Hulu’s Candy insults with sexist crime caper, worse wigs
Jessica Biel plays an accused axe murderer opposite Melanie Lynskey in this mediocre miniseries
TV Reviews Hulu
The axe murder of Betty Gore isn’t the only attack on women in Hulu’s Candy, a screamingly sexist limited series even the most fervent true-crime fans can safely skip. Created by Nick Antosca (The Act) and Robin Veith (Mad Men), this five-part docudrama takes on the infamous case of Candy Montgomery, a Texas housewife who hacked up her supposed best friend amid a love triangle in the summer of 1980. With former The Sinner star Jessica Biel playing Montgomery and Yellowjackets’ Melanie Lynskey as Gore, Candy has the cast, time period, and setting needed to thoughtfully consider how patriarchal pressures sometimes spur suburban women to violence. But instead, this overstretched mess delivers half a day’s worth of slut-shaming that does little more than masquerade as being about—or for—anyone with a vagina.
Candy kicks off with the sensational crime in question, though we don’t see exactly how Gore ended up so…well, gory until much later. Montgomery is introduced at the start of a busy day, flanked by her kids (Aven Lotz and Dash McCloud) and Gore’s eldest daughter Christina (Antonella Rose)—who, yes, was really being babysat by the Montgomerys when her mother was killed. Biel’s saccharine Candy buzzes between phone calls with her oblivious husband Pat (Timothy Simons) and a never-ending cycle of errands. Like a cheery train conductor perpetually on schedule, she’s hailed as an “overachiever” by the other moms and exudes a cool efficiency that straddles pleasant and spooky. Meanwhile across town, Lynskey’s Gore is a hysterical wreck, visibly exhausted by a wailing newborn and her absent spouse Allan (Pablo Schreiber).
When Montgomery arrives at Gore’s home 20 minutes into the episode, the diametrically opposed homemakers (one an isolated mother in need of support, the other a borderline super-powered Martha Stewart crony) feel primed for confrontation. And yet, a jump-cut to a shell-shocked Montgomery, sitting in her car post-face off, delays Candy’s explanation for what, or who, brought these women to blows.
Candy is a textbook example of how not to write women, reinforcing stereotypes instead of challenging them.
More whydunnit than whodunnit, the remaining 4 hours and 40 minutes reconstruct (and partially fictionalize) the events surrounding Gore’s death, steadily plodding through Candy’s obsession with Allan, her compulsive curiosity about his wife, and her eventual murder trial. The orbiting talents of Biel and Lynskey make for an initially intriguing dynamic that positions home-wrecking like a keg of domestic dynamite, and the pair’s inevitable showdown is a feminist two-hander for the ages. But confusing narrative direction and utterly baffling character development seriously undercut the promise of that premise.
Told nonlinearly, Candy clumsily switches between before and after Gore’s death with minimal justification for why it does what when. Prior to the axing, it follows Allan’s budding affair and deteriorating marriage simultaneously, inexplicably failing to position him as responsible for either.
Biel, always excellent at conveying character motivation, portrays Montgomery as an undersexed mom-turned-passion-seeking missile. Lynskey, superb in rendering nuanced portraits, channels Gore as a mousy Fried Green Tomatoes-type on the brink of going full “Towanda.” This pairing of strongly gendered performances would be fine if Candy used them to critique the virgin/harlot dichotomy. But as it stands, this series is a textbook example of how not to write women, reinforcing stereotypes instead of challenging them.
After Gore’s death, Lynskey’s clever characterization is reduced to shallow victim status, and Montgomery is further vilified as a teflon whore with a black heart. Sure, Candy apologists could argue Biel anxiously wandering around in a blonde Bob Ross wig is critical, first and foremost, of a murderer. But considering this show goes out of its way to include dialogue commenting on the role of women in society and the god-affronting sin of adultery, that’s as disingenuous as calling these two “friends.”
85 Comments
Wokeness score: 0/10. Reccomended.
lol this is so sad
Shut up.
Worth watching, however, is 1990’s TV movie, A KILLING IN A SMALL TOWN,
which starred a never better Barbara Hershey as Candy, and was superbly directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal (Jake and Maggie’s talented father).
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available for streaming. I saw a DVD release of the movie with the title EVIDENCE OF LOVE (the name of the book it’s based on) at Big Lots a few years ago and grabbed it for $3. So I’m good. But yeah, Hershey is brilliant as Candy.
