Kellams: Into September we go. Helping guide us with recommendations and a question is our Culture Vulture, April Wallace, an instructor at the University of Arkansas. Welcome.
Wallace: Hello.
Kellams: Let's start with your question. What is your question?
Wallace: I'm just curious what you think of this kind of new-again trend of releasing an episode or two per week. For me, it kind of calls back the old style of TV, where we had to wait the week for our new episode. Do you think that makes sense in streaming?
Kellams: So you're saying as opposed to dropping all 10 or 13 episodes, bingeable? It makes sense to me because that's how I've been treating streaming television all along. I don't think I've ever binged a series.
Wallace: Really?
Kellams: I wish people could see your reaction. Yeah. I think it's rare that I watch two episodes back to back. I will say, if it's the penultimate episode of a series we're really enjoying, then we'll watch the next one right away. And it's because I'm old, I guess. I want to have time in between. I love that “Severance,” one of the more intricately structured shows that's out there — it's on Apple TV — I love that it's only once a week. I would rather have time to think about it, time to be at the proverbial, metaphorical water cooler and talk about it. I don't want to binge shows.
Wallace: OK. You have enormous self-control, and I admire that. I am kind of the opposite. When we finish an episode, I am like, “You cannot hit the next button fast enough for me to see the next episode.” But I do appreciate the shows that have been doing that for me, so that I do have a little more time to process, because some of them pack a lot into one episode.
Kellams: Yeah. And if it's a show I'm really enjoying, I would rather space it out over time rather than make it an ultralong movie. All right. Recommendations.
Wallace: This week, I would recommend the new “Cape Fear” series.
Kellams: OK.
Wallace: Only a few months ago, my husband and I went and watched the 1991 “Cape Fear” movie.
Kellams: With Robert De Niro.
Wallace: Mmhmm. He's the criminal Max Cady, and Nick Nolte was the attorney Sam Bowden. Sam withholds evidence that would set Max Cady free. But once he's released 14 years later, Sam realizes he has to go outside the law to protect his wife and daughter from this rapist. You can safely say that the general sense of both the movie and the series is unease. This is not a comfortable storyline.
Kellams: And same with the original movie, with Robert Mitchum as Max Cady.
Wallace: You can speak to that. I haven't seen the '60s movie, and I want to, but I feel like we just kind of got over the emotional stuff of the '91 movie. It's traumatic. There's this enormous fight scene at the houseboat toward the end.
Kellams: There's just this sort of paranoia that takes over, this sort of claustrophobia. And Robert De Niro — I'm thinking about when he's got a bat or a pipe, and he's at the dumpster, and he's saying, “Come out. Come out, wherever you are.”
Wallace: Yes.
Kellams: That's frightening.
Wallace: All of it is.
Kellams: So now you want to go and watch a multipart series about this? Tell me why.
Wallace: What is wrong with me? Well, first of all, it stars Amy Adams as the attorney Anna Bowden. And I fully appreciate that they went to a different gender for this character, but it is pretty much the same character as Sam. And opposite her is Javier Bardem as Max Cady. And, of course, you put those two in, and it's going to make for an incredible performance.
But we'll go through some of the similarities and some of the differences. One similarity I really loved was that Juliette Lewis, who was the daughter in the '90s film, is also in this series.
She has a role, and it's a pretty significant one, as Max's sister. As the teenage daughter, she was in the especially vulnerable position of being preyed upon by Max Cady. He makes her believe that he's romantically interested in her, and she becomes a victim. She's not the only one. Sam Bowden's mistress is among that riffraff, and we see Juliette fight to keep her mother from becoming a victim as well of his violence.
But in the new series, as the sister, she's working through the trauma of having grown up with Max Cady and what effect he could have had on her through their childhoods. She has an interesting relationship with his family, his core family, and a son whose true identity is mulled over for most of the series. So every time she crops up, I love that she goes from victim in the old movie to a villain in the series. So she gets a complete turnabout while having kind of a callback to what we know from the previous movie.
Anna Bowden has knowingly put Max Cady away with questionable evidence, similar to before. But this time, he's not a rapist. He's a murderer. He's accused of murdering his wife, who was pregnant at the time, so therefore also his child. He believes that he's innocent.
Part of the romantic tingle here is that Anna does have an affair. She has infidelity, like the earlier movie, but she's not married yet. At the time of the trial, she was engaged, but then there's a possible tryst with Max as well. So she has put this man away, and shortly after the trial, she and the prosecutor are romantically entangled, and she marries him. And by the time Max gets out, he is aware of this series of events and how these two people could have conspired to change the course of his life. So they are more vulnerable as a married unit because they had more motive to make this guy go away for as long as possible.
Kellams: I first saw that Apple was going to do this series. I thought, “Do we need this?” And I don't know if you could answer whether we need it, but it sounds like it's different enough that it's worth watching.
Wallace: Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Kellams: All right. Do you have a book recommendation? Usually, the book you're going to recommend, you bring with you. But there is no book with you this time.
Wallace: It's actually right here. It is “Table for Two” by Amor Towles.
Kellams: Yes.
Wallace: And I know you know this because — well, I learned of this book because you were onstage with the guy, and it was fairly new at the time. And so he had mentioned — this is why I started reading it — he had mentioned it as a collection of stories, the likes of which you might overhear, like a snippet of conversation from another table. And you're only there for the dinner, but you just wish you could learn more about the story. But you're only in their lives for a short period of time. So these are fictional essays. And I'm about a third of the way through, but it has the wonderful writing of Amor Towles.
Kellams: He's so good.
Wallace: He's so good that I wish these short stories would turn into longer novels.
Kellams: Well, and if you've read “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway,” those were books of significant length. They were great reads. You never got bored. But “A Gentleman in Moscow” took place over decades. “The Lincoln Highway” took place over, what, 10 days? But still, it's “The Odyssey” in a way. And so it was interesting to then go to Amor Towles condensed to short stories.
Wallace: Absolutely.
Kellams: But it pays off.
Wallace: It does. “The Lincoln Highway” was probably one of my favorite things that I've read in the last few years, and that's what I came to the talk kind of holding in my mind. If a book is good, it can't be too long. And that's how I think of “The Lincoln Highway.” It's such a journey in many ways.
If you haven't read it, Emmett Watson is an 18-year-old who just got out of a juvenile work farm. And upon arriving to his family home, his dad has recently passed away. His mom disappeared a long time ago. He's there to collect his kid brother and go to California and start a new life. But in the trunk are a couple of the guys from the work farm who have escaped, and they are going to convince him to go on a different journey.
Kellams: And there are unexpected events. There are bad decisions made. He writes to where every character you have empathy for, if not sympathy. You might have sympathy for each one as well. And bringing this conversation full circle, I read this in two days, a Saturday and a Sunday. So I binge-read this book. It's that good. And I'm with you. I didn't want it to end, and I thought the ending was well-earned.
Wallace: Yes.
Kellams: If it's got Amor Towles' name on the spine...
Wallace: Buy it immediately and read it.
Kellams: April Wallace, our Culture Vulture. Thank you.
Wallace: Thank you.
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