‘Fatal Attraction’ Episode 7 Recap: Sins of the Father

Two words come to mind when describing Episode 7 of Fatal Attraction: emotional abattoir. That’s the environment Alex Forrest grew up in, as we learn in the series of flashbacks that give this episode its spine. And the moment I realized that’s where this was headed, that the kid we were watching play mini-golf in the opening scene while her father ignored her to flirt with another woman was Alex, I could feel my whole body tense. I knew we were about to examine the family dynamic that made her into what she eventually became, I knew it would be horrific, and I was right.

I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that young Alex (Ivy George, doing pivotal work for the character) was never physically or sexually abused by either parent, at least; at one point, when her father Stanley (a magnificently malign Cliff Chamberlain) crept into the bathroom to serenade her with Harry Nilsson’s “Best Friend” while she brushed her teeth, I thought that’s where we were headed. But what we get instead is better only in the sense that it’s less repulsive to watch. After all, we’ve seen the damage these people did to their child. We already know how bad it gets.

To Stanley, affection for Alex is strictly transactional, and withheld upon the slightest sign of independent thought or conflict with his own desires. He uses her as an accomplice against her mother in his affairs; her mother (Lena Georgas, terrifying), embittered to the point of not really giving a fuck about her kid anymore, tells Alex this isn’t love, this is evidence that he loves her no more than he loves his wife. She threatens suicide, and apparently follows through, leaving her father’s disembodied bellowing about her mother (whom he constantly badmouthed to Alex, again making her his accomplice) abandoned her own daughter. 

It just goes on and on. They both belittle her accomplishments; after Mom is gone, Dad takes this burden on himself, constantly ridiculing her educational, career, and romantic choices. But many of those choices are made for her, by others, though she constantly covers this up. A study group ejects her for her erratic behavior; she makes sure to thoroughly destroy the group dynamic by divulging various damaging secrets on her way out, then presents this to her father as her quitting rather than getting the boot. Later she tells him Dan turned down the judgeship for which he was rejected in order to make him look better; since she lies about him not being married, her dad simply thinks he’s some kind of careerist weirdo. Needless to say, his own perpetual failure to find a job due to his delusions of grandeur hang in the air like a miasma. 

Her relationships with others grow more and more toxic. She’s too needy with her therapist, too crazy with her would-be friends; just about the only place she thrives is work, because she genuinely cares about and feels useful to people who’ve been victimized more dramatically than she has. She apes all her parents’ bad behaviors: the alternating clinginess and cruelty, the charm and the coldness, the lies and accusations and self-pity. She starts self-injuring. She starts dissociating. (These moments are particularly disturbing: Lizzy Caplan just stands or sits there and the lighting shifts, indicating hours have passed with her staying stock still.)

In short, this is Fatal Attraction really taking the time to build up Alex as a person rather than a plot device, a human rather than a harridan. Dan didn’t fall into the clutches of a siren lying in wait, he simply stumbled into an already shattered life and got sliced by its shards.

The episode’s other throughline are Dan’s two stints in court, first as a defendant in Alex’s murder, then as an ex-con trying to clear his name. In neither case do things go well. Since he decides he needs to lie and say he never had an affair with Alex in order to remain a sympathetic figure during his murder trial, his testimony is full of holes. (For whatever reason I really was taken aback when he straight-up denies telling his workplace nemesis Detective Earl Brooker he’d never been to Alex’s apartment. Dan, we all heard you!) Alex’s hideous father even gets one over on him and his high-powered attorney, producing one of those surreptitious selfies Alex took of her and Dan and the dog on the beach that one time, right there on the stand. It’s a slaughter that not even the testimony of little Ellen, who very clearly was kidnapped by Alex and has a mountain of anecdotes and evidence to prove it, does any good.

And since his application for a new trial doubles as an admission that he lied both during the trial (where he denied the affair he’d actually had) and at his parole hearing (where he confessed to a murder he didn’t actually commit), the presiding judge assumes he’s lying now, too. So much for that.

Two major revelations come from the flashback material. First, the cops really did find a body; though we never see it and thus can’t know for sure, nobody so much as hints that there’s any doubt the body is Alex’s, even if it was fished from the water. Second, after Dan confessed the affair following the murder of his mother-in-law, his wife Beth secretly arranged a meeting with Alex, the nature of which we are not yet privy to. Put the two together and you start to wonder if there’s maybe another suspect on our hands. (Certainly the fact that she’s never told Dan about the meeting even after all this time and even during the trial is suggestive.)

Finally, there’s something going on with young adult Ellen. She’s continuing to stalk her Jung professor due to his secret affair with her friend, if that’s the word for it, Stella. When it turns out that Stella has gone missing, Ellen smiles. Could Ellen really have been so pissed over the professor thing and Stella’s digs at her dad that she…nahhh, couldn’t be. Could it?

I’m at the point now where I’m baffled that Fatal Attraction has gotten bad reviews. The writing is so rich, the performances so vivid and lively from a whole suite of actors, from the leads all the way down to characters as peripheral as Chamberlain’s monstrous Stanley and Reno Wilson’s hilariously assholish Earl. Hell, Toby Huss is worth the price of admission alone; the look in his eyes when Dan puts him in the line of fire on the stand — full of intermingled resentment of this betrayal, understanding that his friend is fighting for his life, and realization that his own career is likely over due to his involvement in the case — is nothing sort of miraculous. 

From this episode (written by Kevin J. Hynes, who like all writers deserves fair treatment and fair pay from the studios that wouldn’t exist without them) on down, Fatal Attraction has surprised me by becoming one of my favorite shows of the year. No, it’s not Adrian Lyne’s slick thriller, but I like what it’s doing even better.

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.