd said:

 In this show I never doubted Danny since the first incident when the dying mother said she loved to look at the sky and the nurse pulled shut the curtains as soon as the family left. In fact, I would have liked some ambiguity but it was just a horror story.

Same. And it bugged me he didn’t tell anyone about that. (so as soon as he had stomach pains I’d assumed she’d poisoned him.) Or, yeah, just in general try to make his case without freaking people out.

 

[possibilities]

Danny's affect was off-putting and socially unskillful, but I guess the nuance this week was that even people who are a bit unpleasant and not really acting according to norms might in fact be right and should be taken a little more seriously.

[Kiss my mutt]

This entire episode was a bit fantastical and didn’t fit with the others. I thought I was watching a lifetime movie. I liked the first two because you could put yourself in their shoes, at least somewhat, but a nurse killing almost the entire family including the dog? 
 

Thanks for the article, @possibilities  One of my biggest fears, (whether rational or not) is being mistaking locked by a vengeful gaslighting relative in a psychiatric facility and no one believing that I’m sane. Weird, I know!

[redpencil]

5 hours ago, possibilities said:

I think it was ambiguous for a lot of the episode, but in the scene at the hospital in the end, when she tells him about his father dying, and he wants to see his brother, she doesn't say "of course! I'll bring him to visit you" -- she denies him-- and as he becomes upset, she tells the staff that she has no idea why he's upset, that he just went off for no reason.

To me, that sealed it. She's evil.

I had the same conclusion once it was officially over, but given that until the very last second I was waiting for something else to happen that might indicate we were seeing Danny's hallucinations or similar, I don't think the episode was successful based on what I feel like the premise of the show is supposed to be.

[Chicago Redshirt]

9 hours ago, possibilities said:

I assume stepmom/murderer was preventing others from visiting. My understanding of psych hospitals is that the visitor list has to be approved by whoever is supervising. For a minor, that would be the dad and when he was gone, probably the murdering step-mom inherited the guardianship.  

It seems like if she were on her honeymoon when dad died, there would have to be a lapse in time where someone -- Bro, another adult in their life, the institution's hierarchy would inform him that the dad died. But maybe that is overthinking things.

8 hours ago, hilaryvm said:

I'm not so sure we were meant to believe the nurse was actually evil.  My impression was that we were seeing everything from Danny's point of view, so we weren't necessarily getting an accurate presentation of what the nurse said/how she acted but how Danny saw it all.  I think that the show meant to leave the question open as to whether he was actually crazy or not.  If that was the point, I'm not so sure they did a great job of making that clear.  But I could be wrong and we were supposed to believe Danny and that she was evil.

There are too many things that would have to be coincidental for her not to be evil. Or it could just be that we are seeing things slightly askew because it's Danny's story. I assume we are supposed to take everything that happens in these episodes at face value. But if we have an unreliable narrator issue, then maybe Nurse is good.

If we are supposed to take everything at face value, we have to accept that all the following are just coincidental:

1. Mom died much sooner than expected.

2. Nurse and Dad just happened to have an affair

3. Chester somehow was the victim of a hit-and-run and Nurse for some reason brought his body back to the house

4. Danny experiences a sharp stomach pain that doctors can't explain

5. Nurse gets more freaked out than a normal person would when Danny asks to switch steaks with Dad.

6. Dad dies unexpectedly of a heart attack or something just after getting married to Nurse.

7. Bro is also experiencing sudden stomach pains that are severe enough to prevent him from visiting Danny

All of them individually are easy enough to explain, but put together -- especially with Nurse's post reveal behavior -- seems clear that she is evil. 

7 hours ago, possibilities said:

I think it was ambiguous for a lot of the episode, but in the scene at the hospital in the end, when she tells him about his father dying, and he wants to see his brother, she doesn't say "of course! I'll bring him to visit you" -- she denies him-- and as he becomes upset, she tells the staff that she has no idea why he's upset, that he just went off for no reason.

To me, that sealed it. She's evil.

