Season 2 - Feud: Capote vs The Swans

[carrps]

1 hour ago, Jordan Baker said:

I remember thinking he was terrific as Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, but this role is on another level.

I first noticed him [Tom Hollander] as the mousy little husband in Gosford Park who finally at the end gets up the courage to .... well, watch the movie. He also has a wonderful scene with Sophie Thompson (my favorite Thompson sister). I just love that movie.

[sugarbaker design]

1 minute ago, carrps said:

I first noticed him [Tom Hollander] as the mousy little husband in Gosford Park who finally at the end gets up the courage to .... well, watch the movie. He also has a wonderful scene with Sophie Thompson (my favorite Thompson sister). I just love that movie.

It was just on TCM the other night, so good.

[Snazzy Daisy]

S02•E04 - It’s Impossible

This episode is so much better than last week’s and a heartfelt dedication to the late Treat Williams. 💙

Is it impossible for Jack to forget Truman for good? He doesn’t deserve someone as kind and caring as Jack.

Is it impossible for Babe to forgive Truman for his betrayal? He’s the love of her life. Their surprise encounter feels like a dream. It’s a cordial goodbye.

Who is the REAL enemy of the swans - Truman Capote or Slim Keith?

Slim has ripped the swans away from one of their closest confidante, pushing Truman into medicating himself with alcohol. She’s suing Truman for defamation. She’s planting blind items about Truman to further isolate him. She’s screwing Bill behind closed doors (she calls it “friendship” 🙄) and convinces him to keep Babe away from Truman. Babe has been a good ally to Slim this entire time and she betrays her. Shared grief over an impending death is never an excuse. Hasn’t Slim done enough??!

There’s only one person who can knock Slim off her high horse - the fiercest Lee. And she does that elegantly. 💥😆

[Jan Spears]

I've never read anything about Slim Keith and Bill Paley being anything more than close friends.

12 hours ago, weaver said:

And where is Amanda Mortimer Burden in all of this.   

She's still living and I can't imagine she would give her consent to be depicted in any intensive way in this.

FYI - Slim's memoir (Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life) was published around the time of her death in 1990. I read it 30 years ago. The impression it left with me was that Slim herself was not especially interesting but she knew some very remarkable people. Interestingly, the chapter that has stuck with me is the one where she writes compellingly about her stepdaughter, Bridget Hayward. 

Edited February 16 by Jan Spears

[Cheezwiz]

5 hours ago, 12catcrazy said:

Actually, that is apparently the truth.  I haven't watched the episode yet, so I don't know exactly what they're showing, but Capote helped get her started as a model under the name Kate Harrington. 

Wow, I read up a little on her, and Truman actually took her in after her father (and Truman's former lover) abandoned the family. She called him up simply hoping for help finding a job.  He met with her for lunch, later moved her into his apartment, gave her all kinds of education on writing, helped launch her modeling career, and genuinely thought of her as a surrogate daughter. She still considers him to be the most important adult figure in her life. I'll post a link to the article I read in the media thread, but it does give a different glimpse as to who he was as a person. I'm glad they included this in the show, because it was definitely real, and shows another facet of who he was.

[sistermagpie]

I liked a lot in this episode, but sometimes it's hard for me to keep track of the timeline. I'll think something's a flashback and then realize it's not.

Quote

 

The boozing and the drug-taking began then.  Good writing is hard.  And you can't do it very well if you're perpetually drunk or drugged.  Since he could no longer write well, Capote fell into writing gossip.  The chapters of Answered Prayers that exist are really execrably written.  Just really, really, really bad.  PageSix on LSD-levels of bad.

In his mind, Capote was writing a 20th Century À la recherche du temps perdu—Proust's novel was also a Big Scandal when he published it.  The difference is that À la recherche was well-written, and Answered Prayers was not.

 

While I totally believe he'd lost it because of all the booze and drugs, I can't help but feel defensive for any writer having their unfinished work held up for scrutiny. TV and movies always show people writing the book as if they're just typing their final form, but lots of writers are fans of the horrible first draft. 

