I Can’t Stop Loving the Bad Guy; The Undoing and Toxic Men
I don't like to watch shows until after the final season has aired. I was burned by Lost when it first came on the TV when I was in high school, and then three years ago when Game of Thrones finished its last season. I ride the careful balance between spoiler and gentle suggestion that this show that I'm about to obsess over for the next six months wasn't a huge, colossal waste of my time. It's made me really appreciative of limited series shows like Fleabag, Sharp Objects, Chernobyl, and Little Fires, shows that gleefully plunge you into a dark, heavy, wet plot with incredibly complex characters, enchanting dialogue, and heaving emotional weight, only to throw you back onto the shore, soaked and gasping for air, after the tenth episode. I love that. A cold-plunge for the soul, and one that fits my busy schedule.
Even then, it was only a month ago that I finally watched Kate Winslet's incredible show Mare of Easttown, and it was only this past week that I watched The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. While it normally takes me a couple of weeks to finish a show, I completely devoured it over two days. To say I was gobsmacked is to be an understatement. A show about a wealthy couple generally untouched by the fears and failures that haunt many of the rest of us, the world of Grace and Jonathan Fraser is turned upside down when a young mother from their son's prestigious private school turns up brutally murdered, and they become swept up in the resulting storm. The stark contrast between wealth and power, effortless influence and life of ease, with that of the growing feeling of dread that everything in your life was not what it seemed to be is powerful in this show; a brutal and naked reminder that even the most powerful, the best equipped, can sometimes be taken advantage of.
From a visual point of view, this show was interesting for showing graphic tidbits and flashbacks to the last moments of Elena Alves's life, and the cast is so tight and small that it feels claustrophobic at times. There is no stranger from out of town who randomly murdered this woman. The call is coming from inside the house. One of these people killed poor Elena, but who could it possibly be? Much in the same way of Jessica Biel's The Sinner, which focused less on the whodunit and more on the question, 'why?' It feels overwhelming almost from the first episode of The Undoing that something is very, very wrong. And yet we are dragged along through a masterful suspension of disbelief, and into almost willing something to be true when it so clearly isn't. At the end we realize this isn't a show about a crime, but a show about gaslighting, about emotional manipulation, and about our own hesitance to change our views about someone we care about deeply, about someone we love.
When this show first came out, I listened to an NPR interview with Hugh Grant where they discussed his experience being involved in such a unique project, and how it must've felt to go from someone who traditionally gets cast as the hero to suddenly find himself playing the villain. Armed with that knowledge about the show, I remember still watching it and thinking, "well, maybe he's just playing the pretend villain. Possibly it was really Grace. Maybe it was really the son, even." I balked at the idea that someone so charming, loving, successful and sweet could be a bad guy. As I watched, I was reminded of my ex-husband, a man who was always the most popular guy in the room, who could charm the ice off a Midwest winter. I remembered an old ex from college, who I had continued dating even after a mutual friend had warned me that he was not a good person. I remembered all the times I looked at the red flags in front of me and consciously decided to tell myself that they were green. We have all been colorblind at some point in our life; we have all known a monster. We have all believed in the good in someone, even when we have evidence of the contrary. We love to think that we know who the bad guy is, but The Undoing taught us all that even when all the pieces fall into place, we have no fucking clue.
This show felt like a painful reminder and a warning, all wrapped up in one. It reminded me of why I continue to write this blog, because even as a sex activist and a feminist, as someone who was literally in the middle of writing a book about boundaries, I let a man stealth me last year and I said nothing. The lengths of disbelief we will extend to men who are charming is a reminder that while every woman either has or know a woman who has been sexually assaulted, so few of us know a man who's been an assaulter. This show was a reminder that monsters don't have to lurk in alleyways. Sometimes they can be spooning you in bed.
All my life I’ve been led to believe that men would act in my best interest, that there would always be a motive unveiled to me at the final moment, where I would see that the betrayal was really just a play to save my life. Being fed the belief that all charming men are good guys has been patriarchy’s biggest achievement; giving bad men a path of no resistance to get what they want. You can get away with anything, as long as you do it with a charming smile. Our definition of who and what a bad guy is so narrowly defined, that even when it stares us in the face, even if the evidence is almost overwhelmingly in support of guilt, we are reluctant to believe it. What a grift. What a brilliant strategy. That’s why The Undoing is so good, is it challenges our beliefs that we can judge people based not on their looks alone, but also their actions. It challenges the belief that “he can’t be the bad guy, because he’s always been nice to me.” It also challenges the belief that we can always see and prevent bad behavior or bad actors from being in our lives. Grace Fraser is a clinical psychologist and a brilliant one, yes, but she is also a woman who was married to a monster for fifteen years and had absolutely no idea. It’s not your fault if you get charmed by a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
It’s not my fault that I’ve been trained to see charm as a reasonable excuse for bad behavior. It’s not my fault that patriarchy has duped me into automatically overlooking suspicious actions as long as they're coated in love. But I can certainly do something about it now. I can undo my assumptions, and examine my proclivities more carefully. A monster can look like a knight in shining armor if I squint hard enough. It’s time to open my eyes.
