Betrayal - Series Premiere - Recap: It Takes Two to Tango
Recap and review of Betrayal - Series Premiere - Pilot:
Betrayal is a show I found intriguing despite itself. Hardly any of it is good other than James Cromwell and the overall visual aesthetic of the series itself, with its muted tones and lavish, palatial estates. It's a show about passions, privilege, and excess, and also murder, for reasons that continue to escape me.
A perfectly fine show could have been made about the gradual implosion of two marriages as the result of an affair, and hey, Showtime is already getting on that with The Affair, co-starring Dominic West, Maura Tierney and Helen Thomas. But there's no reason a similar show couldn't thrive on network television, yet there's this seeming need in primetime soaps these days to orient everything around a central mystery, regardless of whether or not it actually fits the story. Here, we have a flashforward to a time in which the protagonist has been shot and is being comforted by someone who may or may not be her husband. It's an attempt at a Revenge-style in media res opening, but it doesn't work at this early stage in the game. Right now, this is just a jumble of half-formed ideas and underwhelming performances. It's not the worst pilot I've ever seen, but I'm not sure I've seen a pilot that has tried this hard for so little return.
Credit: ABC
The story centers on Sara Hayward (Hannah Ware), a photographer who meets a handsome stranger while at an event with her husband. Over the course of several days and frequent, repeat encounters, Sara grows attracted to the man, Jack McAllister (Stuart Townsend). When Sara misses her train out of town on business in order to retrieve her scarf from Jack, the two end up spending the night together at a hotel, nearly consummating their affair before Sara receives a call from her husband. Oh yeah, I probably should have mentioned that both Jack and Sara are married. Yet the show wants us to view this affair as taboo, despite the fact that neither Jack nor Sara seem to view it as such until that phone call. Not even a cursory "But I'm married" or "We probably shouldn't" before diving into each other's arms. It's a peculiar choice to push the doubt back to the latter half of the episode, and it's not really a choice that works within the context of the story they're telling, even if it's more representative of the doubt people might experience during an affair: free of inhibitions to start, but doubtful once jolted back to reality with some reminder of their marriage or family.
Credit: ABC
Naturally, after the call, the two take a break from seeing one another, deciding that while they're both unhappy in their marriages, an affair might not actually solve anything. But Jack proves incapable of staying away. He tracks Sara down to her studio, explaining that for the first time in his life, he actually feels the "magnitude" of life. This is the point where both parties affirm that they're married and can't go through the affair, but they're inexorably drawn to one another throughout, until they've basically fallen into one another's arms and engage in some TV MA sex. Yet things spiral out of control once Sara returns home to her lawyer husband, Drew (Chris Johnson), and discovers that Jack is the defense attorney that will be facing off against him in a court of law. This is a revelation that's treated with all the weight of Sara discovering she and Jack are related or something, and it doesn't really carry the massive significance the show seems to think it does, at least not in this stage of the game. Sure, her lover and her husband are on opposite ends of the courtroom, which has to make things exceedingly awkward and unpleasant, but Sara practically slips into a state of catatonia when she finds out who Jack is. With that said, the affair between Sara and Jack is easily the strongest material of the episode, and the pilot would have been better served focusing on that relationship more, and less on the murder investigation that will pit Jack and Drew against one another in court.
Credit: ABC
As we find out, Jack is the lawyer for the wealthy Karsten family, headed by patriarch Thatcher Karsten (James Cromwell). However, he's not only their lawyer, he's part of the family itself, as Jack is married to Thatcher's daughter, Elaine (Wendy Moniz). This already complicated family dynamic is made more problematic by the feud between Thatcher and his brother-in-law, Lou, over a perceived business betrayal. It's a divide that troubles Thatcher's mentally-challenged son, TJ (Henry Thomas), who wants to fix things between his father and the uncle he loves so dearly. Thatcher makes it known that he doesn't want TJ involved in the situation, despite his eagerness to help, but it's advice that is ultimately ignored, as TJ confronts his aunt and uncle near a waterside plaza and tries to mend fences. Lou receives his nephew with kindness and tries to explain the situation to him while TJ's aunt waits inside. Moments later, the aunt comes outside to find police dragging the water below for a body, which they recover -- Lou has been found with two bullets in his back, and TJ has disappeared completely.
Credit: ABC
Of course, no one but TJ's aunt knows that he was there, and so Thatcher sends Jack to grease the wheels and ensure the woman's silence on the matter. Meanwhile, Thatcher is having a hard time keeping things in check, as the police are snooping around and getting closer to the truth. To keep the matter from hitting the papers, Thatcher sends TJ to a club to lay low, but while there, TJ ends up spilling the beans to a woman named Brandy. The day is hardly over by the time TJ has been arrested for murder, with Drew catching the case of a lifetime. A conviction could mean the world for his political ambitions, but he'll have to get past his wife's lover to do it. That said, it's hard to care about those stakes, if only because it's the difference between the posh apartment Drew and the family are already living in, and a lavish mansion like Thatcher has. Either way, it's not like they're going to be destitute. But I suppose these are more likely emotional stakes than anything else, as we're risking the dissolution of two marriages, one of which has produced a child. That's more interesting material for exploration than this murder plot, which is only saved by James Cromwell, who doesn't simply portray a patriarch with a one-track mind for power. He portrays Thatcher as a father, with equal parts warmth and frustration towards his son, whose mother did not live to see the troubled, but well-meaning, man he's become. It's a more nuanced portrayal than the material deserves, in some respects.
Credit: ABC/Jean Whiteside
Betrayal could have been more than the sum of its parts, but much of what's interesting about it, and much of what ABC has been promoting (e.g., the affair itself), doesn't really take center stage. Not in the way the A-plot of a series should. And that's a shame, because I feel like there's a better show that could be made with this premise.