“It’s always the fucking husband.”
Which is exactly where we find ourselves at the start of HBO’s latest limited series adaptation “The Undoing.”
If you love “Big Little Lies” like me, you will be fully invested in HBO’s latest novel adaptation that you are sure to obsess over. Like “Big Little Lies,” “The Undoing” is a novel adaptation based on the book called “You Should Have Known” by Jean Hanff Korelitz. The novel was released in 2014 and the rights were grabbed up by HBO with David E Kelley set to re-invent the book into a Limited Series. Nicole Kidman and Kelley both worked together on Seasons 1 and 2 of “Big Little Lies.” While the Limited Drama Series is based off of the 2014 Book, it is said that the script deviates, taking its own liberties with the material after the first two episodes.
The story is largely surrounding the Fraser’s, a well-off, extremely privileged, Upper East Side family. Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman) is a well-known psychologist who is married to Jonathon (Hugh Grant) who is a pediatric oncologist and together they reside in Manhattan with their teenage son Henry. Their world is turned upside down when the well-to-do family becomes wrapped up in a murder investigation of one of the mothers at their son’s school.
The series, spanning six episodes, is told mostly from the Fraser family’s perspective as their lives seem to start to unravel as the murder investigation propels forward. The first episode starts from the Fraser perspective, as we see the initial loving interaction between husband and wife and father and son as Jonathon walks their son Henry (up and coming star, Noah Jupe) to his prestigious school, Reardon Academy. As all Upper East Side Prep School mothers are over involved in their children’s lives, we find Grace attending a Tea Luncheon with the other mothers at the school to plan for the upcoming Auction Benefit. As the Tea gets underway, we can sense that all mothers know each other and operate closely together in their exclusive circle, so they are thrown when a newcomer arrives, infiltrating their exclusive circle.
The new mother is Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis), the mother of a scholarship student at Reardon looking to become more involved in the inner-workings of Reardon Academy. As to be suspected, she is greeted un-enthusiastically as she tried to penetrate the women’s group. We don’t know much about her, except that she is a working mother and newcomer to Reardon. She also shows up dead at the end of Episode 1, her murder prompting the Fraser family’s Undoing.
Elena’s body is discovered the morning after the School’s Charity Auction and the members of the community are struggling to find answers. As the Chief Detective (Edgar Ramirez) starts the investigation off with questioning the parents that saw her the night of the Auction. Grace is frantically trying to get ahold of her husband who left earlier that morning on an early flight to Toledo for a medical conference. Her agitation alerts the police who promise to follow up with more questions.
As Grace makes her way upstairs to her bedroom, she tries calling her husband for the 15th time. While walking into their bathroom waiting for Jonathon to pick up, she hears the vibrations. She steps back into the bedroom, following the noise and finds her husband’s cell phone in the back of the bed side drawer. She opens the phone and sees the unread text messages and voicemails from her throughout the day. Frantic for answers, she calls the Hyatt where her husband told her he was staying to find that no one with the name of Fraser had checked in. Grace calls four different hotels to discover that her husband was not in Toledo.
“it’s always the fucking husband….”
Which husband?
Ya’ll got me invested. New episodes of “The Undoing” are released Sunday night son HBO and HBO Max. I won’t be re-capping every episode, but will be posting small snippets every week.
And that’s the sitch.
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