'Capote vs The Swans' review: FX's new season of 'Feud' is deathly cold-blooded
Truman Capote is a legendary American writer most famous for his 1965 true-crime masterpiece, "In Cold Blood." He is not, however, famous for a feud with a group of blue-blooded ladies from New York in the 1960s and ’70s, and there is perhaps a reason for that.
A less than compelling story is only one of the problems with the Ryan Murphy-produced "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans'' (FX, Wednesdays, 10 EST/PST, streaming next day on Hulu, ★½ out of four), a middling follow-up to 2017's first "Feud," about the beef between movie stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
The first installment of the anthology series had color, effervescence and bite; but the new season takes the black-and-white theme to the extreme. Deathly dull, slow and tedious, "Swans" can't even be saved by the star power of its cast, which includes Naomi Watts, Demi Moore, Diane Lane and Calista Flockhart. Its title promises a clash of majestic beasts, but it ends up as a squabble of headless chickens.
If you don't know the true story behind "Swans," you can hardly be blamed. Creator Jon Robin Baitz took inspiration from Laurence Leamer's nonfiction book "Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era," which details a spat between the famed author and the women he called "the swans," the upper echelons of New York high society who took him in as a friend and confidante.
However, Capote (Tom Hollander) then takes the secrets of Babe Paley (Watts), Slim Keith (Lane), Lee Radziwill (Flockhart) and C.Z. Guest (Chloe Sevigny) and uses them in his writing.
Among the thinly-disguised torrid tales splashed in the pages of Esquire are the sordid affair between Babe's husband, CBS chief Bill Paley (Treat Williams) and New York first lady Happy Rockefeller and Ann "Bang Bang" Woodward's (Moore) manslaughter – or murder, depending on your point of view – of her husband. In turn, the ladies who lunch cast Capote out of their social circle, leaving him alone on Thanksgiving (or worse, forced to go to a hippie-dippie meal in Los Angeles) and without anyone to gossip with.
The stakes of this conflict really couldn't be any lower. It's hard to care, even in a fun, voyeuristic "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" way, the way you get sucked into the silly upper-crust drama of great period pieces "Downton Abbey" or "The Gilded Age." It doesn't help that the feud is so one-sided: Capote betrayed his friends, and, of course, they're mad at him.
There is no nuance here, no gray area or mutual evil, just snooty people and a "Saturday Night Live"-style impersonation of a famous historical figure, better immortalized by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the 2005 film "Capote." A midseason and electrifying appearance from Chris Chalk as famous Black writer James Baldwin made me wonder why that author isn't the subject of a TV series.
Where to find it:'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans' is set to premiere: Date, time, where to watch and stream
The series isn't helped by a maddeningly nonlinear structure, which jumps back and forth through time seemingly not for narrative emphasis but rather to confuse and bore viewers into turning off the TV. The pace is achingly slow, and the short story feels stretched over eight long episodes. Even as the series turns darker and more serious, it struggles to create meaningful stakes. Much time is spent on Capote's relationship with abusive lover John O'Shea (Russell Tovey) as well as his alcoholism and depression, yet the writing doesn't grab you.
Great nonfiction stories don't always make for good TV drama. In the mid-20th century, Capote and his swans could generate headlines and captivate an audience. But now there's something distinctly soporific about it all, and certainly not the kind of writing Capote himself would have wanted associated with his name.
And if you're looking for a good story about swans, "The Ugly Duckling" is fine.
