Gettin' My Eps In: Disclaimer E4

Flashbacks provide us with death and sadness, with the promise of much more drama to come.

I went on so long about Disclaimer this week that I decided to skip the discussion of Teacup. Since that show is quickly falling in my estimation, I’ll probably try to do a multi-episode wrap-up later on.

Disclaimer
Episode 4: “IV”
Written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Streaming on Apple TV+

Last week, I noted that I don’t really agree with criticisms of this series that have called it a long movie, since I felt that it was working as a set of discrete episodic installments. This episode may slightly temper that assessment, since it seems directly tied to the previous chapter, serving as a continuation of the story threads that were developed there. However, it also works really well as a distinct chapter, with the break between the two episodes serving as something of a turning point. Regardless of whether you want to quibble about whether this is one continuous narrative or several distinct chapters that stand on their own, the show as a whole continues to be a compelling drama that continually peels back layers of the story and lets us watch in fascination as the characters proceed through the various narratives.

As with the third chapter, much of this episode is dedicated to the “flashbacks” that supposedly show what happened between Jonathan (Louis Partridge) and Catherine (played by Leila George at this point in her life). They continue to engage in a variety of sexcapades throughout the night after they initially hooked up last episode, and while they plan to meet up the next day, Catherine urges Jonathan to be discreet, because she doesn’t want her young son Nick to go mentioning the new friend she made while they were on vacation. While they’re both hanging out on the beach near each other, they engage in some silent flirtation as Jonathan takes some pictures of her, and then they slip away to a bathroom for another tryst. And that’s when things start to turn sour.

As I’ve mentioned previously, these scenes certainly seem to be a depiction of the events as portrayed in the book that Jonathan’s father Stephen (Kevin Kline) has published as part of an attempt to expose Catherine (Cate Blanchette in the present day). In this version of the narrative, Catherine is the sexual aggressor, and she takes the dominant role, which we can tell by the way it seems like most of their activity involves Jonathan performing oral sex on her. That seems like a detail an older, more prudish person would include in the story to make it seem like there’s something deviant about Catherine, a sense that she wants to control others and cares only about her own desires.

And sure enough, we see that her wiles have swayed Jonathan into falling in love with her. When he informs her that he’s changed his ticket and plans to fly back to London with her, she’s pretty unhappy. He seems to think she’s going to leave her husband for him, and even though she makes it pretty clear that’s not going to happen, it looks like he’s planning to continue following her and refusing to accept that she doesn’t feel the same way about him.

So, when the moment that we know is coming takes place, it seems like the perfect opportunity for Catherine to get rid of him. The story has already shown that she’s not too attentive to her son, asking somebody nearby to keep an eye on him while she goes to have sex in the bathroom and being only slightly perturbed when that person is no longer there after she gets back. Then she immediately decides to take a nap, continuing to leave Nick unsupervised. Inevitably, the inflatable raft he was playing in is missing when she wakes up. She realizes that he’s gone in the ocean and is floating away, and when she yells for help, Jonathan swims out to save him. While some lifeguards come and help to retrieve the raft, they don’t realize that Jonathan is still out there, and by the time the people on the beach notice that he’s struggling, it’s too late, and the lifeguards can’t get to him before he drowns.

Comparing the Jonathan/Catherine scenes from the previous episode and this episode, they do seem to be two halves of a whole. The first is rising action, with a lengthy seduction scene building to a (ahem) climax. This second half is a fall that also builds slowly, with some more scenes of teasing and sex before things take a turn, culminating in a long sequence of Jonathan struggling and eventually succumbing to the waves. And just as last episode’s sex scene focused on Catherine’s face, we get a protracted moment here as she is holding her son after he has been rescued, knowing that Jonathan is still out in the ocean, and doing nothing to save him. The camera lingers on her face, making sure we see her cold expression that shows that she has decided it’s better to let him die so he won’t cause any problems in her life.

So yes, this clearly seems to be a depiction of Catherine as imagined by Jonathan’s mother (who we know was the actual writer of the book). She’s aggressive and controlling, uncaring and inattentive toward her son, and if not murderous, at least calculatingly sociopathic as she callously tosses away the life of someone who has only given her affection and sexual pleasure. There’s even a moment of ham-fisted foreshadowing earlier in the episode in which Catherine jokingly tells Jonathan that if he doesn’t pretend that they don’t know each other, she’ll have to kill him. It’s the kind of thing that an editor would have probably made an author take out because it’s too obvious, but as we know, the book is self-published.

