For the uninitiated: There is this house in Westfield, New Jersey, that was one family’s dream house but turned into a full-on nightmare because, like 30 seconds after they moved in, they started getting these creepy-as-hell letters from a mystery stalker who identified only as “The Watcher.†This deeply unsettling suburban horror story was reported on in depth on this very website, and that story caught the attention of one Ryan Murphy, who has turned it into this Netflix series. At the behest of that family, the family in the series goes by a different name and resembles their real selves as little as possible. So it is with that artistic mandate that Murphy is giving us a spoooooooky story for the season, which I, as a Union County native and experienced recapper of campy-creepy stalker shows, feel duly qualified to cover for you.
As somebody who grew up around here, it is very funny to watch the Jersey suburbs be depicted as some sort of dreamy fantasyland. Dean (Bobby Cannavale, who will tell us later that he has a “special pasta night†— yes, give the people what they want!) calls these small-town streets “paradise†as ominous music rises, just in case you were wondering, Is it paradise really? Or will this “paradise†be … “lost� If you wanted something subtle, you should not have signed up for the Ryan Murphy Experience™; just hop back on Route 78 and hightail it out of here.
Look, for storytelling purposes, I get why the Broadduses Brannocks need to pull up to this house and basically orgasm on the lawn with glee, but, like … has anyone ever left New York for Jersey without some requisite eye rolls and “We swore we’d never do this†and “Just remember how good the schools are†or whatever? The idea that they’re just ecstatic to ditch Tribeca for that John Cheever scene is honestly less plausible to me than anything else that happens in this premiere.
Everybody is dressed in head-to-toe white and beige as if they could create the Nancy Meyers life they yearn for through fashion alone. Nora (Naomi Watts) has the audacity to note that the house is “a little sterile.†Nora, you literally dressed your entire family in different shades of oatmeal, pots and kettles. We also have children: Carter, a boy who was gifted a ferret named Sprinkles to ease the transition to the new home, and Ellie, a 15-year-old whose entire personality is “likes to be on her phone†and “wants to wear makeup.â€
At the open house, the Brannocks meet Pearl (Mia Farrow!), the president of the local preservation society, and Jasper (Terry Kinney), who wears overalls and talks about how many bones baby skeletons have and seems generally unwell. Their whole look is very American Gothic. They love the dumbwaiter. Did you know the house has a dumbwaiter? Maybe Carter should Google “what is a dumbwaiter.†Gosh, how thrilling that there’s a dumbwaiter in this house! Et cetera. If you drink every time someone says “dumbwaiter,†you will be absolutely blitzed by the end of this episode.
Now for the real star of the show: Karen. Karen is Jennifer Coolidge, and when I saw her onscreen I said out loud, “Oh hell, yes.†Karen and Nora went to RISD together back when Nora was “crunchy†(read: less beige). Nora makes ceramics and has a gallery in Tribeca. Karen is divorced and just wants to marry rich. Anyway, she’s showing the house, so now the Brannocks have an in.
Another selling point for this house is that the next-door neighbors are Richard Kind and Margo Martindale. (This prompted another “Hell, yes†from your recapper, who will not rest until everyone has watched The Americans. Have you watched The Americans yet? Stop what you are doing and go do that and then come back … We will be here.) They are Mitch and Mo. They like to wear matching windbreakers and sit on lawn chairs and stare with contempt across the hedge. I love them already.
Naturally, we need the Brannocks to not only get the house but to sacrifice everything for the house so that they will never want to leave the house. Dean asks his finance guy (banker? Investment person? IDK how money works) to help him out because “This is America — everybody buys a house they can’t afford!†Okay, I take back what I just said: I do know enough about how money works to know that’s … not a great idea. Dean is under the delusion that people don’t lock their doors in Westfield. People absolutely lock their doors in Westfield! Dean wants his kids to “have a yard to play in.†Dean, your daughter is in high school; she is not going to “play in the yard.†But sure! Dean decides to just take out all their savings and burn through their 401(k)’s or whatever you have to do when you are spending too much money on a house and boom: The house is theirs.
Six weeks later, Dean takes a cab home from the train station to their dream house. (He takes a cab every day? No wonder they can’t afford the house.) He literally says, “Honey, I’m home,†because see above re subtlety. Ah, they are so at peace in their beige palace. This is when we meet Sprinkles, and I write in my notes, “He will be the first to die.†Nora gushes over the air quality, and again I say there is no way an artist would be this over the moon about leaving Manhattan to move to New Jersey! And I’m allowed to say that! Even Bruce probably begrudgingly sighed, “I guess we gotta go back to Freehold.†Money is tight, obviously, but Dean and Nora want to buy so much dumb bougie stuff. Dean can’t bear the 2009 marble countertops? LMAO. He calls his wife “Mrs. Brannock� She’s not even a “Ms.� In this climate? I wonder if the goal of this episode is to make us hate this couple so we won’t mind when they are tormented to pieces by their psycho stalker.
