Paramount+ has canceled the Fatal Attraction reboot and Rabbit Hole after their freshman seasons.

The streaming service announced the shocking news Thursday.

"Fatal Attraction and Rabbit Hole will not be returning for second seasons on Paramount+," a rep for the streamer said via a statement obtained by TV Line.

"We want to thank both series' entire creative teams, crews and the fantastic casts for their dedication to bringing these series to life."

Fatal Attraction premiered April 30 on Paramount+ in the U.S. and international territories.

The streaming service described the series as "a deep dive reimagining of the 1980s cultural touchstone Fatal Attraction through the lens of privilege, personality disorders, family dynamics and murder."

"In the present day, after serving 15 years in prison for the murder of Alexandra Forrest (Lizzy Caplan), Daniel Gallagher (Joshua Jackson) is paroled with the goals of reconnecting with his family and proving his innocence," the official description reads.

"In 2008, Dan first meets Alex and his world begins to unravel after their brief affair threatens to destroy the life he's built with his wife, Beth (Amanda Peet)."

The series starred Joshua Jackson as Dan Gallagher, Lizzy Caplan as Alex Forrest, Amanda Peet as Beth Gallagher, Toby Huss as Mike Gerard, Brian Goodman as Arthur Tomlinson, Alyssa Jirrels as Ellen Gallagher, and Reno Wilson as Detective Earl Brooker.

Alexandra Cunningham (Dirty John, Chance) served as writer, showrunner, and executive producer on the series alongside executive producer Kevin J. Hynes (Perry Mason), with whom Cunningham developed the series.

The critical response to the series was middling, with many taking issue with some of the show's biggest twists.

Still, Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 8 ended with the sense that a second season was in the works, so it's unfortunate that fans won't get to see what comes next.

Meanwhile, Rabbit Hole premiered in March, ending its eight-episode season in May.

On Rabbit Hole, John Weir (Kiefer Sutherland), a master of deception in the world of corporate espionage, is framed for murder by powerful forces who have the ability to influence and control populations.

The cast also included Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) as Dr. Ben Wilson, Meta Golding (Empire) as Hailey Winton, and Enid Graham (Mare of Easttown) as Josephine "Jo" Madi. 

Rounding out the cast are Rob Yang (Succession) as Edward Homm, Walt Klink (The English) as The Intern, and Jason Butler Harner (Ozark) as Valence.

Sutherland serves as executive producer for Rabbit Hole, alongside writer-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (This Is Us, WeCrashed), Charlie Gogolak (The Sinner, WeCrashed), Suzan Bymel (Designated Survivor), and Hunt Baldwin (Longmire, The Closer).

News of the cancellations means that both shows were left with multiple threads dangling, meaning fans have no closure.

Paramount+ previously canceled Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, The Game, and Star Trek: Prodigy.

There are still many TV shows up in the air on the streaming service, including Wolf Pack.

School Spirits scored a renewal for Season 2 earlier this year and is set to launch its freshman season on Netflix to drum up some interest.

Paramount+ has not revealed reasons for the cancellations, but it's likely down to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

As the strikes continue, the networks appear to be canceling shows that wouldn't normally be canceled.

For example, Prime Video walked back renewals for A League of Their Own and The Peripheral, with both shows finding their renewals rescinded.

What are your thoughts on the cancellations?

Are you surprised?

Do you think the shows should get new homes?

Hit the comments below.

Cliffhangers That Made Our Jaws Drop to The Floor

Open List

The post Fatal Attraction, Rabbit Hole Canceled at Paramount+ appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Did anyone else see that coming at all? The two-hour finale delivered at least two big twists, with the real person behind Alex's death by the end of Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 8 and the open-ending that could lead us into another season.

It seems Ellen's time with Alex in that park many years ago was impactful, and she also struggles with the same obsessive affliction.

We also got the most realistic outcome ever with Dan's attempt to reopen his case and have a new trial. The judge who gave him her ruling stated they'd spent enough time on it and gave him a fair shot at justice the first time.

Unfortunately, "Mr. Privilege," Dan, cannot simply emerge from prison a decade and a half later with all the new leads, assistance from his best friend, and support from his family to retry something that he could've fought harder and better the first time around.

In the end, Dan's own pathological lying and arrogance landed him in that prison cell more than circumstantial evidence and any jury of his non-peers ever could. He's smart enough to have known the affair would come out regardless, so not getting ahead of it was unfathomable.

And as much as it sucks that the very beast of a system that he worked for chewed him and spit him out, it's poetic in that sense and works at a wonderful indictment on a system that isn't a body as we're often led to believe, but a machine and a tool.

Therapist: Winning can’t be the goal when winning isn’t possible right?

_{🔗 permalink: Winning can’t be the goal when winning isn’t possible right?}

But this two-hour finale was gripping, albeit meandering and at times repetitive, in that it once again had a blast shifting perspectives, and we got some of the insightful peeks into Alex's life yet with Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 7.

Her relationship with both of her parents was so toxic that she likely never stood a chance.

It was jarring to see how they treated her like one of their peers, respectively, speaking to her as no parent should with a child, putting her smack dab in the middle of their marital issues and complaints about one another.

Stan made her complicit in his infidelity, some active partner pulling the wool over, gaslighting, and disrespecting her mother. Alex at it up because she relished any attention her father directed her way.

But it was hard to keep Stan's attention long, as he was about as careless with Alex's heart as his wife's. It took nothing for him to be distracted by some new woman, and he'd take from Alex to pour into that woman.

But he was manipulative and cunning enough to reel Alex back in whenever he felt he was losing her again. Her father was a raging narcissist, so self-absorbed and self-serving, and she was a victim of it like her mother.

And through that relationship with this man, she considered her best friend more than an actual father; we saw the origins of her neediness and her constant desire for male attention.

We see these glimpses that make sense why she craves male attention so much and desperately does whatever she can to get it, molding herself around the men she meets and whatever interests them to get and keep whatever attention they dole out to her.

Stan: I should call the cops and report you missing. Tell them you’re a danger to yourself. That’s what you deserve. You expect people to care about you when you treat them like this? Not to mention if no one knows where you are, what are you going to do when you need something? Because you are going to need something, honey, you’re a fucking black hole of need.

_{🔗 permalink: I should call the cops and report you missing. Tell them you’re a danger to yourself. That’s…}

And her relationship with her mother, however fraught, also explains why she had standoffish regard for other women.

It was such a profoundly ingrained type of misogyny, thanks to her father's rampant spew when speaking of her mother and her mother's terrible treatment of her when unloading all her frustrations and furies with this child.

It made sense why Alex was so standoffish and cold with her neighbor one minute, then lapping up the nurturing energy the woman gave her the next, as it was unlike what she'd experienced with her mother.

Again, all these little tidbits and peeks into Alex's perspective of things were great at filling in and adding more layers to her than we ever would've previously had, though we most likely assumed or psychoanalyzed on our own.

Dan: I have spent my entire life in the service of justice. It would go against everything that I believe to take someone else’s. No matter how afraid I just couldn’t do that. Not to Alexandra Forrest, not to anyone else.

_{🔗 permalink: I have spent my entire life in the service of justice. It would go against everything that I…}

Part of Alex moving to L.A. in the first place was to escape Stan and cut things off cleanly with him so that he no longer had this hold on her life. He was an expert, giving her all the attention she craved, then cutting into her just as quickly, shaping her life into trying to please and appease him and serving his ego.

His reaction when he left, and how he verbally abused her when she dared to cut ties, was very telling. She fell right back into that toxic bond again once she got there, calling him to tell him about Dan, desperately trying to prove that this man was the perfect guy for her and she'd found the type of love he only chased after but never succeeded.