The full movie is free on youtube
So tell us Alison, how did you really feel about it?
Pretty amazing that Jessica Biel has had this career without showing any aptitude or improvement
She was pretty good as an over the top version of herself in Bojack Horseman.
Based on the photos here Biel is entering the “Wig Actor” stage of her career, that’s development.
I dunno, I think she’s a pretty good actor.
But, I mean honestly, based on what?
I remember thinking she was pretty good in the first season of The Sinner.
She was also pretty good as a morally ambiguous character on Limetown (on facebook TV) which however was not a good show
Well she’s hot and i guess she hasnt gotten on anyone in hollywood’s bad side, so they still throw her work.
So you didn’t watch The Sinner or Limetown then?Also just to fend this doubly misogynistic thing off, “Who’s heard of those?” Literally this site was fulsome in its praise. It’s not even hard to see, but, fine, she’s a bimbo.
Biel, always excellent at conveying character motivation I wouldn’t say ALWAYS
“Biel, always excellent at conveying character motivationI wouldn’t say ALWAYS”
Did you honestly think she didn’t properly convey why she was running from a guy swinging a chainsaw and wearing her boyfriend’s face on his?
Looking through her filmography, The Illusionist is the only title on the list I’ve seen that’s even halfway decent. It’s probably mostly her agent’s fault, but even in her “prime,” Biel was exclusively starring in critically-panned box office bombs. There’s Stealth and the TCM remake, plus Next—one of the many, many terrible PKD adaptations of the 2000s—Blade: Trinity, Planet 51—a Spanish animated film by a nobody studio who have released ONE film worldwide since P51 came out in 2009—the double-header of Valentine’s Day AND New Year’s Eve, The A-Team… I mean the list just goes on and on. The introduction on the Wikipedia page for every movie she’s been in ends with something like “the film was negatively received by critics and underperformed at the box office.”
She was actually pretty great in The Tall Man.
The A-Team was good and she was good in it. But I think that’s the exception that proves your rule.
Yeah, I feel like you can’t just drop that assertion in there without evidence. It’s not like the phrase, “Meryl Streep, always excellent at conveying character motivation. . .”
Thank you! I thought I was losing my mind. She’s never had any roles beyond blank slate straight woman, at least none that have ever registered in the cultural consciousness.
Her bit part in “rules of attraction” was funny.
Okay but that’s not a criticism of her acting, that’s a criticism of her *roles*.
and you forgot Blade 3. Or maybe you wanted to. I dont know.
Yes, those are all bad movies, although I do have a certain affection for Tiny Toons Bull Durham (Summer Catch), but she’s the best thing in each of them. Heck, in Stealth she’s able to convince an audience that someone would get all hot and bothered over Josh Lucas when Jamie Foxx is RIGHT THERE. (Heck, Lucas is the fourth-most sexy person in their squadron, since the AI fighter jet is voiced by Wentworth Miller.)
Ehhhh… The problem I have with your admittedly funny counterpoint is that the praise is *specifically* about conveying character motivation. And I don’t think that’s very difficult in the movies you’ve chosen to mock. General performance critiques or critiques of the movies themselves are fair game (though I think TCM is a pretty good remake/reboot, certainly WAY better than the Netflix trash) but motivation? I dunno. “I don’t want the chainsaw murderer/murderous plane to murder me” is pretty straightforward.
I prefer the phrase, “Jessica Biel, future hard Jeopardy! question.”
She was great playing a nightmare version of herself in BoJack.
Edited this review down for y’all to make it more coherent.
1) When women are violent, men are to blame for their actions and women are merely victims who musn’t be held accountable.
2) A hetero divorce must always be assumed to be the male partner’s fault.
There. Done. As someone else said, if this show is generating this level of Puritan woke-scolding hysteria, I’m immediately more interested.
Damn dude, MGTOW is over thattaway
yawn. ‘everyone who criticizes the wokescold narrative must be a Men’s Rights fanatic’ is a lazy and baseless take
Is this a good review? Pretty objectively no. Does your choice to completely fabricate points that it in no way made and then use those made up points to get mad make it better? Lord, no.
Is this a good review? Pretty objectively no. I mean, she doesn’t even mention the name of the M A L E who made her write so shittily.