Edited February 16 by sistermagpie

[txhorns79]

6 hours ago, Snazzy Daisy said:

Slim has ripped the swans away from one of their closest confidante, pushing Truman into medicating himself with alcohol.

It really was Truman who did those things to himself.  No one made him write about his friends, and I think his problems with alcohol long pre-date his falling out with these women.  I will say I don't think the show has done a good job of explaining exactly why Slim is being so vicious, when it seems like the other women appear ready to move on.   

[pasdetrois]

On 2/11/2024 at 3:43 PM, 12catcrazy said:

Gore Vidal was quite the character.  Very handsome in his youth, witty, intellectual, and he could be as vicious as Capote. 

I so admire the talent of Capote, Vidal, and Christopher Hitchens - the scathing poison pens - but I would be scared to death to be in the same room as them. They were supremely vicious when crossed. Or even when just having a bad day.

[iMonrey]

16 hours ago, Jan Spears said:

She's still living and I can't imagine she would give her consent to be depicted in any intensive way in this.

Biographical pictures do not need permission from their subjects to depict them. If they did there would be no biographical pictures. 

Quote

There is not enough build-up with each main character to really invest in them and so it all feels rather hollow to me.

Hollow is Ryan Murphy's stock in trade. 

And it's too bad, because Tom Hollander's performance is Emmy worthy, but I suspect Emmy voters no longer take Ryan Murphy projects seriously. 

[peacheslatour]

1 hour ago, pasdetrois said:

I so admire the talent of Capote, Vidal, and Christopher Hitchens - the scathing poison pens - but I would be scared to death to be in the same room as them. They were supremely vicious when crossed. Or even when just having a bad day.

Add Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker and you have a wood chipper.

[MerBearHou]

16 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Tom Hollander's performance is Emmy worthy,

I agree and I predict when the time comes around, Tom gets a nomination but the series overall does not.  

This last episode -- heart-breaking to watch the scene with Treat dancing...  

[Maximona]

17 hours ago, Cheezwiz said:

Truman actually took her in after her father (and Truman's former lover) abandoned the family

There's a YouTube documentary you can watch for free called The Capote Tapes that's partly narrated by Kate Harrington.

After O'Shea's wife divorced him, and the O'Shea family teetered on the brink of destitution, Harrington—then age 12 & called Kerry O'Shea—came to Capote and said, Can you help me figure out a way to make some money?  My family is starving.  Capote used his contacts to help her establish a lucrative modeling career, and she lived on and off with Capote for the rest of his life.  When he was very sick & obviously dying, she helped care for him.

See, that's one of the reasons why you can't write Capote off entirely as a shallow, opportunistic parvenu:  He did some incredibly kind things from time to time that he never sought publicity for.  And at his best, Capote was a truly remarkable writer—though I kinda think he may have had that idiot savant thing going on with that one 'cause I never got the impression he was very smart.

I didn't like Episode 4 very much.  Jack Dunphy deserves better than this bor-r-r-r-ing characterization. (Fun factoid:  Dunphy, at one time, was a Broadway hoofer and the former husband of one of Bob Fosse's wives.)

Also, there is no evidence whatsoever that Slim Keith had an affair with Bill Paley.  And I don't see what injecting this "affair" into the narrative does to advance the narrative except to make it more sensationalized and incestuous, which, I suppose, is typical Ryan Murphy fare—and why Ryan Murphy is rich, and I'm not.  😀

[Cheezwiz]

29 minutes ago, Maximona said:

There's a YouTube documentary you can watch for free called The Capote Tapes that's partly narrated by Kate Harrington.

I just watched that documentary last night! (I think it was made about 4 years ago -the whole thing is available on YouTube). Very interesting and highly recommended.

I do think this show is really going in a bit hard on Capote. Yes, he betrayed his friends, and he definitely could be a little shit, but there were other sides to his character as well, which is why people were continually drawn to him - even after he was on the downslide.