What she says is Bro can't come because he's been having stomach pains. Now if you want to give the Nurse is just an innocent victim of Danny's mental issues, those stomach issues could be actual and she could have been about to say "But as soon as he's better, I'll arrange a visit." But Danny freaks out and charges her. An Innocent!Nurse might not have picked up that the notion of Bro having stomach pains would trigger in Danny's mind the notion that Nurse killed Dad and now was trying to poison Bro like she had poisoned him. So it's possible that an Innocent!Nurse could honestly have no idea what caused Danny to freak out. But the tone with which she tried to assure him that she's never going to give up on him definitely seemed sinister. Which again gets back to the unreliable narrator thing.

4 hours ago, Madding crowd said:

This was fascinating information possibilities ! All those movies about people being held by mistake in mental hospitals used to scare the heck out of me. In this show I never doubted Danny since the first incident when the dying mother said she loved to look at the sky and the nurse pulled shut the curtains as soon as the family left. In fact, I would have liked some ambiguity but it was just a horror story.

Again, there could be a lot of reasons why Nurse closed the blinds other than being pure evil -- Nurse could have been forgetful, she could have thought that Mom needed to rest, Mom could have changed her mind and told her to close the blinds. 

 

[Daff]

14 hours ago, hilaryvm said:

I'm not so sure we were meant to believe the nurse was actually evil.  My impression was that we were seeing everything from Danny's point of view, so we weren't necessarily getting an accurate presentation of what the nurse said/how she acted but how Danny saw it all.  I think that the show meant to leave the question open as to whether he was actually crazy or not.  If that was the point, I'm not so sure they did a great job of making that clear.  But I could be wrong and we were supposed to believe Danny and that she was evil.

I would be inclined to agree with this except for the scene where just moments after the dying mom asked for the curtains to be left open (she enjoyed the view, I would simply want the light), Danny saw the nurse stubbornly close those curtains after everyone left the room (very reminiscent of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).  That was just mean and obsessively controlling. 
Additionally, just because you marry the biological father of stepsons, does not give you any rights over those children if the father dies. It would be a lengthy legal battle to have any say over their continued care, even if the father explicitly put it in his will. 

[12catcrazy]

I felt engaged by this episode but felt that they started to make it more obvious that Nurse was evil (and this just wasn't Danny's paranoia) with the steak dinner incident.  

Danny had obvious emotional issues which were going on before his mother died.  I think that his issues helped seal his doom so to speak as he would act so angry and almost irrational that it became easy for others to think that he was nuts.   Like maybe if he had been less explosive, he could have talked his friend into getting the oatmeal tested, instead of frightening her.   

This episode reminded me of the old saying, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean 'they' are not out to get you". 

And finally, is this just me, but it seems that I'm seeing more and more acting that has so much hand and arm movement and exaggerated facial expressions that it makes me think of Pixar style animation (which I really dislike).  It's like human actors are mimicking animation aimed at 5 year olds.   Either that or directors and actors have been watching lots of silent movies and somebody thinks that lots of body movement is a cool way to get your point across.  

[yanksno1]

I wanted to like this show, but after 3 ep's think I'm out. I'm just not enjoying them at all, even though they've been pretty good (but not great or anything). I thought they were going to be more court driven episodes with a bit of a backstory. All the main actors they brought in have been really good. Rachel Bilson was great as ever in this one. Even though I called the twist a mile away, it was still satisfying to see it.

[Daff]

7 hours ago, yanksno1 said:

I'm just not enjoying them at all, even though they've been pretty good (but not great or anything).

I’m really not, as well. The stories are designed to make viewers uncomfortable; however, my main issue was with the trailers leading up up up to the premier. So many quick shots of popular stars and I erroneously believed they were part of a weekly cast, not rotated through unrelated stories. I’m not sure I’ll be a dedicated viewer if the motivation is: “Let’s see who turns up this week.”

[Halting Hex]

On 2/1/2023 at 9:35 AM, Daff said:

Or, Twilight Zone. Although, TZ would have ended with the nurse being hit and killed by the car and the dog would have trotted home. 

I'm feeling a bit more Tales from the Darkside, I think.

Not that any of this is bad (I'm a TZ devotee), but it's rather a waste of an episode considering what this series is meant to be.

On the plus side, that bathing-in-the-blood-of-virgins deal is working out pretty well for Bilson.  Looking pretty nice for 41, I must say.  (Some mouth lines when she grimaced, but other than that, impressive.)