It's a shame that, in the end, Alex never had any real friends in Los Angeles, something we saw her struggle with during Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 3. It was her toxic father she confided in, and he was the one who told her to run and leave.

They had such weird codependency on one another despite him being no good. It made you sympathize with this woman whose only solace and most vulnerable, genuine moments appeared to be when she was helping victims in her program.

It's about the only time it felt like we saw who Alex could be, if not bogged down by her past, trauma, and mental illness.

Although she was a conundrum, she told a young Ellen that you leave people before they can leave you. But if that were the case, it makes you wonder why she fixated on Dan for so long, even after it was evident things were over on his end.

She seemed to want to be the person who could leave others before they left them, but save for her father, whom she returned to in some capacity, she never managed to pull that off.

Unfortunately, her efforts to leave the night she did came too late.

The events of her death turned out to be unexpected yet a bit disappointing.

In all this timeline jumping and perspective shifting, we glossed over so much of the actual murder investigation and how they built their case.

We went from them not finding a body to discovering it at the marina, disrupting what they initially were selling us as a murder case with no body. And we have no idea what led them from that apartment building to that.

Dan's arrogance, poor management of his case, and pathological lying were meant to overshadow the fact that investigators were still laser-focused on him initially and essentially built their case around proving him guilty rather than learning the truth or seeking justice.

Jorge: Murder is a brand now. You want people to know you’re not a killer. But a lot of them would like you better if you were.

_{🔗 permalink: Murder is a brand now. You want people to know you’re not a killer. But a lot of them would…}

And the entire court case was irritating. Again, like a dead horse, they've beaten the "privileged Dan" thing into the ground, and apparently, that's why the prosecution won this case.

To some degree, they've made a mockery of what people are actually critiquing when they speak about privileges with whatever this thing they've done by putting Dan on trial for essentially being a well-off white man and then sending him away for something he didn't even do.

For the trial, I genuinely was waiting to see some abhorrent display that utterly trashed Alex and mentally ill people, but that never actually came.

Merely acknowledging that this woman was unstable and did some terrible, disturbing things doesn't count as putting the victim on the stand and eviscerating her when it's simply someone pointing out the truth.

But they built up this idea that the all-powerful, entitled, and privileged Dan used Alex for sex, discarded her and disregarded her feelings, and then took things into his own hands when he triggered her to act out.

But in all of that, they excuse Alex's actions. The blase reaction to someone not taking no for an answer and escalating to dangerous levels is absurd.

I'd imagine that any footage Mike still had of Alex throwing acid on Dan's car during Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 4 or Ellen's damning testimony about the woman essentially kidnapping her would amount to something.

They strip Alex of any agency for the sake of woobifying her for her mental illness, which in its own way is counterproductive and problematic. Alex being mentally ill does not excuse MURDER!

And just as Dan using any form of power that tinged the dynamic of their sexual relationship is an issue, wouldn't Alex's unwillingness to hear and accept a "No" trigger some of the ongoing consent discourse that falls under the same umbrella?

"No means no" for everyone, not just women, right? It's not on Dan that Alex didn't accept him breaking things off with her, so I genuinely do not understand why they wanted to crucify him for "leading her on" and so forth.

Do they NOT hear how this mirrors the same problematic discourse about sexual assault victims? It's no less valid or problematic because Dan is the recipient.

Sometimes it feels like they've tried so hard to add context and make Alex sympathetic to avoid outright vilifying her that they've, in turn, actually made Dan that person instead, which presumably was not the full intention of delving into this deeper.

And in their effort to assign Dan some culpability and blame for his actions, they've overdone it to the point that they've made him a victim of Alex's mental illness, yes, but also of the system.

And Alex was still a villain, by the way; her mental illness, background, and more context did not absolve her from that title.

By the end of the series, Alex is still a woman who killed Beth's mother, tried to kill her, kidnapped Ellen, and inadvertently passed on her pathos to this child, who grew up to act the same things.

And Dan is the man who went to prison for 15 years for a crime his wife's best friend did, came out to his ex-wife married to that man, and his grown daughter calling the man "dad."

Presumably, that Dan made it out of this tale alive is what makes him the lucky one and also the person we're supposed to resent because mental illness isn't supposed to be a death sentence.

But was that meant to be the message here? Because unfortunately, they've depicted Alex doing so many awful things that it's much easier to conclude that she was a victim of "Fuck around and find out."

They attempted with her death scene, as we saw that she intended to leave altogether, meaning she was retreating from all the havoc she wreaked on Dan's life and those of his loved ones.

And we're supposed to take that as a reason why anyone attacking her at that point wasn't fair, was punching down, was cowardice and violent, and she was exclusively a victim by then.

And she was indeed in that regard, but as awful as it sounds, by that stage, after what we saw and knew that she did and the prospect of her getting away with all of it, too, they undercut their own point.

No, Alex didn't deserve to get murdered, no one does, but that's it, too; NO ONE does, including Beth's mother or Beth, had she not made it out of that fire. Violence begets violence, too, and by depicting Alex as not this scorned woman lashing out but actively, consciously, knowingly violent, things get muddied here.

Glossing over Alex's ills hasn't helped the cause here, either. She contained multitudes. She could be this wonderful woman who helped victims and still be this unhinged woman who harassed multiple people and did bad things. Clipping her of that to make her some saint in court doesn't elicit the intended response.

Did we ever know for sure if Alex was pregnant? They showed her pregnancy tests, and she mentioned it to a colleague and to Beth during that surprising sit down.

Beth: Did you do something to my mother?

Alex: I’m pregnant.

Beth: I don’t believe you.

_{🔗 permalink: Did you do something to my mother?}

But I can recall that it wasn't brought up during the trial or the investigation.

Interestingly, that was the final straw for a dark horse and suspiciously too pure for this world character Arthur. We noted multiple times, from Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 2 and onoward that Arthur seemed too perfect, and now we get to see why. Did anyone anticipate he was the one who killed Alex?

And we even got to see the distinction of what he could've been charged with had the real story come out. He thought he choked her to death, sat there for a bit, and she crawled toward her phone for help; he hit her in the head.

There's no mistaking his intentions. If he went there in the heat of the moment and sat on that couch wondering if he made a mistake, he certainly obliterated that when he whacked her head in and disposed of the body.

And we're led to believe that it's something that he could've planned rather extensively. Arthur became such a convoluted man.

He dutifully cared for his dying wife with everything he had and loved her, but what was his thought process when it came to essentially taking Dan's place in his own family?

Was it that he saw his duties through to the end with his wife and then saw his chance to be with the woman he's probably always loved since college?

Was killing Alex the act of a protective friend or a man doing anything for the woman he loved?

And what are we to make of him sitting on the truth for so long and seeming unfazed by his actions? Sure, he approached a lawyer about it and wanted to come clean after his wife died.

But the moment he realized that Dan's imprisonment was less about justice and more about political grandstanding, he let sleeping dogs lie.

It's no wonder he didn't bat an eye at putting all his money into helping with Dan's defense, and he's been the one to speak in Dan's favor in the present.

Arthur knows that this man went to prison for something he did and has benefitted greatly. In that sense, he feels a twisted sense of gratitude toward Dan.

It's so twisted, and I don't know how I feel about Arthur emerging as the real killer, his motivations for it, keeping a secret this long, and "winning" in the end.

In some ways, it feels like a twist for the sake of it.

But these secondary people in the Gallagher marriage took advantage of the cracks, one got everything from it, and the other got dumped in the water.

What I did appreciate was Mike's conversation with Arthur at the funeral. If there's anything that this show has done, it's served as a scathing indictment against the justice system.

Mike put his feelings into words summing up in that exact moment why he had grown disillusioned with the system, and you could tell that must've been the turning point for him when he stopped being a cop. It was a powerful statement about the system being a machine, not a body, as they often suggest the law and all of its factions are.

