I found this series really hard to watch. I found it tragically sad, and distracting, and too busy trying to stuff every detail/gossip about the lives of each of these women into the point of time around filming of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE. And it's hard for me to decide whether its the quality of the series or the content of the series that left me so disturbed. Let's see if I can break it down. Acting: Susan Sarandon is a great actress and I feel she worked hard to capture the woman behind the image, as did Jesssica Lange, but, this series failed miserably in evoking the recognizable iconic images of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or even Olivia de Havilland or Joan Blondelle. Jessica Lange is a beautiful woman - Joan Crawford was a reknown beauty, but the make up department created a hideous mess. So there was always a visual dissonance for me. Writing: Just as I abhorred Crawford's and Davis's daughters' tell-all books that capitalize on their mothers' fame for their own gain, this script reeked of the same disease - scrapping together gossip and conjecture to sell a pitch. They threw everything into the pot leaving me sick with distaste for the whole mess. Themes: the cesspool under the glitter of Hollywood, the abasement of women in the promotion of stardom where people are property, the powerlessness of women, the fuelling of hatred between people, the manipulation of insecurities of the artist, and, even, the prostitution of art for the sake of a buck. I guess I didn't like the construct or the content, and the best I would give this series is a 4 (poor) out of 10. Sorry, Emmys. I think the work of these performers deserve recognition, but not for this series. [DRAMA]
Review by Nancy L DraperVIP 8BlockedParent2017-09-19T21:42:12Z
I found this series really hard to watch. I found it tragically sad, and distracting, and too busy trying to stuff every detail/gossip about the lives of each of these women into the point of time around filming of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE. And it's hard for me to decide whether its the quality of the series or the content of the series that left me so disturbed. Let's see if I can break it down. Acting: Susan Sarandon is a great actress and I feel she worked hard to capture the woman behind the image, as did Jesssica Lange, but, this series failed miserably in evoking the recognizable iconic images of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or even Olivia de Havilland or Joan Blondelle. Jessica Lange is a beautiful woman - Joan Crawford was a reknown beauty, but the make up department created a hideous mess. So there was always a visual dissonance for me. Writing: Just as I abhorred Crawford's and Davis's daughters' tell-all books that capitalize on their mothers' fame for their own gain, this script reeked of the same disease - scrapping together gossip and conjecture to sell a pitch. They threw everything into the pot leaving me sick with distaste for the whole mess. Themes: the cesspool under the glitter of Hollywood, the abasement of women in the promotion of stardom where people are property, the powerlessness of women, the fuelling of hatred between people, the manipulation of insecurities of the artist, and, even, the prostitution of art for the sake of a buck. I guess I didn't like the construct or the content, and the best I would give this series is a 4 (poor) out of 10. Sorry, Emmys. I think the work of these performers deserve recognition, but not for this series. [DRAMA]