On 2/1/2023 at 9:29 PM, Kiss my mutt said:

]I liked the first two because you could put yourself in their shoes, at least somewhat, but a nurse killing almost the entire family including the dog? 

ALISON (channeling Margaret Hamilton):  I'll get you, my pretty pouty!  And your little dog, too!  Hahaha!!!!

[possibilities]

Killing the dog did make her seem like more than money was her objective.

[Starchild]

Nah, the dog didn't like her, so she killed it for convenience, to get it out of the way so it wouldn't keep barking at her and harshing her mellow.

[Diana Berry]

So wouldn’t the authorities have to look at evil nurse if the mom died under her care, the dad dies within six months, sounds  like the brother will probably pass away and the  other brother is locked up because he was accusing her of being evil?  I mean come on.  

[Simba122504]

On 1/31/2023 at 10:01 PM, Madding crowd said:

I hated this episode because it was obvious there was no way out for that poor kid. Not that everything needs to have a happy ending but couldn’t there have been one relatiending, butmily attorney looking into this woman’s background? I can handle things happening to adults but not kids.

That's what I didn't understand. Every time he was near a computer, I thought we were going to get the classic  "Everything you need to know about the villain appears on the first page"  trope. Of course the episode was from Danny's POV, but then she tells him his father died after the honeymoon (he sure didn't waste any time)  and his brother is sick. Unless he was imaging that too? Nobody checked this woman's background. She wouldn't get the estate anyway  Like someone else said. Was this the freaking X-Files or something?  😄

Edited February 5, 2023 by Simba122504

[circumvent]

6 hours ago, Diana Berry said:

So wouldn’t the authorities have to look at evil nurse if the mom died under her care

I am not 100% sure but I am almost certain that when someone dies in hospice care there is no autopsy and in general it is assumed it is the disease that kills them

But since the father/now husband dies soon after, and they have a record of suspicion, maybe someone would be looking into it. Then again, law enforcement in this country only solve about 5% of the cases, so maybe it is accurate that they wouldn't.

[Jillybean]

Danny wasn't the only one. The dog knew from the outset that she was evil. The only thing I don't get was her coming to taunt him in the psych hospital. She got the money, now move on.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Jillybean

[JH Lipton]

I have two words: Unreliable Narrator.  I think that Danny was and is schizophrenic and everything (which we need to see from his point-of-view) must be seen through that lens.  I know someone who is schizophrenic and what Danny thought was going on was almost certainly not the truth.

I believe that the last scene only happened in his mind.  Dad and Matthew are just fine.

Why?  Because the only two things that we know for sure is that an independent court-ordered psychiatrist deemed that Danny was not competent enough to stand trial, and that Dad remarried very quickly.  (The second doesn't count because that happens a lot where neither spouse is evil.

On 1/31/2023 at 7:01 PM, Spartan Girl said:

So that poor kid was being gaslit all along?

Not necessarily...

On 2/1/2023 at 11:24 AM, hilaryvm said:

I'm not so sure we were meant to believe the nurse was actually evil.  My impression was that we were seeing everything from Danny's point of view, so we weren't necessarily getting an accurate presentation of what the nurse said/how she acted but how Danny saw it all.  I think that the show meant to leave the question open as to whether he was actually crazy or not.  If that was the point, I'm not so sure they did a great job of making that clear.  But I could be wrong and we were supposed to believe Danny and that she was evil.

I think you're right, but they obviously didn't push the idea of Unreliable Narrator hard enough. 

[circumvent]

18 minutes ago, JH Lipton said:

I have two words: Unreliable Narrator.  I think that Danny was and is schizophrenic and everything (which we need to see from his point-of-view) must be seen through that lens.  I know someone who is schizophrenic and what Danny thought was going on was almost certainly not the truth.

I believe that the last scene only happened in his mind.  Dad and Matthew are just fine.

If that's the case then the whole episode was a waste of time. If a writer wants to do this they have to be skilled in showing the why maybe Danny is just imagining things. If they wanted to leave the audience guessing and in doubt, we can imagine anything. Like, I can raise even more doubts about Danny's story and say that the mother never really died, that he was actually thinking that the nurse was the mother. 