It sucks people in, chews them up, and spits them out. The wheels of justice are churning robotically with no regard for the effects.

And everyone suffers from it, the victims of crimes, the perpetrators of them, the enforcers of the law, solicitors, it doesn't matter.

It was a moment that was personally striking and even resonant as someone who once had an interest in and actively pursued that system.

It was a fitting moment for Mike, who has genuinely been the brightest spot and most compelling aspect of this series, as we've noted multiple times in our Fatal Attraction Reviews. There isn't a single moment when he didn't steal the show and temper everything happening around him.

And somehow, the dynamic duo of Dan and Mike got extended to a trio with Earl, and somehow, I'd watch those three endlessly as they reopened cases and investigated matters.

It's an untouchable dynamic rife with entertaining drama and comedy and one I wish we spent more time on overall.

Aside from Lizzy Caplan's captivating performance of Alex throughout, she really has done some remarkable work at bringing the nuance to the character of Alex that only sometimes came through with the actual writing — these two hours dragged in ways that weren't warranted.

We spent too much time on things we didn't necessarily need and not enough time on more interesting things.

For example, too many flashback angles and perceptions of the same things fall into themselves.

But one of the worse examples of this is with the very thing that became a cliffhanger and left things open for another season: Ellen.

One of her best moments of the finale was sitting in the bar and having drinks with her father, another being that hug between the two and his immediate reaction afterward.

With Ellen, it felt like we'd get a deep dive into how her life was affected by her father's imprisonment and how she and he could rebuild the close bond they once had.

However, she was (understandably) cold and distant for a large part of the season with very little else, and we didn't spend as much time with her and Dan exploring their relationship.

I would've given anything for more of their interactions, and Jackson and Jirrel's chemistry was intriguing.

But Ellen disappeared into a side plot that included narrating and drawing parallels to Alex and Jung's theories. And we knew that her arc had to be going somewhere. Otherwise, they would be bothered showing it, but it was so slow, tedious, and uninteresting that it took a lot of work to invest, even knowing that.

Then they pulled out that final twist of Ellen essentially being like Alex, too. She's the new fatal attraction, some aberration of her father's misdeeds, her mother's pain, and this impactful moment in a park with her father's mistress that somehow groomed her and laid the foundation for whatever Ellen has become.

With this twist, they've opened the door for a second season and new things to explore.

But they've also essentially undone whatever goodwill work they were trying to do with nuance and the stigmatization of mental illness with Alex.

Or maybe the thought process is that they spent some time trying to humanize and add layers to explain why Alex was the way that she was, so by the time we see that Ellen, who is a product of her environment but decidedly more stable, healthy, and privileged, we'd see the distinction between the two.

Alex had reasons that shaped how she became what she was. In contrast, Ellen could be a quirk of biology—a girl naturally inclined and predisposed to hovering around sociopathy and erotomania.

Alex: Who you can trust and who you can’t. I know you probably think you can already tell, but I promise you you really don’t. Your parents they’re pretending that nothing is wrong, they’re saying that everything is okay, but it’s really not. they’re lying to you. Both of them, but especially your dad. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you. I know that he does, Someone can love you and still lie to you. Some people, it’s just what they do. It’s what the world is like, but you can handle it if you know how.

Ellen: How?

Alex: you let them think they’re fooling you. You act like you believe them, but you never forget who they really are, and you never let them stop you from getting the life that you want. And if they try, you leave them. They don’t get to leave you.

_{🔗 permalink: you let them think they’re fooling you. You act like you believe them, but you never forget…}

To which I say, what in the YOU's Joe Goldberg was that ending?

As a slow-burn thriller, the series does okay. When it takes itself too seriously and tries to invite social commentary, it makes a muddled mess of things that only elicits more criticism.

But the cast has been stellar, and it's been quite a ride.

Over to you, Fatal Attraction Fanatics.

Did you predict Arthur killed Alex? What do you think about that ending with Ellen?

Would you be interested in a season two? Sound off below.

The post Fatal Attraction Season Finale Review: Who Killed Alex? appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Beth talks to Ellen and hears from her what Alex did when she took her.  Beth then tells Arthur that she must've made Alex angry and that's why she took Ellen and tried to burn her in the house and all of that.

Dan tells Ellen that he's not pushing to appeal the judge's decision as they hang out and have drinks together.

Dan has a run in with the new senior partner at the law firm he's working at, Steve, who is obnoxious and thinks that Dan really killed Alex. He wants him to have done it and feels Dan could be helpful

Beth invites Mike and Dan to dinner.

We see things from Arthur's perspecive. He, too, went to see Alex at her apartment. After dealing with his wife dying, he focuses on helping Beth. He breaks into Alex's apartment and goes through her things.

When Beth calls him crying he tells his wife he's going to help her.

Alex's father tells her to run and leave to avoid getting arrested. She sees the pills in her cainet and formulates a plan.

Arthur is the one shows up at her apartment and attacks her. He strangles her to death or thinks he does, but Alex isn't really dead. When she goes for the phone, he hits her in the head with a weight bell. and disposes of the body.

He gets home in time to bring coffee to his wife's healthcare aide.

Arthur wanted to confess and get Dan there with his family. He consults a lawyer. The lawyer tells him that they're not going to get Dan out because it was essentially a political hit job and they won't go back on Dan being a whale.

We see what happens when Ellen spent time with Alex and talked. Alex told her about leaving people before they leave you.

Ellen pieces together

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 8 Recap: Caregiving appeared first on TV Fanatic.

He doesn't want Beth on the stand because they'll ask her abou tthe affair, and she's not a convincing liar.

Alex is upset that she doesn't get and maintain her father's attention when they're out playing min-golf together and he spends more time flirting with a woman who isn't his wife and her mother.

Alex's father treated her like his best friend and they had all the fun and she'd cover for him. While her mother resented the close relationship and that they used to leavfe her out of things and gang up on her.

Alex gets kicked out of her law school group beause of how she comes off to everyone.

Dan prepares for his trial and helps his defense attorney with the opening statement and also knows the angle of the prosecution argument which implies that he used his privilege for everything.

After her situation in law school and her father talking about another trip he has planned with some woman, Alex starts hurting herself. She goes to an intern in psychology.

Stan, Ale'x father is going to testify.

Stan also didn't have a great reactioni to Alex when she says that she's not doing law school anymore and working at the victim advocacy program.

Ini the trial they state that they found a body in the marina and the cause of death was blood force trauma and ten of 24 prints they found at the home belonged to him.

Daniel gives Ellen all the information and things he has to have them look over his case to prove his innocence and he tells her that the reason they didn't look at any iof it before was because he lied initally abou the affair.

Alex gets back into contact with her father and they continue this toxic relationship as she tells him about her relationship wtih Dan.

He shows the picture that she took of Dan and his dog on the beach while on stand.

He asks Beth to put Ellen on the stand. She admits that she met Alex and she was the one who took her. They went to a park and things.

They still find him guilty.

And the judge in the present won't reopen  his case because of all of his lying.

Dan tells Beth in the present that he didn't get his trial opened up again, and she telsl him she believed in him anyway.

We see a flashback to when she supposedly left to go to work after first learning of the affair, and she met with Alex one-on-one.

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 7 Recap: Best Friends appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Of course, that's a significant part of what's driving the narrative in this reinterpretation of the filming, hitting home that fact, lest we were so distracted by how disturbed Alex was that we lost sight of that.

And Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 6 showed just how Dan was essentially his own worst enemy in landing himself in prison for murder.

It's fascinating that as we stray farther away from Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 1, we learn that the seemingly charismatic "Nice Guy" everyone loved wasn't that at all.