Capote made it clear in interviews that he didn't think writing was something that could be taught. Nonetheless, it seems like he could have been a really good mentor to other young up and coming writers had he chosen a more constructive path.

Edited February 16 by Cheezwiz
typos

[peacheslatour]

30 minutes ago, Cheezwiz said:

I just watched that documentary last night! (I think it was made about 4 years ago -the whole thing is available on YouTube). Very interesting and highly recommended.

I do think this show is really going in a bit hard on Capote. Yes, he betrayed his friends, and he definitely could be a little shit, but there were other sides to his character as well, which is why people were continually drawn to him - even after he was on the downslide.

Capote made it clear in interviews that he didn't think writing was something that could be taught. Nonetheless, it seems like he could have been a really good mentor to other young up and coming writers had he chosen a more constructive path.

I think part of it was that he had an incredible amount of success at a very early age. He was fawned over by the publishing world and he became kind of this year's fashion accessory. He swallowed all of it and thought he was one of them. He wasn't and he didn't know his "place". 

[carrps]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Hollow is Ryan Murphy's stock in trade. 

Preach it, sister. Brother?

 

[Carolina Girl]

20 hours ago, Cheezwiz said:

 

Capote Tapes already covered.

Edited February 16 by Carolina Girl

[Black Knight]

I don't think Ryan Murphy had much to do with this season. I think every episode so far has been credited to Jon Robin Baitz as the writer and Gus Van Sant as the director. According to IMDB, Baitz wrote four of the eight episodes and Laurence Leamer (who wrote the book) wrote the other four. Van Sant directed six episodes and Jennifer Lynch and Max Winkler each directed one. Baitz is credited as developing this for TV. Ryan Murphy doesn't have an individual credit anywhere in the opening or closing credits, but his eponymous production company gets a card at the very end.

[Maximona]

9 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

I think every episode so far has been credited to Jon Robin Baitz as the writer and Gus Van Sant as the director.

Huh!  That'll teach me to only look at the big umbrella.  😀

The direction is actually pretty deft.  And I think Hollander is doing a fabulous job in the title role.

But the script is weak.  Kinda like the screenwriter was writing a scripted version of The Dead Housewives of New York City.

Plus, Babe Paley as a Perry Como fan?  I don't think so.  😀 

Edited February 16 by Maximona

[Jan Spears]

7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Biographical pictures do not need permission from their subjects to depict them. If they did there would be no biographical pictures. 

If the subject is dead, you can depict the subject any way you like. Mommie Dearest (the movie) is the ultimate example of that. No less than Christina Crawford has criticized the movie for deviating from her book in sensationalistic ways.

But in the case of a living subject (and particularly a subject who may not want anything to do with a production), the creative team behind the production has to be very, very careful not to defame the living subject. I have no idea what Amanda Burden's relationship (or lack of such) is to this production. But I can envision a whole team of lawyers saying behind the scenes not to include her except in the most legally defensible of ways (i.e. Mentioning that Babe Paley had a daughter named Amanda from her first marriage).

[surfgirl]

Quote

Also, there is no evidence whatsoever that Slim Keith had an affair with Bill Paley.  And I don't see what injecting this "affair" into the narrative does to advance the narrative except to make it more sensationalized and incestuous

I believe neither did Babe ever see Truman again, so why insert that false narrative into the story? Taking something that is so fact-checkable and insinuating false story lines into it just for shock value is cheap. I don't know who Ryan Murphy is, but based on this series I am not impressed.

[peacheslatour]

1 hour ago, surfgirl said:

I believe neither did Babe ever see Truman again, so why insert that false narrative into the story? Taking something that is so fact-checkable and insinuating false story lines into it just for shock value is cheap. I don't know who Ryan Murphy is, but based on this series I am not impressed.

I wish a real film maker would make a movie about this subject because it really is fascinating. Too bad Murphy is a hack.

