Recap of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Series Premiere: Keeping Up With the Ushers

 

“The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t waste any time delving into Edgar Allan Poe’s most iconic themes. In the opening 30 seconds of the series premiere, I identified at least four allusions to distinct works, ranging from the more obscure to the well-known. (While the appearance of the raven might not earn any special points, the bold use of ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ is sure to send a chill down the spine of those familiar with ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.)

For viewers well-versed in Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination, this initial montage serves as both a declaration of intent and a genuine challenge – akin to spotting the ghosts that subtly appeared in the backgrounds of series creator Mike Flanagan’s previous Netflix ventures. How intimately acquainted are you with Edgar Allan Poe, after all?

Flanagan is a seasoned hand at this kind of storytelling. His adaptation of the beloved horror classic ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ brought a fresh perspective, while ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’, though nominally based on Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’, seamlessly integrated elements from other James stories. Just one episode into ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, and it feels like a fusion of both approaches: a series that leverages Poe’s timeless short story as a springboard for an incisive examination of Big Pharma’s avarice and its far-reaching consequences, seasoned with memorable elements from a variety of other Poe tales.”

Before formally introducing our two main characters, drawn from different Poe stories in a fan-fiction flourish, the series sets the stage with a somber tone. Roderick Usher, a wealthy Big Pharma executive, grapples with profound grief after losing all six of his children — an astonishing six — within a mere two weeks. At this juncture, it remains uncertain if the miniseries will present any clear heroes. Presently, we are introduced to Usher’s courtroom adversary, Charles Auguste Dupin, an assistant District Attorney striving to prosecute the Ushers for their significant role in the opioid epidemic due to their drug-related activities. (It’s worth noting the parallels to the Sackler family.)

Unexpectedly, Roderick reaches out to Dupin, promising to confess to all 73 charges, which include defrauding the U.S. government. All he asks is for Dupin to visit his dilapidated childhood home and hear the entire story over a bottle of outrageously expensive cognac. It’s made apparent that this will be a long tale — enough, even, to fill eight hours of television. The narrative commences in 1953, when the young Roderick and his sister, Madeline, reside with their single mother, Eliza. Eliza serves as both the secretary to and the secret lover of Longfellow, the uncaring head of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Longfellow is the type of man who, despite knowing that Roderick and Madeline are his own flesh and blood, instructs Eliza never to bring them onto his premises. By 1962, when Eliza’s health deteriorates, he outright refuses to offer assistance.

It’s worth noting that Eliza may not have accepted his help in any case. Her devout religious convictions lead her to reject medical intervention altogether, believing that tampering with a body’s natural state is an affront to God. It’s for this same reason that, after her passing, Roderick and Madeline lay her to rest in the backyard, hoping to honour her beliefs by forgoing embalming.

Naturally, there’s a reason why professionals exist. On a dark and stormy night, Roderick and Madeline gaze upon the freshly filled grave, only to find it empty. Eliza was interred while still alive, and though barely clinging to life, she manages to claw her way out long enough to strangle her son before making her way to Longfellow’s opulent residence and ending his life with her own hands.

If you’re wondering how this extensive, macabre backstory connects to Roderick’s six deceased children, you’re in the same boat as Dupin, who sought concrete answers rather than a disturbing trauma narrative. However, like him, we’ll need to exercise patience. As the narrative oscillates through time, we receive brief introductions to each of Roderick’s offspring — all, except perhaps Victorine, evidently flawed in their own distinct ways. Yet it’s evident from the scope of Roderick’s account that the seeds of their grim destinies were sown long before they were born.

What transpired? A small clue arises as the story settles into New Year’s Eve 1979. We’ve been subtly informed that this date carries significance; a swift glimpse of the New Year’s Eve celebration was included in the show’s initial montage. As the young Roderick and Madeline take their places at the bar, elegantly attired, it becomes apparent that their presence serves merely to establish an alibi for a heinous act they’ve committed. They’re met by a bartender named Verna — it’s worth noting that this name is an anagram of “raven” — who speaks cryptically about the importance of making promises for the future.