‘fabricate’, lol
This is a horrible thing to say (or even think) – but here goes. After reading the book about this horrendous crime and now, after watching the first 3 episodes of “Candy”, I’M about ready to go grab the axe to kill Betty!! The sad part is, according to the book about the events of 6/13/80, Betty Gore was REALLY like she’s being portrayed – annoying, pouty, clingy, the list goes on. AND Candy Montgomery, as portrayed by Jessica Biel, truly was an overly-enthusiastic, bubbly (HATE THAT!), multi-tasking, sexually frustrated housewife. The whole thing is so bizarre – but it really happened. Thus far, they’re going pretty much by the actual events – give or take changing names of children, over-enhancing Candy’s “needs” and picking horrible haircuts for ALL the men in this mini-series. I think this 5-part mini-series has some potential to stay with it until the end – even if you just want to “escape from your own modern-day housewife trials and tribulations”. Just sayin’ . . .
2) A hetero divorce must always be assumed to be the male partner’s fault.It’s not an assumption, if part of what torpedoed the marriage is the affair that he had. (Which he’s certainly at least partly to blame for, right? Or did he just trip and fall into another woman’s vagina? It happens!) But feel free to turn valid points into something else entirely, if it makes it easier for your sad male victimhood.
sAd MaLe ViCtOmHoOd.
I guess the implication there is that when men are victims of something, you don’t give a shit, right?
Anyway, nice strawman. I never said dude didn’t contribute to the marriage failing because of his affair. But the reviewer seems incredulous at the idea that the other party might have contributed to the deterioration of the marriage. Do you believe that when someone cheats, they’re thus automatically 100% the reason for a failing marriage? Something tells me you’d think otherwise with the genders reversed. Then there’d be plenty of sympathy for the adulterous spouse and plenty of discussion of what ‘caused’ them to stray. That’s a double standard.
It’s okay, you basement dwelling incel cuckold, statistics don’t care about your feelings. Google is free.
… But those opening credits are pretty dope.
I’m not sure it’s really as puzzling as Foreman thinks that a series about a woman murdering another woman is not about how men are terrible.
I wanna see her review other movies now, outta morbid curiosity.Terminator 2: Judgement Day: “For a movie in early 90s LA, it fails to make any commentary on the racial tensions that gripped the city back then.”
“Candy has the cast, time period, and setting needed to thoughtfully consider how patriarchal pressures sometimes spur suburban women to violence. But instead, this overstretched mess delivers half a day’s worth of slut-shaming that does little more than masquerade as being about—or for—anyone with a vagina.”Now the patriarchy has gone just too far. #SaveTheBurbs
People who commit murder are generally under a lot of pressure — you don’t kill someone when things are going just swell. We don’t generally think those pressures are to blame when one person kills another with an ax. And while being a wife and mother can cause real pressure, Montgomery seems to have committed the murder here because she didn’t want the man she was sleeping with to be married anymore. I’m not sure where the patriarchy factors in here.
Yes, if women routinely responded to the pressures of the patriarchy by becoming axe murderers, things would be … different. I agree that the reviewer’s off-base as to the potential for telling this particular story in some particular other way. But as I’ve had occasion to note in the past, Hollywood freaking *loves* a woman murderer; the real-life ones are statistically over-represented relative to the many, many, many real-life stories of men who murder their wives/girlfriends.
I’m not sure I get the concern. Do you think viewers are actually confused about which gender is committing the vast majority of murders? I mean, we also have a disproportionate number of films and TV shows where the murderer winds up being a kid. Isn’t the reason for that that it defies our expectations?
It’s not concern per se. More like, there’s a gender issue here, but it’s not that the show ignores the impact of the patriarchy. Yes to expectation defiance, but the kid murderers are usually fictional, I was talking about dramatized true crime.
Again, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what role the patriarchy poses here. Sure, Montgomery might have been stressed because of unfair burdens of being a wife and mother. But it doesn’t seem like that actually played a role in her murder. The triggering event here was the fact that Montgomery was having an affair with the murder victim’s husband.And yes, you were talking about dramatized true crime, but I think the selection reasoning is basically the same. Hollywood is looking for murders that are interesting and unusual, whether they’re filming fictional stories or ones based on reality. Women and children are unusual murderers, and so that adds an element of interest. Because there are so few murders where the murderer turns out to be a child in real life (far more so even than murders committed by women) it’s inevitable that those stories will largely be fictional, and not true-crime.
I think my parents, rabid consumers of copaganda police procedurals, believe that cops are great and most cities are a Purge-style hellscape.There comes a point at which “defying expectations” just becomes expectations.
