Critic’s Rating: 3 / 5.0
3
Disclaimer is … boring as hell.
While it’s true that Apple TV+ famously has incredible and underrated projects that randomly appear on the interface and you only learn about through some obscure social media post by a diehard subscriber singlehandedly doing the promotion themselves —
Where was I going with this? Oh, right. Disclaimer is a peak Apple TV+ series in terms of star-studded and pretentiousness, but it’s boring.
Is Disclaimer’s High Praise Warranted?
Maybe the critical acclaim from other reviewers speaks to their superior taste in media and appreciation for the many elements that go into quality television making.
Perhaps they’re riveted by Cate Blanchett and the rest of the cast, or they’re utterly thrilled by Alfonso Cuarón’s filmmaking style applied to this limited series about a bestseller.
I’d love to know what they appreciate about this series that eludes me.
This reviewer is not the audience and demographic for this series despite eclectic tastes ranging from cheesy Lifetime flicks to prestigious premium cable dramas.
But here we are, four episodes deep into this dreary slow-burn series, and more than anything, one walks away from each installment feeling whelmed.
Would you like some absolute candor here, TV Fanatics?
Disclaimer’s Double Feature Was a Chore to Get Through
Pushing through Disclaimer Season 1 Episode 3 and Episode 4 required a switch from a delicious indulgence in tea to a caffeine-jolting cup of coffee.
I still found myself playing a game on my phone just so something else could hold my attention.
It was Melon Maker, by the way. Surprisingly cathartic.
Nevertheless, I did power through, and this double dose of Disclaimer had some genuinely notable components.
Again, the series isn’t all terrible, but it’s certainly an acquired taste.
Lesley Manville as Nancy is the hero MVP performer of this double-episode of Disclaimer.
Manville performs like the rent is due at 5 p.m., and she is still a couple hundred dollars short at 4:15.
There’s no greater pain for a mother than having to bury her own child, and for Nancy, Jonathan was the apple of her eye and her pride and joy.
He was their only child and an obvious “Momma’s Boy” who doted on and loved his mother, sometimes making Stephen jealous.
Lesley Manville Delivers a Raw, Emotional Performance as Jonathan’s Mother
This little tidbit is fascinating because it’s one thing that he and Catherine, whom Stephen actively hates with his entire being, have in common—feeling like their sons were closer to the other parent and, as a result, they didn’t have space in that familial unit.
It’s not a good story with this much conflict and tension if the protagonist and antagonist (whichever role you ascribe to whom is up to you, folks; this is Disclaimer, after all) have some similarities and a connection that could make them bond if only they didn’t hate each other.
Nancy does not handle the news well that her son is dead, understandably so, and even takes a potshot at the cop’s tea-making skills, which is the most British thing to do ever.
In the past, Disclaimer follows Stephen’s perspective in all of this as he and Nancy travel to Italy to identify their son’s body and attempt to make sense of the final days leading up to his death.
It’s a horrendous affair, though actively jarring at times when these parents’ profound grief is intercut with pinhole, hazy camera angles and intermissions to the seduction and sexcapades of Jonathan and a young Catherine.
But we’ll get into those scintillating sex scenes in a moment.
Nancy’s determination to find out what happened to her son was one of the more compelling aspects of this series. For a series that thrives on perspective, it made you long for her story specifically.
Jonathan’s Death Ruins Nancy Beyond Repair in Disclaimer
Everything we know about Nancy is via Stephen’s perspective in these couple of episodes, from how she refused to believe that her son’s death was an accident to her burying herself in her grief that she may have metaphorically made herself sick amid it all.
Her grief and pain were palpable, and once Jonathan died, so did Nancy, well before the cancer took her.
It was a tragic sight because it left Stephen alone to deal with his own grief and a fresh new one, as his marriage as he knew it ended around then.
But we’re supposed to see these things from Stephen’s perspective, and there’s a lot that isn’t resolved with this period and what transpired between Jonathan’s death all those years ago and his vengeful mission now.