[Blakeston]

I think my biggest issue with this season is that they really haven't shown why people were so drawn to Capote. He must have been witty, but we're not seeing much of his wit at all - not even in the scenes here he's in his social-climbing prime.

I mean, I get why the swans might have been entertained by a sassy brunch companion who's full of gossip, but why on earth was Bill Paley so taken with him, to the point that he wanted to invite him to everything? It's not as if Truman said anything in that scene that was particularly funny.

[babyhouseman]

44 minutes ago, Blakeston said:

but why on earth was Bill Paley so taken with him

The book implied he was a companion for Babe and not a threat since he was gay. Maybe TC was a distraction so Paley could have affairs even though I know Paley didn't need that. 

[txhorns79]

On 2/16/2024 at 7:22 PM, Jan Spears said:

But in the case of a living subject (and particularly a subject who may not want anything to do with a production), the creative team behind the production has to be very, very careful not to defame the living subject.

It's very hard for a public figure to succeed in court making that argument.  Olivia de Havilland was still alive when the original season of Feud aired.  Catherine Zeta-Jones played her during that season.  De Havilland sued Ryan Murphy, et.al. for how they portrayed her, and essentially made the argument she was defamed by how she was portrayed.  She lost her suit. 

Edited February 18 by txhorns79

[Blakeston]

 

On 2/17/2024 at 4:39 PM, babyhouseman said:

The book implied he was a companion for Babe and not a threat since he was gay. Maybe TC was a distraction so Paley could have affairs even though I know Paley didn't need that. 

This makes total sense. But the way it was portrayed on the show made it seem like Bill and his guy friend were totally enchanted by how fun and witty Truman was.

And Truman didn't say anything particularly witty, unless they were bowled over by his comment about how you'd want to fly into the Bermuda Triangle if you had to listen to Harry Truman talk about economic policy.

Edited February 19 by Blakeston

[Enigma X]

On 2/6/2024 at 1:14 PM, carrps said:

Yeah, I know Ryan Murphy doesn't do subtlety, but couldn't he learn? I just get tired watching his shows and usually just give up on them.

Same.

As with the first season of Feud, I sort of fact-check each episode after watching one because I think Murphy embellishes or moves around actual facts.

I am enjoying Feud because it is juicy, but all the things that I hate about Murphy's style are evident.

[Maximona]

18 hours ago, Blakeston said:

I think my biggest issue with this season is that they really haven't shown why people were so drawn to Capote.

Like I say, somewhere above, I just finished reading a couple of Capote biographies for reasons completely unconnected to the airing of this show.

Capote was very witty in real life, and he had that gift—which some people have & is better experienced than described—of giving his entire attention to you when he was talking to you.  He also had that thing that children of alcoholics so often develop, a kind of hypervigilance that allowed him to track people, remember salient details about them.

Capote could also be extraordinarily generous—as witness his practically becoming a foster father to Kate Harrington. That's just one example of his generosity among other.

I think what this show misses entirely is that Capote was as much a victim of these brittle, shallow women's values as they were victims of his malicious tongue. He was short, weird-looking, weird-sounding, gay—the consummate outsider, in fact, and his way of dealing with that was to armor himself as a consummate insider.  But, of course, beneath the armor, he was very insecure.

And above all else, Capote was a writer.  An excellent writer at times.  The swans didn't understand that, and Capote couldn't understand why they didn''t understand that.  

“What did they expect?” he lamented to one friend. “I’m a writer, and I use everything. Did all those people think I was there just to entertain them?”   

And that is basically true!  To a real writer, everything is material.  😀

[Sweet-tea]

On 2/15/2024 at 12:41 PM, 12catcrazy said:

Actually, that is apparently the truth.  I haven't watched the episode yet, so I don't know exactly what they're showing, but Capote helped get her started as a model under the name Kate Harrington.   She was another person who was seen a lot in the media in the 80s/90s.  

I’m watching the Truman Capote Tapes on Hulu. Kate is on it and said this did happen. They showed one of her early modeling photos. 