OK, but we’re plainly not at that point, right? No one is confused about which gender is committing the vast majority of murders. And we shouldn’t be picking what stories to depict on TV based on your parents being idiots, particularly since even they are not so stupid as to be confused about this.
See, you say “No one is confused” but I would bet this isn’t the case. I think about something like Gone Girl and how it plays into conspiratorial male paranoia. I suspect a depressing number of MRA types are either ignorant of or in denial about gendered murder stats.And I’m not making any kind of “should” statement about this variety of narrative. Nor am I defending the review, which is weird about the messaging/thematic resonance.(Although I very much agree with the critique of nonlinear structure as requiring *some* kind of justification. It’s the laziest screenwriting tool to maintain a viewer’s interest. People complain about voiceover or flashback but for me nonlinear structure is the worse crutch.)
Kudos to the reviewer, though, who was presumably writing this on a dare: “I bet you can’t find a way to say ‘this show should have given its women less agency, and focused more on the tangentally-related story of the male side-character’ and make it sound like you’re saying it because of feminism.” I mean, she didn’t pull it off, but she gave it a good try!I was startled by the passage Zod quotes, criticising a story for allowing its female characters their own choices, rather than ‘showing’ how they’re just inanimate objects moved by the machinations of men. But I outright burst out laughing when I got to “inexplicably failing to position [the man] as responsible”. It’s so misogynistic – and yet pious – that it’s hard to tell whether its a parody intentionally, or just accidentally…
I’m also not sure how you can use this story to critique the “the virgin/harlot dichotomy.” Like, you can undermine that dichotomy if what happened is that the more chaste person wound up being the immoral/criminal one. But Montgomery really was cheating, and really did kill Gore.
I wonder if Alison watched Titanic and complained that Hollywood did a disservice to the maritime industry because Cameron had the boat sink at the end.
It’s hard to tell whether the AV Club is better satire than The Onion these days.
Because Alison is no doubt the sort of woman who immediately takes sole credit for anything good, but immediately looks for a boy to blame when she fucks up. Actually, I wonder if that’s why they kept Barsanti on.
Sure, but then the article takes pains to argue that the show depicts a story where, when women get agency, they go nuts. That women that do things go bad. Now, that could be a description of what actually happened in this case, but then it’s worth asking if that story is worth telling.
As well, the article doesn’t say the man is responsible for the MURDER. It’s that most failed marriages are a mutual failure. ESPECIALLY Midwestern marriages of quiet desperation where folks get married to the very first people they sleep with and then don’t know how to keep the honeymoon going.
Not that most people deal with marital crises by committing murder, of course, but, it’s a series depicting a relationship that made the news. And said news explored their marital troubles, and that they started going to couple’s therapy just before the murder, so it’s probably fair to point out if the show chooses to turn him into a quiet unknowing victim of a cheating vamp instead of someone aware that his marriage was in trouble. That, at the very least, it makes him and their relationship more boring, and subsequently the main character more transparently evil. In other words, less interesting than in reality.
Which, to use your vernacular, would seem to be a simultaneously misogynistic and pious move on the part of the showrunners.
Me neither. But the article’s author seems pretty convinced it does.
I would like for Jessica Biel to get more action roles, she seemed primed to be a star in those but when Blade Trinity tanked it seemed to end her getting offered those
thats too bad too-i think all of them share the blame for blade trinity, it wasnt her fault.
thanks for the ridiculous “review” . If a nitwit like you hates it , it must be worth a watch!
“The axe murder of Betty Gore isn’t the only attack on women in Hulu’s Candy”
A woman murdering another woman is not any kind of “attack on women”.“More whydunnit than whodunnit”MORE? It isn’t a “whodunnit” at ALL.
Hm.
I don’t know if it was explained well, but I understand where Foreman’s coming from. If we’re going to spend five hours (five fucking hours! Just make a movie for god’s sake) with these two, we need more insight into the dynamic than just “I dunno I guess she was just a mean jealous bitch.” It wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t clearly trying to Say Something about women – but it is.
I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t say whether it has a point that justifies its run time. But Foreman’s point wasn’t that Candy needed a better justification for it’s runtime, but that she wanted Candy to have a very specific message. I’m not sure “men are selfish and terrible” is any less of a lazy, halfassed message than whatever Candy manages to get across.