How did Roderick and Madeline find themselves in control of a pharmaceutical conglomerate to which they were, at best, unrecognized and unacknowledged heirs? I suspect it was influenced by Verna, who has made mysterious appearances in a series of otherwise unexplained sudden frights throughout the episode, along with Roderick’s deceased children and one terrifying jester.

Roderick can’t claim he wasn’t forewarned. “Buy now, pay later — that’s what I say,” remarks Verna during that fateful New Year’s Eve encounter. To those young siblings, so close to a fortune they likely believed was rightfully theirs all along, it must have sounded like an enticing proposition. Yet “pay later” carries its own kind of Faustian pact, and it seems the Usher family’s reckoning has finally arrived.

Knocks in the Evening

• One significant enigma remains: Who is the informant within the Usher family (assuming Dupin wasn’t fabricating this, perhaps in the hope that they would turn against each other)? While we lack substantial evidence on any individual yet, feel free to share your best guesses in the comments below.

• Another query revolves around Roderick’s “condition,” which can only be addressed by a very specific and trusted physician. Introducing doubts about his sanity cleverly allows Flanagan to play on his old hidden-ghosts trick. At one point, we can observe Eliza prowling around behind Dupin, but it’s uncertain whether she’s truly there or if we’re merely witnessing things from Roderick’s haunted perspective.

• Roderick and Madeline share a peculiar and intriguing dynamic (and not just because they continue to share a bed long after two children should be doing so). Madeline does wield power – she serves as the COO to Roderick’s CEO. However, while Roderick appears to be the public face of the company, she seems to be the one truly visionary and decisive behind the scenes.

• Nevertheless, Roderick’s revelation to Dupin that Madeline is currently in the basement is, well, cause for concern.

• Roderick is conspicuously receiving and disregarding text messages that he claims are from his granddaughter, Lenore. I’m assuming we’ll learn what she has to say – provided the messages are indeed from her – before the series concludes.

• Kudos to Bruce Greenwood, who is delivering an exceptional portrayal of Roderick Usher despite stepping in midway through production to replace Frank Langella, the show’s original lead, who was dismissed after a misconduct investigation. This isn’t Greenwood’s first venture in a Flanagan production; he co-starred with Carla Gugino in Gerald’s Game and played a supporting role in Doctor Sleep, Flanagan’s sequel to The Shining.

• Speaking of which: Compiling a list of House of Usher actors who haven’t previously featured in a Flanagan production would be a simpler task. Returning collaborators who have appeared in at least one other Flanagan movie or series include [deep breath] Gugino, Henry Thomas, Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel, T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Sauriyan Sapkota, Crystal Balint, Katie Parker, Ruth Codd, Zach Gilford, Kyliegh Curran, Annabeth Gish, Matt Biedel, Michael Trucco, Robert Longstreet, Aya Furukawa, and Igby Rigney.

• Lines from no fewer than three of Poe’s works are woven in: the poem “For Annie,” the poem “Spirits of the Dead,” and the essay “The Imp of the Perverse.”

• The character names are rife with allusions — don’t overlook Mark Hamill’s dour lawyer, Arthur Pym, or Napoleon’s cat, Pluto, or even Lenore’s habit of addressing Roderick as “Grampus” — but it’s easy to miss that fitness guru Bill-T’s actual name is William Wilson, a nod to Poe’s eerie doppelgänger tale.

• And Eliza shares her name with Edgar Allan Poe’s actual mother, who also met a grim and untimely demise.

• The headline describing Napoleon’s demise labels him as “the gaming prince.” (That’s not a Poe reference or anything; I just find it amusing.)

• Mike Flanagan hasn’t been particularly discreet about his grievances with Netflix, so I’d like to believe that Morrie’s peculiar “secret cake” hobby is a sly jab at one of the streaming service’s less astute game shows, which received a renewal for a second season just months before Flanagan’s own The Midnight Club ended up on the chopping block. (It’s not entirely coincidental that Flanagan has since set up camp at Amazon.)