Ellie the teen finds an old-timey lipstick in the bathroom, and without even cleaning it off as you would with a Sephora tester, she just … puts it directly on her mouth. Gross. Dad is furious about this because he’s having a Don’t Worry Darling fantasy in which he moves his family to the suburbs so he can live in the past where teenage girls are not allowed to wear makeup for it will make them harlots and she must stay a child forever. Nobody cares that Ellie can hear music playing upstairs through the haunted intercom.
Dean wakes up at dawn to see the newspaper delivered by bicycle (no). When he gets downstairs, Jasper is just hanging out in their foyer with the paper, which is actually hilarious for us as viewers, but, yeah, I can see why that would freak you out in real life. Meanwhile, the first letter from the Watcher has arrived, and Ellie reads it over breakfast: “You need to fill the house with young blood.†Ooh, boy. Time to go to the incompetent police!
I can’t imagine the Westfield PD is going to be thrilled with this depiction of patronizing Detective Rourke Chamberland (Christopher McDonald) assuring the Brannocks that this is “maybe the safest town in America†(does anyone actually think that?) where the only crime worth noting is “a couple of disappearances.†He says it’s a prank. Buddy, it is not even Mischief Night! Chamberland also says Jasper that is the town weirdo — strong Boo Radley energy — and that they’ll keep an eye on him and send a squad car by the house and such. He also knows they had to “dig deep†to afford the house, which unsettles Nora but actually tracks for me; that sounds like the sort of thing everyone in town would definitely gossip about.
Mitch and Mo have their first big altercation with Dean over their desire to harvest arugula from his side of the fence. This brings us one of the best line readings of the episode (“Basic fucking horticulture, friend!â€), and Mo tells Dean he has made a grave mistake by not being nicer to her. Because everyone in this episode will need to say something menacing with the word see or watch in it, she tells him people here “watch out for each other,†and Mitch adds, “We’ll keep an eye on you.†If I were Dean, I’d tread carefully here, but that’s because I’ve seen Justified and I know what Margo is capable of. It was already in the glass — IYKYK.
Meanwhile, Nora is trying to fit in by playing tennis at the country club. She’s with Karen, and here we get the No. 1 line of the premiere —“Eat a dick, Stephanie†— as well as some background that’s honestly not that surprising: Are we shocked to learn the Brannocks just got out of a decade-long string of bad investments? By the end of this episode, Nora, who is allegedly trying to save money, will join the country club. Karen tells us about how her ex sucked, and I’m not sure how relevant that is to the plot, but I would watch Jennifer Coolidge do pretty much anything, so I’m not mad about it. (Also, while this episode probably could’ve been a tight 30 minutes, I am choosing to be grateful it wasn’t the standard Netflix-inflated hour.) Nora tells Karen about the Watcher letters and asks if she can find out who else put in a bid on the house since she thinks they could be the Watcher.
Back home, Carter wants to put Sprinkles in the dumbwaiter, and I write down, “Time for the ferret to die!!†But when he opens the door, Jasper is in there. Naturally, Dean throws him out, and the best part of all of this is Pearl just being like, “Was he in the dumbwaiter? The last owners let him do that,†as if it’s a very normal thing to let your neighbor do. (“The word dumbwaiter doesn’t mean what it used to.â€) Dean escalates things by threatening to modernize this precious house and have the dumbwaiter ripped out of the wall; Pearl calls him a yuppie and says, “You better watch yourself†because she is contractually obligated to say something with “watch†in it.
Dakota, a precocious teen with an alarm company, comes by to charge the Brannocks $7,000 to install a basic security system and ogle their underage daughter. (Do the kids still refer to themselves as “jailbait� Feels a little early aughts for me, which I think is when this girl was born.)
Finally, it is time for Sprinkles to die. He is murdered somehow, and poor Carter will absolutely be traumatized by this, the thing that was supposed to ease his transition to suburbia. Chamberland is still in denial that anything is awry. I absolutely lost it at Dean’s “How fast do you think a suicidal ferret would have to run into a wall to get enough momentum to crush his own fuckin’ skull?†Personally, I would be on the first train back to the city if someone broke into my house and murdered my pet. But no, the Brannocks will stay here, surrounded by the neighbors to whom they have swiftly endeared themselves, even as another letter from the Watcher arrives by mail, asking if the young blood will be playing in the basement. “If you were upstairs, you would never hear them scream.â€