Love and Death

We are reaching the conclusion of HBOs mini series Love and Death. At this point Candy Montgomery has been charged with the murder of her friend Betty which she has confessed to her lawyer. Her lawyer has also told her husband what has been going on and we are about to enter the murder trial. This is the second to last episode in the series and so far it has been a captivating experience as well as just a joy to watch especially for the talents of Elizabeth Olsen. This is an incredible project for her, she handles the heavy content so well and I hope she gets to do something lighter and more fun after this.

During the jury hearing or whatever where they choose the jurors Candy’s lawyer fully offers up that she is the murderer, but he does a great job of encouraging the potential jurors to realize that this was in self defense and to give Candy a chance to tell her story. This lawyer is doing a fantastic job of just working everybody, the pastor, Candy’s husband, the press. This man is carefully crafting the story he wants to tell and with this being his first criminal case it's really impressive the way he is handling it.

God Elizabeth Olsen is such an incredible actress, the scene with her mother is short but so freaking impactful. Her mother refuses to believe her self defense plea and says she will not be there for her daughter come the trial.

This lawyer is so good, he points out with Alan on the stand that Candy had no reason to kill Betty, that Betty was mentally unstable, that Candy had no feelings left for Alan and that Candy couldn’t have known where the ax was and that it only could have entered the equation because Betty brought it inside the house. Amazing work sir.

As his father in law pointed out Alan seems very apathetic in the courtroom. Shows absolutely no emotion he had no reaction really to seeing the ax that killed his wife. And all that he really said was that he and Betty weren’t getting along too well.

Also this judge sucks, he’s such a hypocritical, arrogant motherfucker. Holding Candy’s lawyer in contempt for doing the exact same thing he did…no.

The only hole in this self defense case is the fact that she wacked her 40 times, Lizzie Borden style. And the prosecution does a great job of blowing the defense wide open. The amount of wacks does make it look like Candy went absolutely batshit crazy but from the psychologist scene we know that Candy isn’t crazy she just snapped. Now we excuse killings all the time because the killer was using self defense, and adrenaline was making their decisions for them, this is not different. She clearly felt guilty, she is remorseful and I stand by the self defense plea.

Somehow the trial is more interesting than everything that built up to it. Even though Elizabeth Olsen took kind of a back seat in this episode she does a great job of showing what kind of stress and grief Candy was under. She self medicates during the trial so that she is able to hold it together in front of the jury and the media. Even though she should be letting herself fall apart so the jury can see that she is remorseful. I am looking forward to the final episode as I am sure it's going to be just as entertaining as the rest of this series has been.