I don't know if it was a deliberate choice to present Dan that way only for things to shift or not, but I wish I could know for certain that it was.

Otherwise, we have this heel turn of the "Golden Boy" that has nothing to do with Dan changing up and everything to do with other people's reactions to him.

It's believable that Dan has always been consistently himself, but it's a bit jarring that he went from presumably being the well-liked attorney in the courthouse to this guy that people actively loathed.

Earl: Ok, so here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to find her body, and I’m going to put you under the prison, okay? You got nothing to say now? That’s not like you; you always got something to say.

_{🔗 permalink: Ok, so here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to find her body, and I’m going to put you…}

In that presentation, they again fall into this pattern of trying to play both sides by painting Dan and Alex as equal parts villains and victims.

Because what we essentially get from this is that people tolerated Dan and faked the funk but subconsciously or quietly loathed him, and the first opportunity they got to write him off completely, they pounced and tore into him.

The second there was a whiff of trouble, whatever animosity that people had harbored toward him came out tenfold to the point where they could sit idly by and watch him go down for murder and could boast about people seeing him for the asshole that he is.

The fact that our entire framework of people's perception of Dan is rooted in characters from all facets of the justice system makes the conflicting tale and results infinitely worse.

Justice is supposed to be blind. It was not in any capacity with this murder case, and that's disturbing, even if the man who went to prison for years is an asshole. It doesn't mean that he was a guilty asshole.

Somehow, the series relentlessly sells us on the politically correct and conscientious concept that Alex is a victim in all senses of the word while simultaneously making Dan a martyr.

In many ways, I wish they'd stick to a specific narrative and execute it properly. Because as it stands, their attempts to invite social commentary by providing all facets of an issue feel like fickle flip-flopping to appease without taking any one stance.

In wanting to say all the things, they're saying nothing.

But the hour showed us exactly how Dan could've gone away for Alex's murder and why people don't give a damn about him trying to clear his name now.

Every step of the way, from the second he learned of Alex's accusation against him, he worked counterproductive to his best interest in his attempt to work in his own interest.

In the end, his arrogance and utter disregard for everyone around him cinched the deal in putting him in prison. I guess we needed something to explain how he went away for Alex's murder without a body or a murder weapon.

For a lawyer with an extensive history in the legal system, Dan was dumb all around. Arrogance bore ignorance.

Dan: Where’s the body?

Earl: I was hoping that you would tell me.

_{🔗 permalink: I was hoping that you would tell me.}

To borrow from Chicago PD's Hank Voight, "Tell me the truth so I can lie for you." Dan was the worst enemy in his own defense because he couldn't be truthful.

Maybe Earl wouldn't have pressed on with this case against Dan if Dan hadn't blatantly lied to Earl's face, insulting his intelligence and spitting on the opportunity Earl gave him to get ahead of things and save face.

And for a lawyer, Dan is a terrible liar.

He then went on to seek his boss' help, expecting her to throw caution to the wind, her reputation, her job, all of it, to rally around and fight for him, and he didn't even have the decency of telling her the truth about anything.

Worse yet, he actively attempted to gaslight, guilt, and bullshit her and got angry that she didn't buy into it.

He's so selfish and self-involved that he expected all of these favors, the benefit of the doubt, and to rely on relationships he fostered that were inauthentic and entirely self-serving because he couldn't be honest or own up to his actions.

And as the hour unfolded, we proceeded to see how everyone's lives had to get disrupted, and people were subjected to the very worst of Dan and his ways all because he couldn't keep his penis in his pants.

It was sickening that he sat there and allowed his wife to argue his case for why his still grieving father-in-law should float Dan money that was specifically for Beth and Ellen to use for his defense.

It was worse when he quietly accepted, without a hint of guilt to be found, Arthur and his cancer-stricken, terminal wife's money.

Dan thought he was the smartest person in the room at all times and was consistently proven to be far from it, and his arrogance and selfishness turned people off and helped drive them toward punishing him.

No one really cared if he was guilty or innocent. They just knew that he was an asshole who needed to be knocked down a peg, and they probably harbored a myriad of feelings because of how he treated them.

So much of this mess could've been avoided if Dan had been honest and accountable for his affair with Alex. Instead, in his efforts to keep that under wraps, he put a bigger target on himself, making himself the primary suspect.

People couldn't know the extent of his deception. If he lied about something as obvious as his affair, he easily could've lied about whatever happened to Alex or whether or not he did something to her.

Treating his colleagues and peers as if they were stupid and trying to manipulate them would never go over well.

By the time Earl showed up at his place to arrest him, it was easy to understand why how we got to that point.

And yet, despite all of that, it's infuriating if one is being as unbiased as humanly possible, which is the goal when investigating and convicting, the things played out as they did.

In the present, Mike and Dan have found heaps of evidence and information that should've, at the very least, raised reasonable doubt and kept Dan from going to prison.

They never found Alex's body. The account of Dan assaulting her came so abruptly and took off like wildfire without anyone looking into that further.

It was 2008; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation had been on for at least eight years by then, thus shifting everyone's perception of investigation and making it infinitely harder to try cases when even a layman expected a plethora of evidence.

With what we know at this stage, it makes no sense that no one looked into all the other possible suspects, considering all the other prints in her home, looked into witnesses and persons of interest, delved into her background a bit more, or unearthed previous incidents.

We get bits about how it was an election year, and they had to prove that they could be tough on crime even if it meant going after their own. They're harping on how they wouldn't put the dead victim on the stand.

They've made all these little comments and implied all these things to explain why this case didn't work in Dan's favor, and it's just so unbelievable.

In this effort to course correct, it feels surreal that everyone is tiptoeing past the fact that Alex's mental illness was actively harmful and destructive to those outside of herself.

The solution to the stigmatization of mental illness isn't to veer so far away from doing that it becomes equally and dangerously problematic, too.

Emma: Joanna’s in her third trimester with a toddler. So when she calls for reinforcements, Mom has to answer. But I’m really sorry about that if you needed me.

Alex: I don’t care what you are. I don’t care about you at all.

_{🔗 permalink: I don’t care what you are. I don’t care about you at all.}

What does not ring true in the least is that every single soul involved in this investigation and Dan or Alex's lives were conscientious of the stigmatization of mental illness and actively worked against it without so much as presenting a sliver of unconscious bias about it.

If it doesn't ring true even if 2023, it certainly doesn't in 2008. From Dan's boss and his friend who wanted to enlist as his defense attorney to Clay, Earl, and others in legal aid, no one wanted to vilify the victim.

However, it was like Alex being mentally ill was the naughty word they couldn't say or acknowledge. They've taken the "I don't see color" approach to her mental health, as if even acknowledging it at all was offensive.

Clay was an interesting character. You could see he was genuine, sympathetic, and intuitive.

Given his own experiences with a mother who was mentally ill, he picked up quickly that Alex had some issues, but he never let that detract him from dating and caring for her.

I loved what he had to say about pushing too hard for her to get help and support when she was evidently still not acceptant that she had a problem and needed it.

It was very self-aware and sensitive, and it was one of those moments where they succeeded in striking the right nuance with the mental health issue.

We haven't seen the full extent of Dan vilifying Alex for being mentally ill as his primary defense. Surely, it was ugly and even worse coming from someone who touted himself as the victim's voice.

Clay reading Dan for filth had its entertaining aspects. And it remains bizarre that Mike and Dan even think they'll get anywhere with half the people they speak to when Dan is standing in their face, a convicted killer, speaking callously about the murder victim.

It speaks to Dan's entitlement and how he still hasn't learned in many ways.

Nevertheless, it still remains frustrating that everyone is so willing to sacrifice justice because, as Clay put it, they hate Dan more than Alex.