Watching the real footage of Capote makes me even more impressed with Tom Hollander’s performance. He has captured Capote’s voice, mannerisms and essence. 

I liked this episode but found it sad. The beginning scene of Babe going through the rigor of glamming up and then undoing it for the radiation really got to me, as did the dance scene of Babe and Bill. The song was perfect. 

I didn’t see Slim’s affair with Bill coming. 

Edited February 20 by Sweet-tea

[MonicaBWQ]

On 2/8/2024 at 4:18 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

Ah, Mia Farrow.  Another young person still alive. 

Christopher Cerf was also a guest and is still living. His father was Random House founder Bennett Cerf. He is also an accomplished producer and author in his own right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_White_Ball

Edited February 18 by MonicaBWQ

[carrps]

Isn't Christopher Cerf the guy Carly Simon wrote You're So Vain about? I'm pretty sure she admitted that a number of years ago.

 

[peacheslatour]

22 minutes ago, carrps said:

Isn't Christopher Cerf the guy Carly Simon wrote You're So Vain about? I'm pretty sure she admitted that a number of years ago.

 

I just recently read an interview with her and she said it's a composite. Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty especially.

[Sweet-tea]

On 2/18/2024 at 2:57 PM, peacheslatour said:

I just recently read an interview with her and she said it's a composite. Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty especially.

This was my understanding too from reading her book. 

On 2/18/2024 at 10:11 AM, Maximona said:

Like I say, somewhere above, I just finished reading a couple of Capote biographies for reasons completely unconnected to the airing of this show.

Capote was very witty in real life, and he had that gift—which some people have & is better experienced than described—of giving his entire attention to you when he was talking to you.  He also had that thing that children of alcoholics so often develop, a kind of hypervigilance that allowed him to track people, remember salient details about them.

Capote could also be extraordinarily generous—as witness his practically becoming a foster father to Kate Harrington. That's just one example of his generosity among other.

I think what this show misses entirely is that Capote was as much a victim of these brittle, shallow women's values as they were victims of his malicious tongue. He was short, weird-looking, weird-sounding, gay—the consummate outsider, in fact, and his way of dealing with that was to armor himself as a consummate insider.  But, of course, beneath the armor, he was very insecure.

And above all else, Capote was a writer.  An excellent writer at times.  The swans didn't understand that, and Capote couldn't understand why they didn''t understand that.  

“What did they expect?” he lamented to one friend. “I’m a writer, and I use everything. Did all those people think I was there just to entertain them?”   

And that is basically true!  To a real writer, everything is material.  😀

The Capote Tapes is interesting because it shows a lot of footage of him. When he was young, he was slight, blonde and delicate looking, kind of pretty. He didn't age well though. You can see the decline in the later clips of him. The documentary also goes into his relationship with the swans, and especially Babe. Kate Harrington confirms that he liked Babe the best and was very upset over the end of the friendship. And the ball he threw was a super big deal. 

Edited February 20 by Sweet-tea

[peacheslatour]

4 hours ago, Sweet-tea said:

This was my understanding too from reading her book. 

The Capote Tapes is interesting because it shows a lot of footage of him. When he was young, he was slight, blonde and delicate looking, kind of pretty. He didn't age well though. You can see the decline in the later clips of him. The documentary also goes into his relationship with the swans, and especially Babe. Kate Harrington confirms that he liked Babe the best and was very upset over the end of the friendship. And the ball he threw was a super big deal. 

Yes, this lines up with everything I know about him.

[carrps]

15 hours ago, Sweet-tea said:

The Capote Tapes is interesting because it shows a lot of footage of him. When he was young, he was slight, blonde and delicate looking, kind of pretty.

Yes, the back cover photo on the dust jacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms was quite the sensation when it was first published.

 

I guess my memory was faulty, and the Christopher Cerf identification was just speculation.