It should be interesting to see to what depths the story will drag Catherine’s character, since we keep getting hints that everyone who has read the book finds her to be a villain that people love to hate. We get a moment where present-day Catherine stops in at her local bookshop, where we had previously seen Stephen take care to make sure his book was displayed prominently. When the lady at the store encourages Catherine to read it and says that it has an “awful, awful female character,” this upsets Catherine so much that she leaves without saying a word. At this point, the burning question is how the comeuppance that the fictional Catherine receives will compare to what will happen to her in her real life.

The other major part of this episode is the portion of the story following Stephen and his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) as they deal with the aftermath of their son’s death. This is another direct continuation of what we saw last episode, but unlike the rising/falling action of the Jonathan/Catherine plot, this one is more like a decline and then a total plummet into despair. Nancy seems almost catatonic in her grief, and in one especially heartwrenching scene, Stephen finds her underwater in the bathtub, apparently trying to understand what Jonathan felt in the moments before he died. She screams at Stephen for pulling her out of the water and wails about how even though the medical examiner told her that Jonathan felt no pain before he died, she can never be sure. It’s a tour de force of anguish by Manville, as is another sad scene in which she finds some photos that Jonathan took and seems so happy to remember him before falling back into total despair.

These flashback scenes see Stephen slowly realizing that his wife is too far gone to ever come back, and he sort of resigns himself to a life of constant sadness, with Jonathan’s spectre a constant presence in their lives that prevents them from ever experiencing anything approaching happiness again. In another reflection of something that happened in the last episode, which showed Stephen and Nancy enjoying themselves while grilling some dinner in their well-manicured backyard during the moments before they were informed of Jonathan’s death, we see here that the backyard has become overgrown and fallen into disrepair, another part of their home that is just as dark and depressing as the rest of their lives.

Interestingly, there may be a bit of unreliability about these flashback scenes as well. They’re narrated by Stephen, with him talking about how he felt helpless to do anything as Nancy continued to retreat into grief and depression. When she contracts cancer, he makes it seem like her death is another inevitability, and he notes that since she and Jonathan have been buried side by side in the family’s burial plot, he’s destined to serve out the rest of his existence alone. He certainly seems to be laying it on a bit thick. As he seeks his revenge, he wants to portray the damage that he and his family have suffered as all-encompassing, justifying everything he has decided to do to punish the irredeemable villain who was responsible for all of this sadness.

That’s a lot of talk about the flashback/fictional portions of the episode without discussing much of what happens in the present day. But those really are the focus of these two episodes, with the other plots slowly developing into what will probably be higher levels of drama to come soon. We’re still seeing Catherine’s husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) struggling to come to terms with what he has learned. There’s another bit of unreliability or self-deception in which he claims that he was sure that during his marriage he had satisfied Catherine so well sexually that she had forgotten about any other men she had been with in the past, but now he’s learning that this isn’t true. Except last episode, he had noted that he always worried that he was less experienced than her and was never sure whether he fully satisfied her. As he continues to wrestle with anger and betrayal, he seems to be redefining his perceptions of their relationship on the fly, leading him to take more drastic actions that could lead to the end of their marriage.

Or maybe we’re not even getting his true thoughts. The narration detailing both Robert’s and Catherine’s inner monologues is delivered by a narrator (I originally thought it was Cate Blanchette, but it turns out it’s another actress, Indira Varma), referring to Catherine in the second person (“Your misguided belief that you had a right to silence has condemned you.“) and Robert in the third person (“And then, a question pierces Robert’s mind: where was Nicholas while his mother was having an affair?”). Unlike Stephen’s inner monologue, which is delivered by Kevin Kline in the first person, this narration may be someone else entirely providing their interpretation of what the characters are going through. That adds another interesting level of distance to the proceedings.

Whatever may be happening inside the characters’ heads, we do see their real-world actions. Robert throws Catherine out of their home in a way that makes it hard for her to do anything without causing a massive scene. He brings their son Nick home to preclude any arguments in front of him, then makes it sound as if she knows that she needs to leave right away to catch a flight so she can go film her next documentary. He’s already packed her suitcase, and he calls a taxi to come get her just a few minutes after she gets home, giving her no time to argue. She can barely get a few weak apologies and half-hearted defenses out before he brusquely ushers her out the door, leaving her uncertain about where to go or what to do. That’s where we’re left along with her, barely able to grasp what could possibly happen next. Maybe she’ll come up with a way to fight back, or maybe the next stage of Stephen’s plan will be even more devastating. Whatever happens, seeing it play out will definitely be fascinating.