The Tell-Tale Heart
- Episode aired Oct 12, 2023
- TV-MA
- 1h 1m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
3.5K
YOUR RATING
Victorine inches closer to testing her heart technology on a patient until tensions erupt between her and Alessandra. Dupin makes a chilling confession.Victorine inches closer to testing her heart technology on a patient until tensions erupt between her and Alessandra. Dupin makes a chilling confession.Victorine inches closer to testing her heart technology on a patient until tensions erupt between her and Alessandra. Dupin makes a chilling confession.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDupin (Carl Lumbly) tells Pym (Mark Hamill) that he "sees where they get it from," referring to the lawyer's nickname "The Pym Reaper" and suggests they just need a chessboard and a beach. Pym replies that he loves Bergman. This exchange is a reference to the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal (1957) in which a knight in medieval Sweden returning home from the Crusades encounters Death (the Grim Reaper) on a beach and challenges him to a game of chess, believing that as long as he can keep Death playing, he will remain alive. At one point, the knight knocks over the board in an attempt to keep the game going by requiring it be restarted, but Death claims "No one escapes me," and magically restores the board to its playing point. Mike Flanagan's series contains numerous references to the idea that no one can escape the inevitability of death regardless of their actions in life - a common theme in Poe's works - which is also a theme in Bergman's film.
- ConnectionsReferences The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Featured review
Keeps getting better & better...
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.
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.
helpful•268
- coreydingus
- Oct 14, 2023
Details
- Runtime1 hour 1 minute
- Color
- Sound mix
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