‘Candy’ Episode 5 Recap: The Verdict

“It all just seems so pointless,” says Candy Montgomery in the middle of her murder trial.

“That’s it?” says the ghost of Betty Gore as the trial wraps up.

It takes serious courage to end your true-crime drama with both of its lead characters—one living and one dead, one the killer and one the killed—wondering aloud just what the hell it was all about. I mean, what a slam dunk those quotes are for anyone who wants to write a bad review, right? Candy, by this standard, has courage.

And from where I’m sitting, Candy earned that courage. I mean, with its pedigree, there’s an extent to which I’m like “How could it not be good? The woman responsible for like all the best Mad Men episodes co-created a small-town murder show with the guy who did Channel Zero and you can watch the whole thing in about four hours—that’s practically the definition of good TV.” Its final episode sees the show at both its funniest and its darkest, its most cynical and its most sentimental. And when that final verdict rolls in, it’s as flabbergasting to us as it must have been to the assembled Texas crowd.

The events of the episode are easy to summarize. After an opening segment in which Justin Timberlake’s cop character walks the prosecutors through the official version of how the crime went down, we speed-run through a trial that would take up multiple episodes on a longer show. Via her showboating attorney Don Crowder (Raúl Esparza is a magnificent bastard in the role), Candy drops a bomb on everyone by admitting to the killing. She claims it was a matter of self-defense against a jealous wife, and that repressed memories of her unkind mother caused her to snap and deliver the infamous 41 axe blows against her friend. Somewhere along the way Candy also admits to having another affair after the one with Betty’s husband Allan ended, though she refuses to say with whom. (Her friend and business partner Sherri disappears from the courtroom when the verdict is read, strongly implying she suspects her own husband.)

In the end, the jury finds Candy not guilty. She and Allan and her husband Pat all go on with their lives: Allan remarries, to one of the local women on the periphery of the story; Candy and Pat get divorced, and Candy begins a new life under a new name as a mental health counselor. Oh, and her lawyer, who’s immediately incarcerated for contempt of court once the case is over, runs for governor of Texas. (It’s hard to imagine him doing a worse job than the current asshole.)

But all this talk of the facts ignores the centerpiece of the episode: Candy’s brutal and bloody killing of Betty. The show utilizes a technique that dates back at least to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: State the facts, spend a bunch of time fleshing out the characters to the point where the anticipation of the act of killing becomes almost unbearable, and then let ‘em have it, rubbing everyone’s face in the horror until no one can stand it.

And you’d better believe that all 41 blows with that axe are depicted. It’s a tour de force of physical acting by Jessica Biel and a master class in gore; the few seconds when you see what’s left of Betty’s face after her eyeballs have been chopped out will stick with me for a long, long time.

But—and this is a telling move on the show’s part—just because Candy is the sole survivor of the incident doesn’t mean it’s only her side of the story that gets represented. The filmmakers insert Melanie Lynskey as Betty into that courtroom, offering a few brief comments that it seems only we and perhaps Candy can hear. She tells Candy “That’s your story.” When it comes out that Candy has another affair and she refuses to name the man involved for fear of damaging his family, Betty says “Another family.” When the defense and prosecution rest, she says “That’s it?” And when the verdict is read, she says plaintively, heartbreakingly, “She left my baby.” Then she vanishes, unable to tell her story any longer.

Whose side does the show take, then? Candy’s version of the story is presented plausibly—a distraught Betty cornering her with the axe over the affair, a triggered childhood memory unleashing “overkill” on Candy’s part. But Betty’s dissenting presence cannot be ignored, nor can a climactic shot of Candy eating candy while smirking into the camera. That’s not what innocent people look like, you know?

There’s also the fact that, at least according to the cops, they found a broken sunglass lens in the Gore family garage, indicating that the struggle began there; this contradicts Candy’s otherwise plausible version of the events, though a young cop’s tampering with the crime scene made this evidence inadmissible. Given that Timberlake’s cop character sincerely cries over the plight of Betty’s abandoned baby, a show of emotion that makes his fellow Texan lawmen uncomfortable, I think we’re supposed to give credence to his interpretation of what went down.

But ultimately there’s no solid ground to stand on. We’ll never know for sure what made Candy Montgomery chop Betty Gore to ribbons, and this is as true of the filmmakers behind Candy as it is for us viewers. If that troubles you, well, I get it.

But I don’t think that art exists to present us with answers. Good art asks questions and trusts us to answer them ourselves. That’s Candy, very good art indeed, in a nutshell. To echo Betty, that’s it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.