By all accounts, the affair was long over when Candy entered Betty’s home on June 13, 1980. There are certain known details about the crime at the center of this deadly drama that Love & Death candidly reports to its viewers: Betty Gore and Candy Montgomery were two housewives raising young children in suburban Texas when Candy initiated an affair with Betty’s husband, Allan (Jesse Plemons).
It’s a move seemingly made to elevate a true-crime story out of the grime of the true-crime genre. That’s where my opinion as a true-crime fan sours there’s just something a bit yuck-o about adding “murder” to the list of deliciously sordid repercussions of mid-century malaise. But while a deep dive into the consequences of emotional repression and the myth of the nuclear family is certainly worthy fodder for TV, Love & Death takes things a step further. Whether it’s the beloved pastor announcing the shameful end of her marriage, Betty catching side-eyes for openly criticizing the pastor’s replacement, or Candy arranging her alibi for Betty’s death around a laundry list of church events, each character in Love & Death feels the oppressive eyes of their community on them as they attempt to hide the cracks in their own performance of suburban bliss. So why does Love & Death, Max’s seven-episode limited series about the events and characters surrounding the case, feel like such a true-crime bust?Īs the show serves us slices of sugary-sweet, heavily coded small-town drama (occasionally spiced up with a foreshadowed glimpse of the violence to come), we learn that appearance is everything in this community. In terms of true-crime fare, the tale of Betty Gore’s death at the hands of Candace Montgomery has it all: infidelity, housewives behaving badly, feathered bangs, and, most importantly, bloody, bloody murder.
After all, by the end of the struggle, 30-year-old mother and schoolteacher Betty will be dead from 41 brutal ax wounds, and Candy will be the only one left alive to tell the story.Īnd oh, what a story it is. The declaration is blunt, leaving no room for interpretation. “I’m gonna kill you,” Betty Gore (Lily Rabe) sputters as she fights her former friend Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen) for control of the ax that will soon end her own life.
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