SummaryDavid E. Kelley's limited series inspired by the 1980 true story of how Candy Montgomery's (Elizabeth Olsen) affair with Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons) led to her killing his wife (Lily Rabe) with an axe.
SummaryDavid E. Kelley's limited series inspired by the 1980 true story of how Candy Montgomery's (Elizabeth Olsen) affair with Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons) led to her killing his wife (Lily Rabe) with an axe.
Love & Death is a standout in part because it's willing to wade into the emotional disarray, but it also rests chiefly on the shoulders of a leading actor capable of capturing all the complexities of David E. Kelley's scripts and Lesli Linka Glatter's direction. Put another way: Love & Death wouldn't be half as riveting without Elizabeth Olsen to bind it all together.
Aside from a layered performance by Olsen that easily surpasses the wig-forward acting of Candy’s miscast Jessica Biel, what sets Love & Death apart from its predecessor, and so many other superficial, ripped-from-the-headlines murder shows (Dahmer—Monster, The Thing About Pam, The Serpent), is Kelley’s refusal to reduce real people to cartoon killers or weirdos or fools.
At seven episodes, the HBO Max series overstays its own welcome but its two aces in the hole are Elizabeth Olsen as the to-the-point Montgomery, who has it all but desires to spice up her life, and Tom Pelphrey as flashy attorney/church member Don Crowder.
Incredibly compelling in its most shocking moments, but a little slow otherwise, Love & Death lives and dies by Elizabeth Olsen’s excellent, charismatic central performance.
Glossy and engaging. ... Too often, though, Kelley’s latest has nothing especially fascinating to say about its protagonist, nor anything novel to add to the conversation about her infamous encounter. It leaves one wanting more, and not in the way it intends.
Olsen works hard to imbue her character with more nuance as the strain of events begins to grind Candy down. But the series itself seems content simply to recreate the events of her case rather than explore them in any deeper psychological or thematic fashion. After seven hours, we end up with no more insight into what happened on that fateful day in Wylie, Texas than if we had just stuck to the Wikipedia page.
There are many shows that sympathize with killers and vilify their victims, but Love & Death never earns privilege. That’s because outside of Elizabeth Olsen’s devastatingly layered performance, Love & Death is a disaster.