Candy On Hulu Is A Must Watch For True Crime Aficionados

When a PTA meeting goes terribly wrong. Jessica Biel as Candy Montgomery and Melanie Lynskey as Betty Gore in Hulu’s original mini-series Candy. Photo courtesy of Hulu.

“Lizzie Borden had an axe
She gave her mother 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41“- Author Unknown

Based on true events (admittedly some were stretched for entertainment purposes only but the 41 wacks on Betty’s body is true) Candy is a story of jealousy, betrayal, murder, and justice denied all because two people couldn’t keep their bits to themselves.

Maybe we should have made marriage counseling great again decades ago.

The series starts in the late 70s with the two women at the center of this storm, Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore, leading two very similar lives with two very similar husbands. There’s Betty, a stay-at-home mom with two children (one of which is an infant) who is married to an engineer named Allan Gore (played by Pablo Schreiber) and who is struggling with what appears to be postpartum anxiety/depression and apparently isn’t a lot of fun to be around. Then you have Candy, who is married to Pat Montgomery (Timothy Simons) another engineer, with which she has two children, and she is deeply involved in the community and local parish and is, at least on the surface, a lot of fun to be around. Both husbands are deeply devoted to their wives and children but both marriages could use some help. Betty and Allan choose marriage counseling (that’s good) while Candy decides to have an affair (that’s bad.) With Allan(that’s very, very bad.) Meanwhile, Pat is on auto-marriage and just going with the flow. The whole situation sounds like a True Crime documentary in the making.

Photo courtesy of Hulu

When Candy and Allan being their affair they have an understanding that if one or the other starts having feelings for the other, they are done but that’s not how things go and when Allan tells Candy he has feelings for her, she tries to end it but he persists so it lingers for a bit until the Gores start going to counseling. When things improve for Betty and Allan it’s Allan that wants to end things with Candy and they do, amicably. However, Candy’s need to control people meant that if she can’t have Allan she’ll treat his wife like crap (the longer the affair lasted the closer the friendship between Betty and Candy became yet once the affair was over so was the friendship) and find someone else to have an affair with.

Photo courtesy of Hulu

Everything comes to a head one day when Candy drives over to Betty’s house to pick up a swimsuit for Betty’s daughter Christina (Antonella Rose). Christina and Becky Montgomery (Aven Lotz) had gotten very close (sounds weird and it is) over the past year and with Christina spending more time over at the Mongomerys it only made sense that Candy would pop over to the Gores for forgotten items (Candy kept leaving one very impactful forgotten item over at the Gores herself, I mean why bring guilt home) but on that fateful Friday the 13th in 1980, Candy killed Betty in a gruesome display of violence that over the course of her trial will be blamed on repressed anger from a childhood incident involving her mother shushing her. Got to love 80’s style psychiatric diagnosis.

Candy Montgomery hit Betty Gore 41 times (what an odd number to count to. Yep, I’ll see myself out) and yet is acquitted on all charges by claiming self-defense. The trial is one weird shitshow, with no justice for the Gore family whatsoever (when Candy finished killing Betty she heard the infant daughter down the hall crying and left her there for over 13 hours until help finally arrived.) In fact, Candy and Pat(who stuck with her through 2 affairs and one murder) were allowed (actually highly encouraged) to move to a different state and start a whole new life. Allan marries another woman soon after the trial is over (which is quite normal) and that’s how everyone moves on.

The episodes are shot in a kind of a folding format where you start in one point in time, let’s say 1978, then you walk through whatever events take place in that moment, and then jump to another point in time, say 1980, two days before Betty is murdered and what through those events and so on. Each timeline is worked into the next one even if they are not technically congruent and it works really well. The cast is fantastic, the decor is really on point (it’s hard to get that 70s/early 80s crossover just right) and the storyline is engrossing after the second episode. The first one is a bit methodic since it’s trying to get everyone up to speed. At just 5 episodes this mini-series is a breeze to binge and definitely worth your time.

Candy, along with a whole lot of other amazing shows (Like The Orville: New Horizons. Just saying.) can be streamed right here on the one and only Hulu.