Clay knew firsthand that Alex had some issues that likely could've caused bigger problems and even resulted in her landing in legal trouble or worse, and yet it felt like he was so staunch in his moral argument and high ground that nothing else mattered.

Clay: Alex, it would hurt me a lot, but to help you, Alex, I would give up whatever we are to each other for you not to be in pain.

Alex: We’re nothing.

Clay: Ok, then, whatever we could be.

Alex: Nothing. We’re nothing!

_{🔗 permalink: Nothing. We’re nothing!}

He brought up things about Alex needing help, but in all of this advocation for Alex "posthumously," there was no help when she was still around.

It makes it feel like everyone can pat themselves on the back for not vilifying her for being mentally ill after the fact when none of them were around to do any of this before she died.

We saw how alienated and isolated she was or how the people around her ran off or fell back. It's a lot of great talk with no real action, and it feels hollow.

What makes things worse is that they allude to the fact that Alex may not even be dead and pulled off some sick, perverted action of sending Dan to prison for her murder.

What are we supposed to make of that?

Mental illness doesn't warrant a death sentence, that is certainly the truth. But hating someone doesn't excuse a miscarriage of justice either.

Additional Notes:

• Mike is the single greatest character in this entire series, and I love every damn second of his screen time.

• Dan is at his most likable when he and Mike are just bros together, getting high, investigating, and bickering. I could watch an entire side series of them as private investigators and all the antics that come with that.

• Ellen is very much underused. It seemed like we would get more in-depth with how Dan's imprisonment impacted her life, but she's mostly become filler.

• Her fixation on her advisor and friend's affair feels too on the nose with all of her other Jung fixations and parallels to her father's case and past.

• Alex's treatment of Emma was so brutal and upsetting because the poor woman prioritized her daughter over Alex. Did none of the cops speak to Emma extensively since she knew Alex was alive when Dan left?

Over to you, Fatal Attraction Fanatics.

What are your thoghts on the line they're trying to toe between Dan and Alex as victims? What was your impression of Clay? Was the investigation into Alex's murder handled poorly? Hit the comments below!

Fatal Attraction streams Sundays on Paramount+

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 6 Review: The Dillingers appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Clay and others watch Dan in court and aren't impressed by him.

Alex meets Emma, her neighbor for the first time. She also goes out on a date with Clay. She regales him with a story, but he catches her in a lie, and she blows up and gets rude with him because he caught her, making their date awkward even though he works to smooth things over.

He brings her to the rooftop to show her his favorite space. She gets emotional when he talks about it being a beautiful place and they share a moment.

Alex is rude to Emma and gets angry at her when Emma left to support her actual daughter.

Clay tries to talk to Alex about her behavior and her reminding him of things with is mother and genuinely wanting to help her, but she pushes him away.

In the present, Mike goes to see Ruth and get information in legal aide about the person who Alex had a relationship with before. He and Ruth have a history.

Mike goes to see the bailiff, but it doesn't go over well either.

Emma sees Dan when he leaves Alex's apartment after their fight. She goes to check on Alex afterward, but  she comes near the door but doesn't open it so Emma leaves.

Earl gets the case and shows up at Alex's apartment to see the blood stain but no body or weapon. Emma called in for a wellness check.

Earl tells Dan that Alex made a complaint that Dan assaulted her. He gives him the heads up and tells him they have to get in front of it.

Dan tells Earl that Alex is a stalker. He then lies and tells Earl that he doesn't know where Alex lives and was at home the previous night. Earl plays it off, but he doesn't believe him and brings up that Dan's prints are all over Alex's house.

He then tells Dan that Alex is dead.

Dan tells his boss about Earl thinking he's the suspect in Alex's death, and he wants her to call Earl's boss to get him in line.

Conchita says she'll help him but wants to know the truth about everything and Dan still lies to her face and plays the victim, acting as if she's wrong for accusing him.

Conchita calls in the security and has him escorted out of the building and take all of his things because she can tell he's lying.

Dan enlists help from his defense attorney friend. She tells him that she doesn't want his case because she doesn't want to go after the victim. She gives him refrences.

Dan and Mike go to Elijah, the guy who was the food delivery person, to ask why his prints were in her apartment.

While there, they get some weed for themselves.

While hanging out with stella, she asks Ellen if Dan really killed Alex and brings up the rabbit hole she fell down looking into the case and wondered why Dan never said his alibi was home.

Beth asks her father for money for Dan's defense, and he's irate and doesn't want to help. Arthur and his wife are the ones who help and give money.

Mike and Dan meet with Clay in the present to hear about his relationship with Alex. He tells them that he messed things up when he didn't handle her mental health issues well because he could tell she had them but he went about approaching hers the wrong way.

Dan interrogates him about not coming forward, and Clay goes off on him for always professing to be the voice of the victims and vilifying her for being mentally ill. He was glad that the jury saw Dan for who he really is.

Mike goes to a retirment party and sees Earl there. He brings up the case of the delivery boy Elijah bludgeoning his father and getting away with it, then tells Earl that Elijah's prints were in Alex's apartment as a dig at Earl never looking into that further at the time.

Ellen talks to her mother about what Stella said. She also watches as her friend falls back into the habit of sleeping with the professor again.

Artem, the abusive husband of the woman Alex was trying to help before she died, attacks Dan at Mike's house and drunk Mike stops him.

In the past, Dan dreams about Alex leading him away from his house. He wakes up to banging on the door. Earl and the cops are there to arrest him.

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 6 Recap: The Dillingers appeared first on TV Fanatic.

To say that Alex has done some unconscionable things during Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 5 would be disingenuous because as she continues to escalate her behavior, are we all that surprised anymore?

Dan's world was falling to pieces rapidly, and now we may possibly understand how he ended up in prison for her death.

Daniel truly rued the day he chose to sleep with Alex Forrester, and he's paying such a heavy price for it. The ramifications of it still linger even 15 years later, particularly with his every interaction with an adult Ellen.

In a chilling opener, we saw all the moments leading up to the death of Beth's mother, and as Dan suspected, Alex was behind it.

Here is officially where whatever efforts the series has been trying to make toward adding more nuance to Alex start to slip.

After all, there's little sympathy you can feel when this woman coldly causes a woman to drown, covers it up, and goes about her day as if nothing happened.

Beth: Why did I have to be told tonight? Was it a strategy? Pile it all on, see how she reacts?

_{🔗 permalink: Why did I have to be told tonight? Was it a strategy? Pile it all on, see how she reacts?}

One minute Alex was bonding with Beth's mother, who was warm, friendly, honest, and so welcoming to this complete stranger, and the next, Alex was not only watching her die but closing her up in the pool.

As twisted as it sounds, had Alex watched her drown without help, it would've given us some pause that maybe her feelings got the best of her, she froze, or it took her a bit to process what was going on, or she panicked.

But she didn't offer any aid, listened to this woman's pleas, and then trapped her in the water until she died without batting an eye. She was calculated in so many of her actions that it left very little room to feel anything other than horror and contempt.

And before we could wrap our heads around that, there were a series of detestable events in what felt like rapid succession.

She lobbed a complaint against Daniel so that it would gain traction, he'd get invested, and she could "save" him making him feel indebted to her.

She set Beth and Arthur's project on fire, trapping Beth inside, and could've easily killed her.

She may or may not have been behind Ellen's brief disappearance, and by the installment's end, after so many things she instigated, she could've possibly set Dan up for her murder.

Because that's totally what she's doing, right? Is it her big payback? The timing feels too coincidental.

Dan: Do you see a world in which we’re going to be okay, or is it too soon, and you haven’t even thought about it yet?

