S01.E03: Danny's Story

[Madding crowd]

She was dying so Danny understood and he was the youngest.

[circumvent]

20 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.

You point is correct but I think Danny was the oldest, Matt (?) the youngest. In the beginning the father asked Danny to drive his brother to bowling. So Danny was 16 at least and the brother below driving age.

[Madding crowd]

I thought it was the other way around but I may be wrong. The brother certainly looked older. In any case I don’t think dying mom was trying to make any kind of statement regarding the cross stitch.

[Attatude]

The episode is a series killer.  The nurse had no believable motivation for enmeshing herself into their lives and killing them off.  The first two were decent but I’m not going to continue watching.  

[potatoradio]

Agreed that this show can't quite fit the material it wants to treat into an hour episode. Either use American Crime as a model and expand a single crisis over several eps OR use Twilight Zone or other short form as a model for how to fit an ethical dilemma into 30 minutes. This is kind of a mishmash in between and it's coming off pretty ineffective.

That said, I think Danny was both insane (or perhaps the insanity was starting after his mom's death) and the caregiver was a killer. 

[Cotypubby]

This episode felt like it was from a completely different series. We barely even saw any of the “accused” part!! This was like something straight out of American Horror Story. They really lost me with the “she really was eeeeeevil all along!” end scene. It was a good depiction of schizophrenia and mental illness until then and then it just became a standard Lifetime TV evil stepmother story because they wanted some stupid “twist.”

The first episode was pretty good but then this and the previous one have been going steadily downhill. I’ll give it another chance because being an anthology the next one could be total different, but these two do not give me any confidence in the writers.

[DanaK]

I too felt this episode was too wildly off compared to the first 2 episodes and I did somewhat like the first 2 episodes, as I don’t mind an episode that makes you think. I hope they don’t do another episode like this one because it was just too hard to figure out what was really going on and had too much of a Twilight Zone tone. The show needs to stay grounded

My TiVo listed Abigail Breslin in this episode, but she’s not included on the cast list; was she not in it for sure?

The ratings after the football-boosted first episode have been awful so I’m not expecting this to get renewed

[possibilities]

They did focus on the accused-- Danny was the one accused. He's the one who was locked up, needed a lawyer, was in legal trouble. I think the theme of the series is about various ways people wind up as defendants in legal jeopardy.

The guilty party was the step-mother, but she was not legally in jeopardy at any time, so she is not the defendant.

[JH Lipton]

On 2/7/2023 at 11:49 AM, Madding crowd said:

Danny was the younger brother and was very close to his mother and emotional about her death.

I thought that Danny was the older brother?

[Madding crowd]

Yes, someone else corrected me on that 

[Spartan Girl]

Honestly, a better ending would have been the nurse getting exposed because the lawyer/police DID wind up testing the food and finding her poison, and she gets arrested and after Danny gets a lighter sentence, the dad tries to apologize only for Danny to rebuff him, telling him that he was the one that let her into their lives and cared more about his wants and needs than his own children.

But what do I know?

[MicheleinPhilly]

What didn't ring true for me in this episode was the supposition that Evil Nurse was now somehow a substitute mother for Matt and Danny. Why is Matt living with her where she is presumably poisoning him? Are there no grandparents or aunts and uncles in the picture? 

Also did dumb dumb Daddy-O leave her everything in his will? Did he not have a will (highly unlikely given he has kids and is relatively well off)? Did he not ensure his children would be taken of, particularly after they had very tragically and painfully lost their mother? 

 

[Lady Calypso]

So, I just watched this last night. I was hoping for the accused to not just easily get proven innocent, but I wasn't asking for THIS kind of depressing episode. 

I agree with others that it probably would have been better to have the ending more subtle and not confirming Danny's suspicions about Alison. I thought the episode was ok, more subtle for me, UNTIL the final scene, and then I thought back to the rest of the episode and it kind of unraveled. I was kind of enjoying that they were looking at the option that maybe his dad was right and that Danny was not well. But, oh, never mind, he was right all along and now his parents are dead and his brother is dying and Danny can't do anything to stop it. 

I feel like there needs to be a bit more with the trial scenes because I feel like we'd see more ambiguity there (or maybe not).

It's just very unfortunate that Danny's dad didn't have the food tested, even if it was just to prove to Danny that Alison wasn't poisoning them. Lots of frustrating "why aren't you doing this!" moments with this show. Sure, Danny's father was convinced Danny was sick and having delusions, but to not test the food at all and to believe his son was mentally unwell and to do nothing? He was already sleeping with Alison so soon after his wife's death and had no remorse or guilt over his children finding out the way they did. Not to mention he moved her into their home I presume not long after he told them/Danny found out. He wasn't really an attentive father, so it made it frustrating to see him continuously not listen.

In a better written show, they could have done this story well because the idea of Danny not being believed was fine, but the execution wasn't as well done.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 2/17/2023 at 8:16 AM, MicheleinPhilly said:

What didn't ring true for me in this episode was the supposition that Evil Nurse was now somehow a substitute mother for Matt and Danny. Why is Matt living with her where she is presumably poisoning him? Are there no grandparents or aunts and uncles in the picture? 

Also did dumb dumb Daddy-O leave her everything in his will? Did he not have a will (highly unlikely given he has kids and is relatively well off)? Did he not ensure his children would be taken of, particularly after they had very tragically and painfully lost their mother? 

 

Given Dumb Daddy's overall insensitivity and stupidity and Evil Nurse's Eeeeeeeeevilness, I actually find it pretty believable that he either did not have a will period, that he created a will that left Evil Nurse the lion's share of his estate, or that Evil Nurse forged a will that gave her the lion's share of his estate. Dumb Daddy probably foolishly entrusted Evil Nurse to not be Evil and to have his kids' well-being at heart. 

I would imagine that Evil Nurse/stepmom would have default custody and that any other relatives would have to sue. But I can't see how any relatives/friends of Dumb Daddy or Dead Mommy could exist, because they would have risen as one to tell Dumb Daddy that pretty much every step of the way -- dating Evil Nurse before Dead Mommy's had a chance to go cold, moving Evil Nurse into Dumb Daddy Manor, continuing to date Evil Nurse when it's clear that the relationship is causing Danny serious emotional trauma, and ultimately marrying Evil Nurse after Danny stabbed her and was serving a sentence for it -- were huge mistakes.

[MicheleinPhilly]

Then Dumb Daddy was even dumber than I thought!