I think that’s a bit of a reductive reading of it. Admittedly we’re not privy to the rest of the show, since it’s being released over the course of the week, but from what it sounds like, a man is absent and disengaged from his wife, and eventually ends up cheating on her, leading to their relationship deteriorating even further. Yet the show, based on the review, doesn’t seem to acknowledge that, hey, this guy was kind of a shitty husband too, foisting all the blame onto Candy. Does that make sense?
Too bad his wife never got the chance to tell him off, due to an incident it’s offensive to focus on.
yeah, none of that is in the trailer.
Yeah, I feel like some people are taking one (admittedly odd) aspect of this review and extrapolating it into the *whole* review. Which…. it isn’t.
Yes, it makes sense. The blame is “foisted on Candy” because SHE DID THE KILLING. Yes, Alan may have been a neglectful husband but he was caring and kind to her when she was nervous and insecure.
Did we watch the same series? I saw the first episode last night. It was fine, wife loved it. Good tension building.
This article and most comments are disgusting. This is a time period portrayal which was done well.
Worse than that true crime show with Renee Zellweger a couple of months ago?
Yeah, Jonah’s in this, so I’m in for the long haul.
Art should portray life, rather than some aspirational version of life. Otherwise we have religious movies. Actual life includes many people that unfortunately live up to the stereotypes of their group. It’s just reality. Despite the last decade’s constant push to eschew stereotypes of some groups—art that tells the story of these walking stereotypes can be worthwhile (the greedy businessman, the corny boring suburbanite, the low character street criminal). I don’t understand the demand to portray certain groups (which are often the groups that are vocal about their own “oppression”) as only the best version of those groups. It’s ruining art. Get past it.
Thats really too bad. id want to watch anything with Lynskey in it-i still might, just to see her, but this doesnt sound good.
This reviewer is a woke IDIOT. Her only concern was crapping on men as usual. The series did not do enough man bashing in order to serve her ridiculous radical woke ideology. Biel was excellent in her character. They series was a bit slow at times. They could have made it shorter and it would have shown better. It seems sometimes they add too much filler content to stretch out the length.
“Told nonlinearly”Aaand I’m out! 99 % of the time these days nonlinear is code for “This wasn’t interesting enough without time jumping for no reason.”
This series is excellent, and Jessica Biel is really good,whomever did the set designs should get an award, it looks just like late 70s early 80s.
F Biel, her even shittier husband and everyone that enables these anti vax jerkshttps://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-jessica-biel-vaccination-california-20190613-story.html
Lol if someone doesn’t want to get vaccinated and thinks it’s a bad idea, more power to them. You’re stupidly indoctrinated if you think that’s a serious issue. Of all the things to whine about, you chose that, 😂.
Don’t you have some sandwiches to make?
Bad review. The sexism you are observing is a spot on recreation of suburban Dallas in 1980. The “Bob Ross wig” was exactly how Candy’s hair looked pre-trial. The entire point of the series (which you missed) was a rebuke of the courtroom narrative and to give Betty Gore a chance to tell her story.
Yeah…where’s the evidence that this show is sexist? Lol, this is a true-crime drama, based on the already established character of Candy Montgomery. It’s an interpretation one can make, of course, but based on the two-part article on their story, you could say that both Candy and Allen are whores. They didn’t need to write the character of Candy or any woman; they just copied and pasted from material based on the whole thing. One thing’s for sure, too, Candy was a really sexual lady. The show isn’t saying that that is or what she and/or Allen did was wrong, whorish, etc; stories leave that up to individual interpretation (but critics gotta back up their ish with evidence—dunno why a ‘top critic’ wouldn’t account for that). To me, this show is pretty plodding, but it’s a good look into relationship ethics, sexuality, and self-defense laws on the books for personal/private property.
Wow, very much disagree. We’re talking about 1979 Texas, here. I think watching the misogyny and lack of blame on Allan or society with modern eyes provides the commentary you felt was missing. Personally, I didn’t need my hand held about it, it was plenty obvious. How about when Pat says he’ll take care of the sundaes so Candy can go out….and then asks her to do the prep work? The fact that Allan had never changed a diaper. Lots of moments like that. I thought it was an excellent commentary on motherhood; how it affects women so differently and the grass is always greener. I also felt it was fairly sex-positive: it was easy to non-judgmentally see why Candy would seek out the company of other men and the judginess really only came into play when further affairs came to light (which…hey, wasn’t really great of her).