_{🔗 permalink: Do you see a world in which we’re going to be okay, or is it too soon, and you haven’t even…}

It's beyond unfortunate that everyone around Dan is paying the price for his affair, and now he has this woman who is hellbent on destroying his life because he broke her heart, or she can't let go, or whatever combination of things are motivating Alex at this time.

It was surprising that she didn't instantly divulge that she was pregnant with his child as some grand attempt at winning him over again and deluding herself into believing they could be some happy family together.

Interestingly, we see all of these terrible things Alex has done, so much in one installment that it's overwhelming, but then they're also trying to make us sympathize with her or at least force Dan to be equally culpable.

The balancing that they're attempting here isn't exactly working, though.

Two fascinating scenes, one in the past and the other in the present, involved both Mike and Ellen sitting across from Dan and telling him about himself, stripping him bare while calling him out and poking at all the sore spots.

I loved the parallels between those scenes.

In the past, Mike called Dan out on his desire to have people like him because of his issues with his father. And because of that character flaw, he overdoes the charm, devotes himself entirely to a person at that moment, and makes them feel like they're the only person in the room.

And then, in the case of Alex, he got angry and freaked out that she got wrapped up in everything that he projected to her and believed it.

Daniel was not ready to hear any of that then, but his reaction to Ellen's on-the-nose read of him as she psychoanalyzed her father in monotone was more muted.

He was both caught off guard that his daughter could assess him so well and hit the nail on the head but resigned to the truth of her words, however biting they were.

I imagine it was to showcase Dan's growth from 15 years ago to where he is now, but then his inability to let sleeping dogs lie in this case still implies that he's still not much of one for accountability of his own doing.

But while Dan should take some responsibility for some of his actions, it's bizarre to present things, as Mike did, as if he invited this chaos.

Ellen: What was it about her?

Dan: I don’t think it was actually about her, which makes me feel sick to my stomach to say, but when I try to remember what I was feeling when all of that was happening, mostly I remember feeling afraid.

Ellen: Of what?

Dan: That life had passed me by and I hadn’t even noticed.

_{🔗 permalink: That life had passed me by and I hadn’t even noticed.}

I know the idea is to flip the script a bit and not rely on sexist and misogynistic lenses that traditionally have us directing all of the blame to the woman without ever acknowledging the male's part in anything.

But we're not weighing things properly to make that type of point.

In this case, suggesting that Daniel's unresolved daddy issues make him a chronic charmer who needs people to like him means that he invited someone to ruin his life and that of his family is as offensive as suggesting that a flirty woman invited an assault because she gave her attacker mixed messages.

Daniel should only be responsible for what he said and did. He shouldn't ever be held accountable for what Alex perceived. No one can control that, nor should they have to pay the price for it.

By now, he's firmly made his point about their relationship and its end, but she's only escalated her behavior. It's not a "both sides" situation in murder, arson, and kidnapping territory.

Unfortunately, even with the context we have up until this point about Alex and how she's sympathetic, it's not excusing or justifying her extreme behavior.

It's undoubtedly not preventing anyone from writing her off as a "psychotic bitch" here, either, so it's hard to say what we're supposed to glean anymore.

Alex is our medial woman, as Ellen discussed. And she's only hurt herself in the process.

But Mike wasn't entirely wrong in his rant about Dan. And if Dan had heard him at all, he would've avoided threatening Alex as he did.

Dan: I’m going to the Feds. You think I can’t because you brought her back? That I won’t because it will burn me too? I do not fucking care anymore! I’m going to call in every favor from anyone who has ever owed me anything to make you go away. So if you want to die, you better hurry up. You don’t have much time, and you’ll have to do it yourself.

_{🔗 permalink: So if you want to die, you better hurry up. You don’t have much time, and you’ll have to do it y}

Then again, maybe Dan heard what Mike was saying, and that's why he threatened Alex, promised to bring in the FBI and use all of his power and clout (and he had in abundance, which feels like its very own form of commentary on the imbalance of their relationship) to bring down on her.

And maybe when he essentially told her to kill herself, it was more than a dig at her fake attempt for attention but a genuine suggestion on his part.

He could've very well expected that she heard his words, believed them, and acted on them.

But what he couldn't have seen coming was that she'd take him down with her.

Dan was running high on emotions, but it was incredibly dumb, especially from a prosecutor, to storm angrily into her apartment, shouting, carrying on, assaulting her, and making threats before leaving.

I'm sure that was used against him during the murder trial, and he handed that to the prosecutor on a silver platter.

But that's not to say that the case was airtight. Interestingly, in the present, he reconnected with Benny, who outright said that he never believed Dan killed Alex.

The more information about Alex, the crazier it is that Daniel ended up in prison for 15 years over her death. Was his defense attorney a newbie? Was he paid off? Downright incompetent? What gives?!

It makes no sense that no one looked into Paul, nor the other fingerprints they found in Alex's apartment, new leads that Daniel and Mike now have to work with while attempting to clear Dan's name.

And then there's Gabriel. Even if it was an unofficial complaint, it had legs and revealed a pattern of harassment by Alex. I get that the idea was not to put the victim on trial for her own murder, but there's also a simple matter of following the evidence wherever it leads.

What is interesting is how people react to Daniel now. He was on top of the world at one point in his career. But when you're at the top, plenty of people will revel in your fall.

It makes you wonder how much of an asshole Dan was that there are people with such a strong opinion about him that they could look the other way while he went down for murder?

The polarizing viewpoints of Dan are intriguing.

Gabriel: You don’t matter in this building anymore, you entitled motherfucker. You want my help? Subpoena it.

_{🔗 permalink: You don’t matter in this building anymore, you entitled motherfucker. You want my help?…}

Even now, Gabriel can help Daniel but simply refuses because he doesn't like him. But he's also smart enough to see past Daniel's charms and get that Daniel could easily cast aspersions and suspicions on him with this development.

And even if he wouldn't be tossing himself into the suspect pool by assisting, he wouldn't bother anyway.

And that suspect pool is large. You can't say Mike isn't decent at what he does. They've made some incredible headway investigating this go around than they did a decade and a half prior.

It's with Mike that Dan feels the most at ease and comfortable, and I could watch those two for hours.

Additional Notes:

• Amanda Peet does some strong work in this installment.

• Beth's reaction to the affair felt so real. I loved how one of her first questions was if that was the best time to tell her. It felt so selfish on his part that he chose hours after her mother's death to drop this bomb on her too.

• Beth and Arthur's friendship is so grounding that I almost hate that they ended up romantically together. There are too few solid platonic friendships with a deep bond. It was a missed opportunity to leave them as friends.

• Did anyone else think there was romantic chemistry brewing between Ellen and Stella?

• Is Ellen's curse being surrounded by inappropriate relationships? It still didn't feel like her place to approach her advisor like that.

• Earl is a bit of a scene-stealer, yes?

Over to you, Fatal Attraction Fanatics. Which of Alex's actions shocked you the most? Do you think she set Dan up? Sound off below!

Fatal Attraction airs Sundays on Paramount+.

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 5 Review: Medial Woman appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Beth's mother falls into the pool while trying to get the floatie out. She asks Alex for help, but Alex just stands there and watches her before closing the pool.

She cleans up the kitchen and gets rid of any evidence that she was there and makes it look like Beth's mother got drunk and fell into the pool herself before she leaves.

She then lets Quincy out of the backyard.

Beth tries to get all the details of the extent of Daniel's relationship with Alex when he tells her everyting.

He tells her that he thinks that Alex is not stable and thinks she had something to do with her mother's death.

Beth tells him that things are done with them and she'll go back with her dad and Ellen . She doesn't believe what he's saying about how dangerous Alex is.

Daniel tells Mike everything and Mike tells him about his run in with Alex.

Mike says they'll come up with a plan.

Beth tells Arthur about Dan when he comes over with his wife to support Beth after her mother.

