Review: 'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans': Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy 8 nights
High school mean girls make life hell for anyone who crosses them. But they have nothing on the glamorous, grown-up, wised-up socialites of "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans," the eight-part series (yes, it's too long) that premiered Wednesday on FX with episodes streaming a day later on Hulu. So fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy eight nights.
"Capote vs. The Swans" is the second part of Ryan Murphy's "Feud" anthology that began in 2017 with his Emmy-winning take on the feud between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange), the sniping co-stars of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane."
You ain't seen nothing yet. In season 2, mostly directed by Gus Van Sant ("Good Will Hunting") from a time-jumping script by Jon Robin Baitz ("The Substance of Fire"), gay gadfly and literary lion Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) suffers the wrath of high-society divas, played by the starry likes of Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Calista Flockhart, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore.
Capote's crime? Turning their wicked, boozy, gossipy lunches at Manhattan's ultra-chic La Côte Basque into an article for Esquire in which the names are changed but no one is fooled. Here in the 1960s and 1970s were the Real Housewives of Manhattan before reality TV was invented.
It's a juicy premise with performances to match so it's a mystery why Murphy and company decide to let most of it sour into misery porn. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing Capote on the rise. Hollander is stuck playing Capote on the way down as a self-loathing self-destructive junkie whose lover, John O'Shea (Russell Tovey), brutally beats him.
Revenge is on the menu for the famed author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "In Cold Blood," as the ladies he once called his "swans" cut him dead. It's social exile for the so-called "Tiny Tyrant" who threw a 1966 masked ball that became the hottest ticket in town.
"Capote vs. The Swans" could have slid by as trash TV, and sometimes it does, so intoxicating are these people to be with. Until, of course, they're not. The period costumes and production design are dazzling, but Baitz's script is stingy with the decadent delights, preferring to watch these perfumed paragons of shallow wealth pay for their sins. Bummer.
Hollander, so sharp in "The White Lotus" as the cad who inspired the classic Jennifer Coolidge line -- "These gays are trying to murder me" -- captures the nasal whine of this southern charmer who did nothing to hide his sexuality even in restrictive times. The swans adored him for it.
The swans seize the spotlight by divine right, with just the right actors to play them. Lane is an exquisite force of nature as Slim Keith, who brought Hollywood connections to Capote's circle and never let her bond with the swans interfere with having a fling with their husbands.
Sevigny excels as C.Z. Guest, the horse-riding socialite who entered the inner circle when she married a polo champion who was also the first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill. Flockhart brings zesty mischief to Lee Radziwill, the lesser-known and jealous sister of Jackie O, who married a Polish prince and still couldn't keep up.
Then there's Moore as Ann Woodward, who was snubbed by the swans when Capote spread the rumor that her accidental shooting of her banker husband was no accident at all. Ouch.
Ringwald also has her moments as Joanne Carson, the wife of "The Tonight Show" star who hosted Capote whenever he was in Los Angeles (he died in her home in 1984 at age 59).
Still, a tough and touching Watts -- she and Hollander deserve Emmys -- is the swan of swans as Babe Paley, a former Vogue editor and wife of CBS chairman Bill Paley (the late Treat Williams in his final role), who adored Capote until his unforgivable breach of trust.
Her death haunted Capote as did the ghost of his mother (Jessica Lange), who continuously belittles his shortcomings. Capote misses the joy he took with the swans. So did they. And so will you. The series errs big time by replacing the frisky fun with numbing, repetitive passages of Capote and his swans wallowing in their woe. My two word response: enough already.
