Cape Fear<\/a><\/p>\nLos tiempos de Dios son Perfectos<\/p>\n
\n Season 1<\/p>\n
Episode 8\n <\/p>\n
\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n
4 stars<\/p>\n
****\n <\/p>\n
\n Cady might have gotten what he wanted, but now Anna finds herself with nothing left to lose.
\n Photo: Apple TV\n <\/p>\n
Perhaps the most significant difference between the TV Cape Fear and the two previous screen versions \u2014 as well as the source material, John D. MacDonald\u2019s novel The Executioners \u2014 is that Max Cady is not a sexual predator but merely a violent criminal hell-bent on revenge. There\u2019s some wisdom in not having a rape threat hover over ten hours of serialized television, and the shift has opened up some thorny connections between Cady and Anna Bowden, whose pasts continue to intersect in intriguing ways. There are moral distinctions to be made between them \u2014 Anna wouldn\u2019t, say, leave a cooler full of dismembered body parts in the deep end of a family swimming pool \u2014 but they\u2019re two characters from similar backgrounds who are willing to play in the mud.<\/p>\n
Yet the big question hovering over the series is, What to do about the Bowdens\u2019 underage daughter now that she\u2019s not a target of sexual assault? The 1962 film version featured a more innocent family with a daughter who\u2019s presexual and thus a na\u00efve object of lust for Robert Mitchum\u2019s casually lascivious Cady. The family in the 1991 Cape Fear is a mess, and the daughter\u2019s flirtations with Cady, managed beautifully by Juliette Lewis, put her on the razor\u2019s edge of sexual curiosity and parental resentment. The choice to make Natalie older and presumably wiser for the TV series has led to moments of great frustration because it\u2019s hard to believe she has made so many obvious mistakes. While it\u2019s true she acted out of loneliness and desire, coupled with a righteous anger toward her duplicitous parents, the show has strained credulity far past the breaking point.<\/p>\n
Now that Natalie is starting to see things more clearly, she has become an emotional force unique among Cape Fear adaptations because she draws from a deeper well of life experience. To that end, the casting of Lily Collias is finally starting to pay off. Collias is known to a handful of critics and indie-movie watchers for her lead performance in the 2024 drama Good One, in which she plays a teenager who grudgingly joins her divorced father and his more recently divorced friend on a weekend camping trip in the Catskills. The film hinges on a small moment that not only sullies the trip but leads her character to reconsider her understanding of her father. It\u2019s as though she\u2019s growing up on the spot, becoming more certain of herself and the way the world works.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the same space Natalie occupies in this episode. She has been burned and humiliated by her dalliances with Nevaeh, who cannot be talked down from her Cady-related psychosis. And she finally gets herself to the point where she cannot believe Cady, either, because the evidence against him is too much for her to deny. Last week, she hedged her bets by accompanying him on a trip back to his hometown near the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, but she toted along a loaded handgun just in case. (This was a dumb idea with predictable consequences, but she took baby steps in the right direction.) Now she realizes with blessed conviction that Cady killed Ray with the gun and she snoozed through it. At long last, she can join the fight.<\/p>\n
The shift in Natalie\u2019s perspective galvanizes the show in two great scenes that reveal the depth of her pain and her hidden capacity for empathy. The first is her surprising jailhouse visit with Nevaeh, which allows her to speak frankly with her with a nice thick wall of detention glass between them. Natalie acts on the faint hope that Nevaeh will connect to her because they\u2019re (possibly) daughters of the same bad father and maybe their romance wasn\u2019t entirely a con. (\u201cYou are a minor who was groomed,\u201d says Natalie. \u201cAnd I think maybe, somewhere, you really do care about me.\u201d) But when Nevaeh blows her off, Natalie absolutely lets it rip, perhaps feeling secure that she will never, say, end up occupying the same cellblock with her extremely soon.<\/p>\n
More affecting still is a later scene with her mother, who\u2019s reeling both from Tom\u2019s arrest for allegedly killing Ray and hiding the murder weapon and from her sleazy father betraying her after negotiating $100,000 in blackmail money to skip town over the scheme to plant drugs in Cady\u2019s house. (There are so many arrests in the street between the Bowdens\u2019 and Cady\u2019s residences that it\u2019s like an episode of Cops that stays in one trailer park.) With Tom furious at her for not telling the truth about her past relationship with Cady, Anna has finally gotten to a place where she can be honest with Natalie about what happened between them, and she finds a surprisingly sympathetic ear. Anna was given to drinking at the time, and she tells Natalie that Cady wasn\u2019t the first guy to take advantage. But her uncertainty about the identity of her unborn child\u2019s father, combined with her conviction that Cady was likely a killer, led to her conspiring to put her client in the hole. Natalie doesn\u2019t cast judgment over her mother\u2019s lapses, and it\u2019s the one precious moment of grace she gets in an episode where her entire life collapses at her feet.<\/p>\n
The Bowden family\u2019s miseries are so extreme that Cady must feel he has the upper hand, even though he\u2019s left hospitalized after Natalie, his possible daughter, shoots him in the gut. The episode ends with 75 percent of the Bowdens under state confinement: Tom is jailed for killing Ray and hiding the murder weapon from police, Natalie is housed in Nevaeh\u2019s prison wing for shooting Cady in the stomach, and Zack is still involuntarily committed for allowing Nevaeh to live in the walls of the Bowden house and for stabbing his dad with a pair of garden shears. The only free Bowden is Anna, who could easily be charged for directing her sleazy father to plant drugs at Cady\u2019s place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what I wanted,\u201d Cady tells Anna from his hospital bed. \u201cFor you to feel this. To feel your family ripped apart. Broken. Caged. Your children taken away.\u201d She absorbs that verbal punch without doubling over, which speaks to her own hardscrabble background and her resilience under duress. Anna reminds Cady that he did actually kill his wife and unborn child despite the implication that she\u2019s responsible for his misfortune. She\u2019s neither hospitalized nor institutionalized. And she can play dirty too.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Dynamite opening with Natalie discovering Ray\u2019s remains at the bottom of the pool. That cloud of blood leading into the photo-negative image is so striking visually, and the whole macabre affair seems to pay homage to the scene in 1991\u2019s Cape Fear when Robert De Niro\u2019s Cady jokes with Illeana Douglas\u2019s character about hacking his wife \u201cinto 52 pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Speaking of nods to the \u201991 version, there\u2019s also the use of Aretha Franklin\u2019s \u201cDo Right Woman, Do Right Man,\u201d which played over a scene where De Niro\u2019s Cady calls Danielle Bowden (Juliette Lewis) on the phone and cons her into turning up for a private drama class the next day. \u201cTrust me,\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019m the Do Right Man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cYou\u2019re not your momma\u2019s girl. You\u2019re every bit of me\u201d: Anna\u2019s dad is a lowlife, but he\u2019s telling the truth here.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Something to monitor: Noa Toussaint, deep in grief over Ray, blames herself for \u201cinviting the wolf in\u201d and potentially upending the innocence project she has spent his career building. Seems likely she will take a more active role in stopping Cady.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Cold resolve from Natalie over her attempt to shoot Cady: When her mother asks what happened, she tersely replies \u201cI missed\u201d as if she were an old Clint Eastwood character.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Anna driving into Tropical Storm Wesley may be \u201991 Cape Fear hat tip No. 3 in this episode because that version was written by Wesley Strick.<\/p>\n
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