As David Gerrold pointed out in one of his books about Star Trek, network TV dramas in the 1960s had a structure dictated by the fact that you had to have commercials every fifteen minutes, so you get an introduction building up to a minor climax, followed by a development building to a bigger climax, followed by another set of developments, leading to a more intense climax, and finally the resolution, building to the biggest climax of all. He didn’t say so, but this required structure lead to a distortion of the way stories are told, and to audience expectation. It sure ain’t classic drama. Frequently the intermediate climaxes seem artificial and contrived.
In today’'s world of premium channels, you have something different, but related. You split the story into equal-sized segments, each of which has to end in its own climax in order to keep the audience hooked not over the next couple of minutes through the commercial break, but over the next week until the following episode. We’re definitely seeing this in The Undoing.
Kelley constructs a good story and he writes spiffy dialogue. The director sets up the scenes beautifully. As someone who spent a lot of time in Manhattan, one thing that really came through was the “feel” of the City, not just the wealthy parts of it, but the street scenes, as well. The series had, to quote Billy Joel, a 'New York State of Mind."
But it was disrupted by that blatant structure. Since this is a drama, not a documentary, I know that it’s constructed, and the writer, actors, and director are all puppeteers controlling what I see, and, thus, my expectations and emotions. Most of us know this, at least in the backs of our minds, while we buy into the illusion that this is a series of real events. But it breaks our suspension of disbelief when we can blatantly perceive the strings. What’s troubling people, I think, is that they’re seeing the strings, way too often.
People above have pointed out the frequent “red herrings” strewn through the show. But it’s not just that there are these red herrings – Kelley is shaping the situations and dialogue around them in order to emphasize their importance, or to tug us in some other direction, and this has lead to the plots sand actions not being wholly consistent from one episode to the next.
Writers have an advantage in writing any sort of mystery – usually when you write a story you have to build audience sympathy and interest with the picture you draw of the character and situations. You do it in such a way that they are sufficiently interesting for the reader (or viewer) to keep on reading or watching, rather than going of and doing something else. But in a mystery, they know that clues are going to be planted, possibly in the most banal and uninteresting places and scenes. So the audience watches and pays close attention, because they don’t want to be “caught”. They don’t want to miss that vital clue. The mystery writer can count on an attentive audience that he or she didn’t properly “earn”.
So the people watch it all, and Kelley has worked to tug around the audience expectations in different directions in each episode. Nicole Kidman is the totally innocent wife surprised by her husband’s sudden out-of-character behavior? But then she’s spotted on video near the murdered woman’s studio. And there was a picture painted of her. And there are those scenes of the woman interacting with her in an odd way. So maybe Kidman’s character is the murderer? It’s not just the painting (which is unceremoniously dropped, without explanation, after this).
The son goes to eat with his parents and talks hopefully about the family maybe getting back together, something he hadn’t brought up before. He saw Hugh Grant and the Woman snuggling when he was at school, and was seen doing so. Then the Missing Murder Weapon shows up in his violin case. DA DA DUH. Maybe the son murdered the woman because she was breaking up the family? It’s not just the sculptor’s hammer in the violin case, it’s the writing surrounding it. Except the son’s behavior in other episodes seems inconsistent with that.
The show’s drift seems organized around these planted false expectations and for-the-moment-only words and actions that are quickly forgotten. If you put it all together into a single multi-hour movie, or if you binge-watched the whole thing its episodic and changing nature would be more apparent. You’d like to have a story appear as a consistent and organic whole, perhaps tugged a bit out of shape by the requirements of episodic television, but this show seems ruled by the structure. And that’s annoying.
Finally, the last episode has the son going off with his father (who he believes is a murderer, and is about to be convicted), which is really unbelievable and not really prepared for. They just needed a dramatic ending, with the father on the run with the son as hostage, a dramatic car chase (with helicopters yet!) and an almost crashing death or suicide. But it’s really pretty empty and meaningless, and just there to give the series a crash-bang ending. Even if there’s no crash and no bang.
The most annoying thing, to me, is that Hugh Grant’s character is an empathic sociopath, which is pretty much a contradiction in terms. Hannibal Lecter (or Lektor, depending on your version) is a sociopath who at times appears sympathetic (he gives agent Sterling a towel when she’s crying), but they’re few and far between and explicable on other bases. But Hugh Grant’s character is a cancer doctor whose success is due in large part to the rapport he develops with his patients. It’s how he charms them, and charmed his wife into marrying him, and charmed Alves into having an affair with him. His empathy would seem to be on constant display, not occasional play-acting for the purposes of deception.
That’s not a consistent believable character. That’s an artificial situation for the benefit of the mystery.