If the last scene was in his mind, than the writing was even worse because raising doubt for the sake of doubt is a con, not an art. I mean, it is all a matter of opinion since we don't have anything else (from the writers), other than our own guessing, to believe that. 

Occam's Razor. The whole thing was too rushed for one episode and not even good writing. It was just too simplistic and a cheap attempt to end with a "thrilling" feeling. 

[Madding crowd]

If the whole thing was Danny’s imagination we would have seen the dad and brother alive and well at the end. The nurse was clearly supposed to be an “angel of death “ type but they didn’t do a good job in showing everything. If the dad was alive at the end it would have been him visiting not the nurse who Danny didn’t trust and stabbed. I don’t think it was ambiguous at all.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Madding crowd

[JH Lipton]

18 minutes ago, circumvent said:

Occam's Razor. The whole thing was too rushed for one episode and not even good writing. It was just too simplistic and a cheap attempt to end with a "thrilling" feeling. 

I guess.  It's just that the ending made the nurse so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil for no good reason and Danny's beliefs were straight out of the "schizophrenic playbook".  

Either way, it doesn't fit with the other episodes.  If they were planning on having each episode be different in style and content, they should have done something different before this.

[circumvent]

5 minutes ago, JH Lipton said:

Either way, it doesn't fit with the other episodes.

I agree. I didn't like the other episodes that much either. I actually don't think they know what they want to do with the series. The first episode was interesting, but too much for only 40 minutes.The second was an "out of the jail free card because you are disabled" trope, which is also ableist as fuck. This one was an attempt to be a little spark out the The Shinning playbook. Failed miserably

 

[SunnyBeBe]

On 2/5/2023 at 10:23 AM, circumvent said:

I agree. I didn't like the other episodes that much either. I actually don't think they know what they want to do with the series. The first episode was interesting, but too much for only 40 minutes.The second was an "out of the jail free card because you are disabled" trope, which is also ableist as fuck. This one was an attempt to be a little spark out the The Shinning playbook. Failed miserably

 

So true!  The writers are not impressing me.  

[Daff]

On 2/5/2023 at 10:15 AM, JH Lipton said:

I guess.  It's just that the ending made the nurse so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil for no good reason and Danny's beliefs were straight out of the "schizophrenic playbook".  

Either way, it doesn't fit with the other episodes.  If they were planning on having each episode be different in style and content, they should have done something different before this.

 

On 2/5/2023 at 10:23 AM, circumvent said:

I agree. I didn't like the other episodes that much either. I actually don't think they know what they want to do with the series. The first episode was interesting, but too much for only 40 minutes.The second was an "out of the jail free card because you are disabled" trope, which is also ableist as fuck. This one was an attempt to be a little spark out the The Shinning playbook. Failed miserably

 

I think you both have hit on it. A weekly anthology, attracting bigger name stars under the supposed theme of social justice reform. Not much skill or artistry to any of it (typical).

[SunnyBeBe]

I didn’t care for this episode very much.  I agree that it seemed to belong to another series.  I do think the show may have squandered an opportunity though.  Early on, I got the feeling there would be a twist.  A big twist.  I suspected that Danny’s brother was jealous and resentful of him.  Danny seemed the favored child.  Mom even left the brother off the Cross stitch piece she was doing.  Danny had to complete it.  I thought baby brother was the one who was behind everything….framing the nurse!  And he wanted Danny dead or away in a hospital or prison , so that he would get all the attention from his new mom and father.  That would have worked for me more than the way they did it.  

[Madding crowd]

The mom died before she could complete the cross stitch piece which is why Danny completed it, it wasn’t on purpose. Danny was the younger brother and was very close to his mother and emotional about her death. It seemed like the dad favored the other brother who was more stoic and didn’t have Danny’s issues.

[SunnyBeBe]

4 hours ago, Madding crowd said:

The mom died before she could complete the cross stitch piece which is why Danny completed it, it wasn’t on purpose. Danny was the younger brother and was very close to his mother and emotional about her death. It seemed like the dad favored the other brother who was more stoic and didn’t have Danny’s issues.

Right, but to complete the branches for everyone but the youngest, even though she was sick…..hmmmm…..a child might feel hurt regardless.