Parents' Guide to Candy

With an enviable cast and immersive (and pretty hideous) period costumes, sets, and most of all, wigs, this true-crime tale is a fizzy kick. Those who lived through the early ‘80s will be in hysterics at all the period-correct details: Betty Gore's Dorothy Hamill haircut, macramé owls, landline phones with curly cords, Kool-Aid made with a big cup of white sugar in a glass pitcher. And it cannot be denied that the backstory behind the murder is truly odd, with its Methodist marriage encounters and the kooky rules Candy and Allan Gore made up before embarking on their affair (Rule 1: No emotional entanglements. Rule 2: Allan brings lunch).

Unfortunately, the emotional impact of Betty Gore's tragic story is blunted by this drama's curious refusal to tell the story from her point of view. In flashback scenes we see Betty as a stern mom and no-fun spouse. We definitely get a sense that her husband's disappointed her and that she's exhausted by the demands of parenting, but we don't get to know her as much more of an obstacle between Allan and Candy's affair, and Lynskey doesn't get to play to her strengths as a character actor audiences love to root for. Biel's Candy, meanwhile, is also opaque. We see her buzzing around her busy life, running errands, glorying in the attention she gets from fellow moms and men alike (the real Candy Montgomery was considered quite the hot fox in her small town). Her terrible crime makes the extent of her resentment towards Betty Gore clear. But how did the anger pile up to the point of murder? What was in Montgomery's heart or mind that led to such a terrible act? Without these insights, Candy is fascinating and yet also disturbing to audiences who may rightly feel they're gawking at a crime scene rather than empathizing with its victim.