We’re to believe that Nancy hid the film from Jonathan’s camera from her husband, and at some point over time, she saw those racy photographs of Catherine.
She started this revenge mission, composing this book about what she imagined happened and leaving it to Stephen to carry on this mission.
And that’s where the storytelling becomes hazy, as it tries to parse through what could and couldn’t be true.
However, that’s also where things with Robert are so damn grating.
We don’t hear anything about a diary; this story isn’t supposed to be some account written in Jonathan’s name outlining what happened up to his death.
Disclaimer Plays with People Opting-into Select Narratives with No Proof
It’s all speculative and heavily fictionalized for sensationalism, and perhaps this is where the series reflects back to the audiences how we consume tragedy porn, and the more sensational the tale, the better.
We needn’t look too far to see how that works out; hell, just look at the popularity of Netflix’s Monsters: The Menendez Brothers, which spends more time telling a sensational and overly dramatic tale and exploitation of a real-life tragedy that many folks can’t decipher where the fiction ends and reality begins.
And hey, I’m not going to argue that Disclaimer doesn’t have things to say or points to make, only that it’s colossally dull while making them.
Robert’s Real Impression of His Wife Overshadows Everything
Robert is reading a fictional book as fact and refuses to check in with the closest thing he has to a source, which speaks volumes about how he’s ever perceived Catherine in the first place.
The second he feels she’s betrayed him and made him angry, all these ugly truths about how he views her come out — his insecurities about their love and sex life, how others didn’t want him to marry her anyway, and these implications that her pedigree wasn’t up to snuff and he was the real prize.
The list goes on, really. At least, that’s what we see whenever the series taps into his perspective.
Ironically, even his perspective doesn’t make him out to be a sympathetic victim of his wife’s lies and deception.
Robert is a Deceptively Cruel, Misogynistc Character
The man doesn’t seem to like his wife at all, jumps at her doing the worst possible thing too easily, takes the words of a random book as fact over her, and subsequently punishes her without ever sitting down and having a simple conversation.
And maybe that makes this entire situation so grating for all involved.
One or two in-depth conversations could clear up so much, yet everyone runs on pure conjecture.
And everyone is guilty when it comes to this.
Stephen is assumingly operating off of the words his late wife left behind, piecing together what he thinks happened via her speculation (because nobody once acknowledged that Jonathan wrote anything down himself).
Robert read a book and ran with everything that’s been it, allowing peeks and moments to shape how he views his wife because he claims he can recognize pieces of her in this tale.
But he’s not a reliable person here since the man clearly has held back years of resentment and distaste for his wife, which he unleashed the second he felt she did something unforgivable!
Catherine May Not Be Disclaimer’s Villain, But She’s Not Helping Her Case
Catherine, for her part, stutters and stumbles through non-answers, stares off into space and generally tries to appear helpless or avoidant.
She does not take any measures to nip all of this in the bud or get her story out.
By now, based on some of her reactions and her strongly admitting (not with the callousness of an evil person but the frustration and hurt of a possible victim) that she wanted Jonathan dead, there’s more to this story than we know.
But, goodness, get on with it already.
I feel like the embodiment of that meme of an illustrative character with a stick poking at the ground and mumbling, “Do something.”
Catherine’s frustrating narrations claim she left Stephen a message acknowledging his fictional book as if that would somehow soothe him, and one has to wonder what this woman is on where she thought that made any sense.
The crazy thing about this situation is that I actually do believe Catherine and that there is more to this story than the one currently told and playing out like an erotica thriller from the ’90s.
Where she loses me is how little she does about any of it.
She avoids her husband instead of trying to make her case, knowing that his anger will only fester and grow, not quell.
She halfheartedly reaches out to Stephen but puts her foot in her mouth by writing off his book as a work of fiction without elaborating why she said any of that.
And she allows Robert to kick her out of their house without so much as uttering a word or even writing it all down and leaving him a letter since he’s hellbent on reading so damn much.
Catherine is a Frustrating Protagonist Even For Those on Her Side
There’s space where Catherine could be a survivor without being a simpering victim, and right now, we don’t know what she is other than a sad woman who is tongue-tied and is determined to keep a big secret that inevitably will come out.