Dan sees Alex at work in the elevator and she gives him back his keys. She says she understands why he couldn't talk to her before and not to worry.

Alex has a pregnancy test.

Dan's boss tells him that she got a letter about him accusing him of sexual harassment via a personal letter. She warns him that she's keeping the investigation discreet, but it's getting investigated nonetheless. She tells him he needs to take time off.

Mike doesn't want Dan to go see Gabriel the bailiff with him, but Mike ends up going to see him anyway when Jorge sends him down there to do paperwork. Gabriel and others are surprised to see him there.

Dan tries to get Gabriel to talk. He asks Gabriel about Alex. He wants Gabriel to sign something for him but Gabriel refuses.

Dan ends up talking to another old colleague Benny who says that he never believed Dan killed Alex. He tells him all the rumors that surrounded him.

Dan gets a lead from Benny about someone else Alex was around all the time, some guy in legal aide.

Dan has dinner and drinks with Ellen as they try to reconnect. She asks him what it was about Alex, and he tells her. Then she psychoanalyzes him.

The woman talks to Alex about her relationship with Dan, and the woman clears Dan and says that Alex saved him.

Alex tells the woman that she's pregnant.

Mike goes off on Dan for invniting trouble with Alex.

In the present, Ellen hangs out with stella.

Alex is freaking out that she's pregannt. She eats chips and smokes a cigarette at the site where Beth and Arthur are working. She then uses the cigarette to set the unfinished house on fire. Beth and the others have to escape as the place goes up in flames and she ends up in the hospital.

They then freak out when their neighbors aren't home to get Ellen and they can't find her. Mike goes looking, and Dan assumes that it has to do with Alex. Beth starts lashing at him when he starts talking but Mike finds Ellen a half a block away walking.

Beth then gets upset when Dan tries to get Ellen to tell him if Alex is who took her.

He goes to Alex'x house and attacks her and threatens her, slinging her around and telling her to kill heself becuae he won't do it for her. He leaves. He says he'll call in every favor to send the feds after her.

Later, we see a pool of blood in her apartment.

In the present, Mike gives Dan more information about prints found in Alex's apartment opening up to more suspects.

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 5 Recap: Medial Woman appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Much like the previous installments, Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 4 volleyed between the past and the present, this time in equal measure as we saw Dan trying to get a job and find some stability presently. At the same time, Beth's life started to unravel in the past.

We had very little of Alex in this installment, but her presence was heavily felt.

As far as the plot goes, there wasn't much momentum, especially considering that the hour followed Alex throwing the gauntlet down when she threw acid on Dan's car.

We spent a great deal of time in the past with Beth, most of it showing her perspective through some of the moments where we were initially following Dan and Alex.

Unfortunately, in most of the quiet moments with Beth, we merely retread territory. Beth exhibited growing suspicions that Dan was presumably having an affair, but she never voiced her thoughts or did anything about them.

We see Beth as this seemingly happy, fulfilled woman with a picture-perfect life, a job that she adores, a happy family, and a new home, but we all know that "picture-perfect" often means anything but that.

We see the house opening from her perspective, with Alex roaming around as she idly and obliviously chatted about how happy she was in the house, giving the usual spiel to sell the house.

And the series thought it was important to see this as one of those significant points leading up to Beth knowing deep in her bones that Dan was having an affair, and with this woman, no doubt.

However, without addressing Beth's resignation of this out loud at any point during the hour, it felt like wasted time.

She found an earring in Quincy's poop, something telling in the laundry because of the single sock she found, and Dan's behavior with his cell phone — they were all these little inklings in addition to his behavior when he came face to face with Alex that clued Beth into something.

Dan: I have to tell you something, Beth.

Beth: Now, does it have to be now?

Dan: Yeah, I think it does.

_{🔗 permalink: Yeah, I think it does.}

However, they didn't do anything with it during this hour, which was surprising. Instead, we end on the cliffhanger, if you want to call it that, of Daniel choosing the absolute worst freaking time to tell his wife that he had an affair.

And her resolute, firm statement about the time not being the best implied that she knew what he was going to say before he did it and, understandably, didn't want to get into it right then.

After all, her mother just died in a pool mere hours earlier.

The closest we got to something was her conversation with Arthur, who the series is doing a decent job of showing how the two ended up together 15 years later.

Aside from the fact that Arthur's entire personality in the past is dutifully seeing his wife through untreatable cancer, he's a bit of a Yoda, almost too kind and pure for any of this.

Arthur: What’s the matter?

Beth: Nothing. Nothing real.

Arthur: Well, if it’s real to you, it’s real. Put it into words. Change its nature. Take its power. Thought into action.

Beth: What’s the action?

Arthur: Saying it out loud. No?

_{🔗 permalink: Well, if it’s real to you, it’s real. Put it into words. Change its nature. Take its power.}

He's Beth's best friend and so genuinely earnest and supportive that it makes sense how he'd end up in Beth's life through the thick of everything. He's almost too perfect.

He invited her to discuss what was troubling her beyond a tricky client, urging her to validate her feelings about her troubles rather than dismissing them.

And Beth seemed on the cusp of opening up but pivoted back to what was safe instead while he took the opportunity to voice his troubles.

It was a scene that set up the groundwork for what we know came to be in the future, and it takes some of the stings if you want to call it that, out of the happy family unit Beth and Ellen found with this man.

Because Beth was too good for Dan, and Arthur was perfect.

We get these little moments and some insight into Beth as a character we wouldn't otherwise have, and Peet was excellent in her scenes. But they were mostly just there so we'd have something to grasp when Beth's entire world came crumbling down around her.

Her mother's death was so tragic. It was just a cluster of scenarios leading up to something absolutely awful, leaving Beth to resent her mother posthumously.

But it also sucked that Dan probably wouldn't have told Beth the truth if not for his fear and paranoia that Alex was escalating in her behavior.

Maybe if he had been honest before things went to hell, Beth could've been prepared, and he wouldn't have had to break the news mere hours after her mother died only to express his concerns that the woman he slept with was possibly behind the accidental death.

Dan is so self-absorbed and selfish in this regard.

In an hour that provided more of Beth's perspective, we also got to see more of how Dan embodies the "Nice Guy" trope, so charismatic and seemingly good while also not being precisely and explicitly that at all.

The situation with that case and Jorge was an example, and how it connected to the present is more interesting. His choice to settle a dispute about crimes against older women had him putting it in the lap of an overworked Major Crimes and now the more specialized unit that could've dealt with things better.

Earl: We all can’t be political animals like you, Danny, I mean, but it’s okay, though. Because somebody’s gotta be the audience, right?

_{🔗 permalink: We all can’t be political animals like you, Danny, I mean, but it’s okay, though. Because…}

And he offered to try the case himself. Still, Earl got in his butt, prompting him to kick the trial over to Jorge, giving this lawyer an opportunity in a move that Daniel benefited from in the current timeline when Jorge returns a favor by giving Dan a job.

In many ways, the best thing about Dan is Mike. Their relationship is one of the more intriguing aspects of the series. In addition to being a constant scene-stealer, Mike has been a great friend in the past and present.

He didn't condone Dan's actions and was visibly frustrated with him for carrying on with Alex. His advice was sound regarding giving her attention, and his intentions were good-hearted, approaching Alex to warn her off.

And it seems his faith in Dan cost him his fair share in the present, but he even knows how to navigate that well.

He has no issue with Earl following the evidence and has no disillusions about Frank or anyone else.

And he's been kicking butt in trying to clear Dan's name. The lead on Paul, the doctor, was a great one, and it set so many things up.

Their interrogation of Paul was one of the better scenes of the hour. His way of describing his connection to Alex and the things she did that put him off was so good. When you encounter someone like Alex and are on the receiving end of her mechanizations, it's genuinely hard to put into words.

