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The devil almost always has a beautiful face. Have you ever noticed this? Evil itself is ugly, and meanness tends to be unattractive, but the boss of it all makes a point of looking good. This is how he hooks you. It also struck me watching the finale of “The Undoing” that if the devil had a favorite mask he probably looks like Hugh Grant and acts like his character, Dr Jonathan Fraser, a very respected and very wealthy pediatric oncologist alive. in Manhattan. .
In “The Undoing,” creator David E. Kelley makes Jonathan’s guilt or innocence the central mystery. Jonathan is billed as the charismatic and loving husband of Nicole Kidman’s Grace Fraser and shows a lot of care and affection for her son Henry (Noah Jupe). His community loves him. Grace adores him.
Still, the fact that he’s played by Grant – the go-to rake in television and film in recent years – you can suspect he’s at least guilty of something. And you would be right.
Soon after a beautiful young mother from Henry School dies, Jonathan goes missing. Police discovered a link between the woman and Dr Fraser soon after. Jonathan swears his innocence, of course, because that’s what beautiful demons do. The first line of defense he offers Grace is, “Here’s what happened: I had an affair.”
Since he’s rich, people tend to think that’s all it was. He is on television to plead his case. Grace stands by his side even as his story begins to fall apart, piece by piece, proving to be as fragile as their marriage.
“The Undoing” is designed to be a showcase for Kidman, which aligns with the central focus of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 2014 book “You Should Have Known”, which Kelley loosely adapted to make the series. But Grant caught our attention in a disproportionate way with her performance – not necessarily because she was brilliant but because of what she represents. Grant’s Jonathan is perhaps the pinnacle of the thug gallery section of his filmography, for through him the actor gives us an all-too-familiar avatar of white male privilege in the modern age.
The line “I had an affair”, by the way, is memorable because Grant stammers it in a way that is both ridiculously flippant and blunt. He delivers it in a deadly serious scene but says it in a way that borders on comedy. This is not a badly played moment but rather the first example of bad faith on Jonathan’s part.
Taken as part of a whole – that is, a man who confesses the least of his crimes against his wife and son to convince them to shelter him from paying for the very great crime of murder – it’s a Grant moment in essence. that you can’t help but worship him.
In recent years, the actor has admitted that the antagonist roles he’s been getting lately have come closer to his real-life personality than those Romeos in dreamboat. That’s not to say he’s a true sociopath (although years ago Jon Stewart banned him from appearing on “The Daily Show,” calling him his least favorite guest. ”And us had dictators on the show, “joked Stewart). But he does bow to his brooding demeanor, and like many famous artists, he likes to let his dark side come out for the occasional sprint.
But Grant is one of the few actors who could convincingly play Jonathan Fraser as Jonathan appears to be a mature version of one of Grant’s early cinematic “types”: he’s smart, charming, and hardworking, and it’s obvious that Grace is the one who entered the marriage with money. He looks gorgeous in a tuxedo and has a childish sparkle around him, wearing his upper crust accent without fuss.
His narcissistic malice soon won out over him. Yet the public buys him as a face in their fight with the legal system because he fits a type that Grant himself helped create, and this creation constantly fools the public.
Who knows if the films of actor Richard Curtis exist in the world of “The Undoing”? Assuming not, there would surely be a swoon-worthy romantic lead role figure – a chivalrous, sweet-mannered stallion who says “daisies” without irony and doesn’t believe love will be. never in cards him until he shows up at his doorstep in the form of Andie MacDowell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) or Julia Roberts (“Notting Hill”).
This time of year, Grant will be appearing in the inevitable holiday broadcasts of “Love Actually” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” the former of which continues her love interest casting series, the latter featuring her transition to the jerkdom. It’s a safe bet that we will also have the opportunity to marvel at his tap villain Phoenix Buchanan in “Paddington 2”.
All of these and other parts conspire to make Jonathan particularly hateful and magnetic at the same time, for in him Grant creates a man who is so good at playing the victim and the injured party that you almost want to believe someone else. did, until it was frankly clear that he was guilty.
Grant’s work taught us to expect Jonathan to be a man who steals your heart as mercilessly as he would stab you through. It also makes his deviation and misdirection through most episodes of the series all the more sinister, as it helps cast suspicion on the people he caused the most pain – his victim’s husband, his own wife, even his child. .
“The Undoing” was a staple for many the past few weeks, but that didn’t mean it was great TV. If anything, it was a premium distraction valued more for its craziness and alluring fashion than for the quality of its storytelling, a very pretty and ultimately weightless tale about one percent issues.
The twist of the finale was. . . there was no twist. Jonathan was the prime suspect in the jump, and Jonathan actually committed the crime – shown in the last few minutes in all his horrific, cut-crunch skull between scenes of a father persuading his son to sing along with him during their doomed road trip.
The finale ends with the father and son being chased by the law and stopped on a bridge where Jonathan gets out of the car and rushes to the side, threatening to jump. The boy begs his father not to run away from the inevitable, to recognize that his cause is lost despite his insistence on innocence, which he should win. “The Undoing” ends there, so we don’t see the defense at rest, with the jury coming back with their verdict or any judgment.
That leaves the door open for a second season, but hopefully the story ends here, leaving us at that point of ambiguity.
Justice can have Jonathan dead in his rights, but if the modern world tells us anything about demons like him, it’s that they can get out of anything.
All episodes of “The Undoing” are available on HBO Max.
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