On Sunday night, FX aired the inaugural episode of Feud: Bette and Joan, Ryan Murphy’s limited series about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ notorious dust-up on the set of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Despite the advance promo ads emphasizing the campier elements of the story, the first episode seemed to play it pretty straight. Maybe as the story progresses and the feud escalates, it will evolve into the garish, throwback camp the ads seem to suggest, but for now Murphy and a stellar cast—led by Jessica Lange as Crawford, a terrific Susan Sarandon as Davis, and Alfred Molina as Baby Jane director Robert Alrich—are laying the groundwork for what seems to be a smart, accurate story about Hollywood.
Oh no, Hollywood takes on Hollywood yet again?? Well, yes, and Feud: Bette and Joan has some pretty interesting ideas on its plate, too, and so far seems poised to deal with them effectively. Davis and Crawford were both in their 50s when Bette and Joan‘s events took place, having been largely discarded by the film industry in favor of younger actresses. In the first episode, we see Crawford sending her maid to the bookstore to buy up everything that has “a woman on the cover,” desperately looking for a story that doesn’t portray females as either ingenues, mothers, or gorgons.
It might seem odd that Crawford settled on Henry Farrell’s thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which seems to contain at least one gorgon in its pages. Regardless, Crawford recognizes the power of the story and enlists Davis and Aldrich to turn it into a movie with her. At this point in Feud, Crawford appears to be both the most sympathetic character and the most ridiculous. On the downward slope of fame, she’s obsessed with her image, but still has something to prove to the world in terms of her formidable acting chops.
Davis, meanwhile, seems to be a much more complicated person, evidenced by her simultaneous commitment to and disdain of her own work. Resigned to a solitary life, she’s critical and uncompromising, with all of the sacrifices that entails. It seems obvious that Feud: Bette and Joan is using Hollywood as shorthand for our treatment of aging women in general, much in the same way Murphy’s The People vs. O.J. Simpson used that trial as a lens through which to view race relations. I don’t know if Feud can possibly will be as good as O.J. was—it seems like a tighter, more focused story with fewer characters—but the one hour that’s aired so far make it seem like something definitely worth seeing through.
The one stumble for me is a framing device that has Crawford and Davis’ actress peers Olivia de Havilland (Catherine Zeta Jones) and Joan Blondell (Kathy Bates) talking to the camera in interview segments. So far it hasn’t added much. But this blemish might pay off in the long run, and it’s more than offset by the amazing opening credits, which are part PBS Mystery!, part Saul Bass, and part Catch Me If You Can.
Feud: Bette and Joan airs Sunday nights on FX.