The flashbacks to what happened in Italy, if they’re the genuine truth, do paint her as a calculated seductress who ruined a young man’s life in two days.
It was downright icky to see this siren lure a teen boy to dinner and into some sexy talk about Kylie Minogue and all the things he was too immature to vocalize being able to do to her.
The entire exchange at the dinner was equal parts tantalizing and disturbing as Leila George’s sultry voice and sex talk set the tone.
She’s an incredibly beautiful and sensual woman and plays that well.
But Jonathan practically panting like a cartoon and nearly coming in his pants at the table only proved how creepy this version of what happened is.
Catherine comes across as a woman who preys on an inexperienced young man and takes full advantage of him sexually, giving him a play-by-play of how to please her and only seeking her own sexual pleasure from this ordeal.
The sex scenes in this version were scintillating and artfully shot and performed.
We get the type of classy nudity that feels more scandalous than it is because of the angles and such.
Disclaimer Shows Us Two Drastically Different Catherines Across Timelines
Young Catherine undulating on the bed or Jonathan with such wild abandon is the type of thing that lends itself to discourse about powerful women owning their own pleasure and sexuality progressively.
The commentary about the female gaze or, more so, the emphasis on female pleasure, and these scenes mainly cater to showing Catherine in full control and absolute ecstasy.
Hell, some would even appreciate or snap their fingers at the idea of a woman guiding this sexually ignorant man through properly pleasing her, as goodness knows that can be an issue with some men, regardless of age.
Even here, Jonathan came too early, but his ability to be taught and youthful quick comeback saved him from getting kicked out of the room.
Trust me, I totally get all of that.
But beautifully shot sex scenes aren’t enough to hold one’s interest through most of Disclaimer.
This is one perspective of what happened in which Catherine comes across as a predator who preyed on a young man, used him up for her own desires, and happily watched him die to avoid dealing with him falling for her and following her back to London, some other angles came through too.
Is Catherine a Predator or Victim?
Catherine came across as a sexed-up, insatiable nymph who was irresponsible and neglectful of her own child (because who leaves their child with a random stranger so they can go hookup in a changing room and then still fall asleep?).
However, there was also something off about Jonathan’s willingness and persistence to take pictures of her in compromising ways, even when she initially didn’t seem to want that.
And we’re supposed to believe that after a whole night of sexing each other up until the paint peeled on the walls (young Jonathan commenting on the smell was because of that all-night affair, no?), he would give up everything and follow her?
There was a lot to this perspective that had Jonathan reading as incredibly naive and easily influenced, which didn’t seem to correlate with some of the other things shared about the character.
But we’ll have to see why that is.
Jonathan’s Narrative is Puzzling
The clencher to capturing just how much of a victim Jonathan comes across as in this tale was the drowning scene, which was one of the series’s most puzzling but disturbing scenes yet.
He rescues Nicholas because all the lifeguards seemed preoccupied with one child and his foot.
Oddly enough, in the thick of it, at least four or five lifeguards appeared in time to help two bystanders pull Nicholas onto shore.
But we had to watch as Jonathan braved the choppy waters and currents of the sea to rescue Jonathan and pull him near shore, only for others to take the lead from him and promptly leave him there.
Understandably, people were concerned about the child who almost drowned, but it didn’t feel realistic that no one else concerned themselves with Jonathan out there fighting for his life.
They saw him swim out to the kid.
The lifeguards who came from the abyss even helped pull the other bystanders in, but are you saying NO ONE on that beach saw, remembered, or checked in on Jonathan?
Jonathan dies the tragic hero, who everyone fails (seriously, that’s a wrongful death suit WAITING to happen).
It all seems too perfect and neat.
But alas, this is Disclaimer, where we don’t trust anything or anyone, including most people who tease this as a thriller.
I’m just kidding, but not really.
Over to you, Disclaimer Fanatics. Hit those comments with your true thoughts.
Disclaimer streams Fridays on Apple TV+