The verdict is in, and the ending is a dud: Rather than wriggling out of the original story’s sexism, the Apple TV+ series just makes the same mistakes in a new way.
Rusty Sabich and Raymond Horgan prepare to hear the verdict in Rusty's trial in the finale ofto depart from the 1990 film that was based on the same Scott Turow novel. To refresh your memory: In the movie's final twist, after Rusty Sabich is acquitted of the murder of his lover, Carolyn Polhemus, he is confronted with the awful truth: His loving wife, Barbara killed Carolyn, out of jealousy and anger that she excuses as a desire to protect her family.
In the finale of the new TV series, Rusty is again acquitted, and he again comes home and has a confrontation with Barbara . He tells her he's known all along that she killed Carolyn; he knew it as soon as he saw Carolyn's body. In fact, he discovered and staged the crime scene in order to protect her. A horrified Barbara, however, seems rather convincingly shocked that her husband believes that she committed a murder.
So everything is basically fine, except of course for Carolyn Polhemus , who is still dead. But perhaps to make a nuclear family omelet, you have to break a few single, unattached eggs!It's difficult to defend the gender politics of the 1990 movie, which came out during a time when getting the figurative death penalty for interfering with domestic bliss wasn't uncommon for women. .
Without Rusty's resignation to his life of guilt and isolation, and with his rallying beside his wife to protect their fundamentally good-hearted child, what you get is a stronger sense that Carolyn simply doesn't matter at all. That she was murdered doesn't matter, that her murder is going to be covered up doesn't matter, that her blinking out of existence doesn't matter.
There is a lot to like in this series. As with a lot of snazzy streaming projects, the performances from known powerhouse actors are not the problem. Gyllenhaal is good. Negga is good. Peter Sarsgaard is good. O-T Fagbenle is good. It's entertaining enough on that basis alone, even if it sags in the middle quite a bit, as so many similar series do. It fits comfortably intoBut that ending is a big dud.
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