- Network: HBO Max
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 27, 2023
Critic Reviews
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Olsen delivers a Candy who’s human and credible (warmer, twitchier than Biel’s). If I have a problem, it’s with Betty, who feels just a little underwritten. Call me old-fashioned, but victims shouldn’t be sidelined in their own tragic stories.
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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.
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It doesn’t expand our understanding of anyone. It makes us voyeurs without a redemptive aspect. And it makes Betty – especially here, where she is notably underwritten – no more than a plot point. Some stories should perhaps be left in peace.
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Ultimately, “Love & Death” has the credentials, performances and production values to elevate the story above the leering exploitation that marks the worst of the field. ... But at the end of the day, “Love & Death” does turn real people into exaggerated, if empathetically rendered, versions of themselves.
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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.
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If Love & Death cannot quite meet Olsen at her level (this is the kind of series that could’ve done with fewer montages no matter how many great needle drops it gifts us in the process), that may well be due to its generic constraints.
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The show seems most alive in dealing with Candy and Allan’s affair, as if the killing is the thing that got a greenlight, but not something worth exploring in great depth. Whether you know the story from previous articles and dramatizations, or it’s brand-new to you, Love & Death never really justifies why all these talented people have come together to re-create this particular crime.
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Despite generous pacing and some fine lead performances, his [David E. Kelley's] show has too little light to shed on its notorious central case.
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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.
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Love & Death is at its best when it’s using the framing of a sensational true-crime case to explore more general human experience: malaise, transgression, the stifle of social order. ... After Betty’s death, though, the series loses its way. What had once been a finely tuned character study becomes wooden and formulaic. ... Love & Death ultimately has no argument, no salient reason to exist beyond the titillation it wisely avoids in its first few episodes.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 17
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Mixed: 4 out of 17
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Negative: 3 out of 17
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Apr 27, 2023