Candy, Hulu’s five-part true-crime miniseries set in the early 1980s Texas suburbs, asks two questions about her eponymous inspiration, Candace Montgomery. First, what prompted the blissful homemaker and Holiday Bible study leader to hack her friend Betty Gore to death with an axe? And second, how the hell did she convince a jury that she punched her friend 41 times in self-defense?
Jessica Biel, once the Camdens’ wayward daughter in 7th Heaven and later the eponymous sinner in The Sinner, now plays another conflicting belief figure. As a chorister and Sunday School teacher, Candace Montgomery is a joyful pillar of her community, loved by children and adults alike. She’s the perfect counterpart to Betty Gore, a gloomy disciplinarian who loses her job as a school teacher because she can’t keep her class under control without giving them all detentions. (On several occasions.) Melanie Lynskey, peeking out from under a dowdy wig, plays the doomed sad sack with a mixture of bitterness and exhaustion. So why did candy kill her?
Both Candy and Betty seem to seek intimacy in their marriages to dutiful but uncommitted men. Candy’s attempts to rekindle the flame with her devout, kindhearted husband-from-husband, Pat (Timothy Simons), continue to go up in smoke, leaving her venting her sexual frustrations in the tub — at least until she finally decides to take a lover . Betty, meanwhile, spends half her time in front of the screen begging her husband Allan (Pablo Schreiber) not to leave her for weekend trips so often. For her, home is like a prison cell – darkened and filled with noises she cannot control. (Although in this case the uproar is just…kids are kids.)
Sweet as she may appear on the outside, Candy’s sugary shell hides a noxious tangle of suppressed anger and frustration not unlike those plaguing her friend. While Betty wears her bitterness on her sleeve, Candy hides it deep inside.
Jessica Biel replaced Elisabeth Moss as the star of the show last year, and it’s hard to imagine what the show could have looked like with the Handmaid’s Tale and Shining Girls star at its heart. For this production, however, Biel seems like the perfect choice to play Candace – charismatic, dizzying and wild. She leads with gentle smiles and undermines them with dissociative, middle-distance looks; Her busy housewife character is doting and domestic, but also athletic and wild.
The rest of the cast has a similar punch. Lynskey, who has had a moment since the Yellowjackets blast, oscillates between empathetic, pathetic, and frustrating as Betty; Allan von Schreiber seems to both love and hate his wife, and Orange Is the New Black’s Resident Porn ‘Stache is wonderfully adept at playing the bereaved widower. (Come for Allan and say he doesn’t know how to change a diaper but thinks his engineering degree will help him figure it out and stay for the moment he figures out what happens, when you load a dishwasher with regular old washing-up liquid.)
Simons quietly steals the show in every scene he’s in as Pat, a loveable jerk whose intuition as a father is far keener than his insight into his wife. And former Law & Order: SVU ADA Raul Esparza is an inspired choice to play Candy’s attorney, Don Crowder – who she knew from church and who the show implies might know Candy a little better than they wanted him to anyone in the courtroom notices.
“Simons steals the show in every scene he’s in as Pat, a lovable jerk whose intuition as a father is far keener than his insight into his wife. ”
Fans of The Sinner, in which Biel played another haunted killer in season one, will recognize Candy’s approach to the true crime elements. Like the USA drama, the Hulu miniseries takes a “whydunit” approach to the mystery at its core — a useful tactic that ensures all viewers, those who already know the details of Montgomery’s assassination of Gore, and those who those who don’t know this will find themselves fascinated. Creators Nick Antosca (The Act) and Robin Veith (The Expanse) blend a slow-simmering crime drama with humor that flirts with Camp but never quite embraces.
However, throughout its five-episode run, Candy hints at the safer series — or perhaps a made-for-TV movie — that could have been. Early scenes like a steamy volleyball game with butt looks and thigh-high high-fives are shot with a quiet humor that sadly gives way to more candid courtroom drama over time. I found myself wishing the show had allowed itself an inch of wiggle room—just a little more humor here, a little more quirky energy there. In the absence of real excitement, Candy tends to spin his wheels – a slightly tart note on an otherwise sweet formula.