Edited February 20 by carrps

[ItCouldBeWorse]

I feel like episode 5, with James Baldwin, was entirely made up. And I'm not just talking about the ending.

[Starchild]

3 minutes ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I feel like episode 5, with James Baldwin, was entirely made up. And I'm not just talking about the ending.

I think so too, but if that's anything like Baldwin really was, he could inspire me to write a whole library of books!

[voiceover]

A lovely turn by Chris Chalk as James Baldwin, though I haven’t checked the Did This Really Happen articles for veracity’s sake.

Much of what his character said about writers & writing was fucking spot-on & I loved it.

But he also lured Truman down the garden path of rationalization — oh, those bitches deserved it! so mean, so spiteful, so two-faced, such bad mothers; so racist, so snobby, so stupid…Burn it all down, Truman!  You must destroy the village to save it!

This series may as well have been subtitled “Behold: the Consequences of my Actions”.  What a circular firing squad this group was.

[Cheezwiz]

I really enjoyed this episode. I think it's heavily implied that Truman's day out with James Baldwin was strictly in his head. I don't think the two authors had much use for one another in real life, but as someone who is as fascinated with Baldwin as I am with Capote, this episode was a treat.  Can you imagine being a fly on the wall listening in on the two of them bantering  back and forth? Really terrific performance from Chris Chalk who portrayed Baldwin. But oh man, what a macabre ending!

One other thing I have been enjoying about this series is the opening title sequence - really excellent artwork.

[weaver]

I tried but couldn't reach the end.  I thought the scene with James Baldwin was preposterous.  You know it did not happen.  Murphy or whoever wrote it just put it in so there could be a narrative of how blacks and gays were treated at the time using 2024 terminology and thinking.     

The writing is lamentable.  

[Spartan Girl]

The swan part was disgusting.

[TakomaSnark]

2 hours ago, weaver said:

I tried but couldn't reach the end.  I thought the scene with James Baldwin was preposterous.  You know it did not happen.  Murphy or whoever wrote it just put it in so there could be a narrative of how blacks and gays were treated at the time using 2024 terminology and thinking.     

The writing is lamentable.  

Even moreso to me, by using Baldwin as the framing device for why Capote's treatment of the Swans was acceptable, it made the Black man the spiritual villain and let Capote off the hook for a decision he made wholly independent of the input of of James Baldwin. Baldwin may very well have thought all those things but if he did, that had nothing to do with Capote's decision to throw the Swans under the bus (and even if they were terrible people, Babe most certainly still considered him a real friend, and vice versa - so the feeling of being betrayed was a very valid one).

And the cooked Swan was a vile choice. It was wholly unnecessary and just there for shock value, in my perspective.

[Spartan Girl]

The one line I did like was about how Gore Vidal was probably celebrating Truman’s downfall “voodoo doll in hand.” Now why couldn’t we have had a Feud series about those two instead?!

[Enigma X]

Just now, Spartan Girl said:

The one line I did like was about how Gore Vidal was probably celebrating Truman’s downfall “voodoo doll in hand.” Now why couldn’t we have had a Feud series about those two instead?!

I was thinking the same thing.

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

The one line I did like was about how Gore Vidal was probably celebrating Truman’s downfall “voodoo doll in hand.” Now why couldn’t we have had a Feud series about those two instead?!

You're definitely not the only one who had that thought.

I, too, thought maybe the whole thing was imaginary. In Capote Truman mentions a convo with Baldwin in his first scene so I believe they knew each other and had some interaction, but this was obviously a fictional set up.

The one thing I did agree on was when Truman was saying the Swans would not have come to his aid this way. For all it was his own fault that they dropped him after that article, it did seem like he was somebody they called when they were in a tizzy but did not help him in return. I believed he was accurate in how they related to people outside their bubble, particularly in, for instance, not inviting Jack to dinners with Truman.

[Starchild]

11 hours ago, Cheezwiz said:

One other thing I have been enjoying about this series is the opening title sequence - really excellent artwork.

