User Reviews

At first, I wasn't enjoying the show as much as I did Flanagan's other work. Episodes kept me interested, but each character felt so fake & like a Hollywood cliché of what rich, over-privledged jerks are supposed to be.

Examples: How young Madeline speaks (to everyone), or how Roderick's boss talks to Madeline in his office. Nobody in real life ever talks like that. Even Prospero talking to Froderick's wife in Episode 1... I don't care how mustache-twirlingly evil or "debaucherous" you are, conversations like the ones they have take me out of scenes more than anything. They don't come across as clever, witty or remarkable (even if the actors are amazing with the material), but instead a tropey fantasy of how Hollywood writers IMAGINE big shot execs talk to people.

So for a while, it just felt like too much unnecessary sleaze.

Everyone written to be so insanely unlikeable, corrupt & irredeamable... Oh, and they all have weird sex lives just for good measure. Ok, I get it. But what's compelling about all this?

Well, I think I finally caught up now. The story really isn't about them, it's about Roderick (and Madeline, to a lesser extent). Roderick confessing to Dupin, the choices he made in the past, and what turned him into who he is today, all while we spectate as the inevitable & unpreventable consequences play out...

You know, like reading the actual Poe story (duh)! Greenwood is fantastic as Roderick Usher, really selling the more reflective, openly defeated, extremely aware he's at the end of the road, broken man his character truly is. His slow unravelling as he recounts these events is what keeps everything so fascinating to me.

It's clear we're about to find out about this cruicial moment of New Years Eve in 1980, and why that bartender has reemerged all these years later looking the exact same & following her kids. At least we know it's not just all in their imagination, as they have actual pictures of her (which their lawyer can see), but it's obvious she's a supernatural entity not of this world.

Anyway, this became more of a series review up until this point, but the score is still for this episode alone. If it were just about the unlikeable kids & their debaucherous personal lives, I'd give it a 6. But it's obviously building to much more, and I should've expected that with Flanagan.

Victorine is delighted when a subject, who's perfect for study simply wanders in off The Street.

As soon as I saw T'Nia Miller, it was her story that I was so excited to see, and Victorine's story is a cracker, this was such a brilliant episode. Miller was fantastic here.

Once again, a character shows glimpses of goodness, but there's the drastic switch up, and the true colours come out.

At this rate, there won't be a mole, they're being bumped off now with a regular frequency, I'm almost saddened by those we've already lost.

Juno surely has a bigger part to play, where's she in all this, we know the kids died, but no mention of her in the present.

Tamerlane up next maybe? She's the one we seem to know the least about so far, need to know more, this one gave us some glimpses, but there's more to come.

9/10.

A more than precise portrait of Ushers , using one of the most famous texts of Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven in new exercise of revenge, a new death in the name of ambitious project and to protect the honor of family , the vulnerability of Roderick in the webb of old ally and interesting work of Henry Thomas, precise portrait of Arthur Pym and a suicide as confession of the pressure.

And, not the last, the funeral sermon as a sort of presence of Edgar Poe himself in this ball of intrigues and precise defined premises of fall.

In short, provocative and seductive episode , fine exploration of dark sides of powerful family .

Of all the episodes so far, this is the only one that comes close to capturing the guilty paranoia of the original Poe story. T'Nia Miller does a nice job early on but as the character goes off the rails, I think she chews the scenery a bit too much.

But at least this one does seem horrifying. This series has been pretty short on horror.

The cast is the strength. Mary McDonnell and Mark Hamill (is that really him?!?) are so good that I wish this series focused on their characters more than it does. Samantha Sloyan is another terrific actor, especially in Midnight Mass, so I'm looking forward to her story next.