It's almost primal, the body and all the senses telling you that something is "off," even if you can't describe why, and he hit the nail on the head about how Alex would take on all the interests that someone has.

Mike: If you tell someone to stop calling you and they keep calling, and the twentieth time you pick up and say, Will you stop fucking calling me? What you just taught them is 20 times is all it takes.

_{🔗 permalink: If you tell someone to stop calling you and they keep calling, and the twentieth time you…}

His description of her swallowing him up was an effective one. That specific story about how she laughed just like him, not ironically or even intentionally, but just folded herself into him, made for a solid moment that resonated with Dan.

But one of the things that Fatal Attraction keeps attempting to do is have something to say, some commentary to make, while also giving into the very thing it's trying to push against.

We're supposed to have all this extra context to avoid just writing Alex off as "crazy," but they still lean into it hard anyway.

Daniel visiting Conchita for the first time since he went to prison was a prime example. They attempt to go back and forth between understanding the natural inclination of calling out Daniel as the privileged straight white dude but then providing all these caveats to make him more sympathetic despite that.

Conchita openly admitted that she withheld valuable information that could've affected his case because she didn't like how he defended himself — his defense either made him a politically incorrect hypocrite at his own convenience or guilty.

As a victim's advocate, the truth and justice should prevail. Conchita put her hand on the scale because of her perception of who the victim was.

They can't go out of their way to call out how women like Alex can be victims of a system run by and often beneficial to men like Dan while also trying to make him the wronged victim of this same system.

It's like the series is trying to serve two masters, neither picking a side, or so it thinks, nor succeeding at having anything to say about either side enough to justify why it's straddling the fence.

What's subtly fascinating about the Alex/Daniel dynamic regarding this case is where Conchita fits in as a woman of color.

While she's fully aware of how society benefits white men and may or may not have allowed that to influence her perception and read on a situation, she would just as likely be cognizant of that same socio-cultural hierarchy benefitting white women, too.

By Conchita's own words, a bailiff, who happens to be a man of color, came to her with unofficial claims about Alex's harassment, and nothing came of it, nor was there any real advocation for him as a "real" victim.

It was some proof that Alex had an established history of harassing people and could've been a crucial part of Dan's defense when he was on trial, but Conchita sat on it because she didn't want to speak ill of the dead woman or allow Dan to "blame the victim."

Conchita: When they don’t have the law, they argue the facts. When they don’t have the facts, they argue the law. When they don’t have either, they blame the victim. The guilty always blame the victim.

Dan: Is that what you still think?

Conchita: I don’t think about you, Dan. Or well, I do, a little when I remember how well I used to know people, including myself.

_{🔗 permalink: When they don’t have the law, they argue the facts. When they don’t have the facts, they argue}

The entire conversation and scene between them have Conchita supposedly sitting on some moral high ground to admonish Dan and acknowledge power structures and remind us that he has culpability in the matter and Alex shouldn't be painted as just some one-note villain.

But it further paints Dan as an actual victim while simultaneously browbeating him for his privilege and catering to the victimized white male narrative.

Do you see what I mean about them trying to have it all the way?

What moral high ground can Conchita stand on by withholding valuable intel about Alex's previous case of workplace harassment? How does she get to walk away from their reunion feeling like the wronged party who was justified in changing her mind about his guilt because of him telling his truth?

He sat in jail for 15 years, presumably for something he didn't do, since the series is hellbent on giving Dan absolution when a colleague and friend sat on something that could've helped him.

Conchita's implication that someone had to pay for Alex's death, regardless of whether it was the right person, isn't what justice or victim advocacy is about.

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If anything, it closed the door on potential suspects by being too fearful of using her actual history. And that doesn't help victims either.

And yet, this is also in the same installment where Dan, the new baby, got handed a job after minimal struggles as a paralegal because of someone he knows, highlighting that privilege again.

Frank: There’s part of me that would love to have you grinding away in a basement for 28 bucks an hour, but the rest of me? I wouldn’t validate your parking if you had a fucking car.

_{🔗 permalink: There’s part of me that would love to have you grinding away in a basement for 28 bucks an…}

Surprisingly, there was very little in the present pertaining to Ellen that went anywhere. It's so much potential storyline to explore with Ellen as she navigates her relationship with her father after all these years.

But sadly, at this hour, she again fell into the role of narrator and allegory peddler with the same pretentious Yung analysis.

Over to you, Fatal Attraction Fanatics. Do you think Alex was behind the death of Beth's mother? Where do you stand on the depiction of Dan? Sound off!

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Beautiful Mosiacs appeared first on TV Fanatic.

In the past, Beth sees that the dog pooped out an earring. She gets a phone call from Dan saying that he has to work late because Frank didn't show, and Arthur, who she is working with, gets a phone call about his wife, who is battling cancer.

Beth starts to have her suspicions of something with how Dan has been behaving, laundry hints, and how he's reacting to his phone constantly going off.

Dan settles a dispute about a serial case against elder women, but he allows Major Crimes to continue with the case rather than a specialized unit for it.

We see from her perspective, Alex when she comes to the house opening.

Alex pieces together all these bits to confirm that Alex is the woman that Dan is having an affair with as she ponders on all of this.

Arthur picks up that something is wrong with Beth. He tries to get her to talk about it, and then when she doesn't, he tells her about Julia's cancer being an untreatable sort that makes him feel helpless.

Mike gives Dan a video of Alex throwing acid on Dan's car and goes off on him about this affair. Dan confides in him and asks for advice. He wants Dan to ignore Alex and not give her the response that she's looking for.

In present, Dan is getting ready for a job interview as a paralegal and having his doubts that he'll get anything.

Ellen talks to her professor about Jung and her project and also confides in him about pending time with Dan.

Dan reaches out to Frank for a job. But Frank brings up what Dan said about Frank when Frank was trying him. He's petty and doesn't give him a job.

Mike was there to pick Dan up so they can keep investigating Alex. They're headed to speak to the superintendent at the building who remembers Alex and her relationship with the doctor, Paul.

Beth and Ellen catch up on each other's day, and Ellen  brings up how she's been feeling and memories and stuff she has since Dan got  out.

They talk to Paul in prison to get information about whether or not he kept in contact with Alex or if he was still around when she was killed. He describes how Alex was great at first, but then he realized that she forced herself to be exactly like him or like everything that he likes.

Dan gets called intio an office to meet with someone and bumps into Jorge who he used to work with. Jorge tells him that he has the job as a paralegal. Jorge is grateful that Dan seemed to get out of his way and back him

But in flashbacks it seems that Earl was the one who proved that Jorge was capable of something and that Dan should have let him lead on a case.

Mike goes to talk to Earl.

In the past, Beth leaves her mother at the house to pick up Ellen while she runs errands with her father. But the door is open.

When Beth gets home, her mother didn't get Ellen at the bust stop, the door is open, back gate is open, and there's a wine glass on the table. She thinks the dog is the one in the pool that's opened, but when she diives it, she sees that it's her mother trapped underneath. The dog comes back.

Beth thinks her mother got too drunk and messed evertything up but Dan still feels it's suspicious that the gate was closed. He thinks Alex was there and tells Mike about it.

In the present, Dan meets with Conchita. She was on his side at first but when she heard his defense, she lost respect for him blaming the victim

She mentions that she got a complaintn about Alex before she died from a court officer. She tells him that she held the information back because he was blaming the victim but gives him the name of the bailiff who filed the unofficial complaint.

In the past, Mike has a chat with Alex.

Dan tells Beth about the affair.

The post Fatal Attraction Season 1 Episode 4 Recap: Beautiful Mosiacs appeared first on TV Fanatic.