That's one thing I'll give Murphy's shows, the opening titles are always gorgeous

[Pi237]

Im fascinated by this story, and the actors are all killing it..But I'm really not into the style of storytelling on this episode or the documentary one. Too many long, lingering scenes and dreamy sequences with foreboding music beating me over the head. It’s work to get through. I guess I prefer a simpler, more straight forward production.  I also would like more time spent getting to know The Swans and not so much Truman-centered, we’ve been watching him self-destruct for a while now. I feel like we’re missing a lot of how he got to know the women, what conversations they had, what things they did together. It jumped quickly into Truman vs The Swans and stayed there for too long without much backstory except Truman’s narration. 

[Carolina Girl]

5 hours ago, Enigma X said:

I was thinking the same thing.

I don't know that it could go for 8 episodes.  Have they made any reference to Gore Vidal before tonight?  If not, the comment would be lost on anyone not familiar with Vidal and Capote's mutual dislike.

But Vidal REALLY loathed Norman Mailer.  If you can find it on You Tube, there is a clip from the Dick Cavett Show with Vidal and Mailer where Cavett uttered his famous snide line (to Mailer, who was being insufferable) "perhaps you'd like two more seats for your 'intellect'."

[tennisgurl]

Its like the someone in the writers room pointed out that this whole feud seems extremally one sided, Truman betrays his friends because of his own creative slump, so they had to show us the Swans being petty racist mean girls so that Truman can be at least slightly justified in what he did. All of that might be true, but I don't think that's why Truman threw their dirty laundry all over the worlds lawn, he wanted something spicy to get his career back on track and this what what he decided to use. There might have been more to it, frustration that he was more of their sassy gay best friend instead of a friendship between equals where they both had each others back, but it was mostly because it was what he thought he needed to do to get back into the public eye. 

This was a weird episode, helped by the great performances, but for a dialog heavy episode it had an unfortunately weak script. We're pretty far into the season and despite being a character driven show I feel like I still hardly know any of the characters and why they do the things that they do. We get pieces here and there but its a lot of telling and not showing, and not even telling a lot of the best parts. 

Its really interesting to hear about Truman's relationship with Kate Harrington and I'm glad that they showed some of that in the show. People really do contain multitudes. 

The guy playing James Baldwin was excellent, it makes me sad that he is only going to be in this one episode (presumably) and that he pretty much just spent the whole episode giving Truman a pep talk about how he totally did the right thing throwing his friends under the bus because they suck anyway. I know that this all did happen (in the show, probably not in real life) but it makes way more sense for Truman to imagine in a booze filled haze that an imaginary James Baldwin justified everything he did and made him feel less like the bad guy. It was also another one of those episodes that was filled with a lot of modern terms and discussions, most of the conversations between Truman and James Baldwin sound like a conversation people would have today, not in the 70s. I get it, these shows from the house of Murphy use the past for mostly aesthetic reasons, but it still takes me out of the story. 

Edited February 22 by tennisgurl

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Starchild said:

That's one thing I'll give Murphy's shows, the opening titles are always gorgeous

A podcaster I listen to nailed it when he said, "This show's credit sequence is writing a check that the show has no interest in trying to cash."

Edited February 22 by sistermagpie

[iMonrey]

2 hours ago, Pi237 said:

I feel like we’re missing a lot of how he got to know the women,

Very good point. I don't feel like there's enough substance to this story to merit eight whole episodes, and I definitely got the impression this latest episode took place entirely in Truman's imagination. It was preceded by what appeared to be a suicide attempt wherein he swallows handfuls of different pills, so my take on it was that it was all a drug induced fever dream. This is the first one I found a slog to get through. An acting tour de force for Tom Hollander, no doubt, but little else to speak of. 

In fact the whole season seems designed to show off Hollander's impression of Capote while the women agreed to sign on just to be glamour pusses all dolled up in 60s high fashion. I'm sure it was fun to do but like all Ryan Murphy productions it is heavy on style and light on substance.