“Love & Death” opens with a woman walking into a garage, and by the time the seven episodes are done, that image has been picked at from every angle the show can find. The series, created by David E. Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter and Clark Johnson, premiered April 27, 2023, on HBO Max. It stars Elizabeth Olsen as Candy Montgomery, the Wylie, Texas, housewife at the center of it.
The show has a real story underneath it. Candy and Pat Montgomery and Betty and Allan Gore are two churchgoing couples living a small town Texas life. Then an affair starts, and someone picks up an axe. The series runs on that hinge, and it knows it.
Trailer, via Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Elizabeth Olsen and the Housewife in Wylie
Olsen carries the series. The role asks her to hold two things at once — the woman who leads the church group and the woman who does the thing — and she does it without pushing. Jesse Plemons plays Allan Gore, the man she has the affair with. He is quiet in a way that reads as damage rather than dullness, and the show uses that.
Lily Rabe plays Betty Gore. Patrick Fugit plays Pat Montgomery. Krysten Ritter plays Sherry Cleckler. Tom Pelphrey plays Don Crowder, the lawyer. Amelie Dallimore and Liam Pileggi play the Montgomery children, Jenny and Ian.
The casting is the strongest argument the series makes for itself. It has no weak link to hide behind, and it does not need one.
The Affair, the Axe, and the Jury
The premise is plain. The series is based on the true story of Candy Montgomery, a housewife from Wylie, Texas, and it centers on a woman living a stereotypical housewife lifestyle in the late 1970s. She has to go before a jury after an affair with her friend from church leads to a killing.
That is the shape of it: church, affair, killing, trial. “Love & Death” does not try to hide the ending. It is not a mystery. It is a study of how a person gets from one point to the other, and the show’s interest is in the middle distance — the small decisions, the lies that seem reasonable at the time.
The late 1970s setting does real work. The show is not just dressing a set. The houses, the church, the way the women talk to each other — all of it is built to show a world where the rules are strict and the exits are few.
A Running Order That Holds
| Episode | First aired |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2023-04-27 |
| 2 | 2023-04-27 |
| 3 | 2023-04-27 |
| 4 | 2023-05-04 |
| 5 | 2023-05-11 |
| 6 | 2023-05-18 |
| 7 | 2023-05-25 |
The season ran seven episodes, from April 27 to May 25, 2023. That is a tight run, and it is mostly to the show’s credit.
What the Show Does With Candy Montgomery
The series found humanity in Candy Montgomery. That is the thing it was praised for, and it is the thing it actually does. It does not turn her into a monster, and it does not turn her into a victim. It lets her be a person who did a terrible thing and then went back to her life.
That choice is the whole show. If you do not buy it, “Love & Death” falls apart. If you do, it is a harder watch than a straightforward crime story would be. The show is not asking whether she did it. It is asking what it means that she could.
Plemons got an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards. That is the one major award recognition the series pulled. It is a fair pick. Allan Gore is the role with the least obvious surface and the most going on underneath, and Plemons plays him like a man who has already decided not to look too closely at his own life.
The Case Against Love & Death
The show has a problem, and it is not the performances. It is the length. Seven episodes is a lot of time for a story whose ending is announced in the premise, and the series fills that time with texture that does not always earn its place.
The middle stretch sags. There are scenes that exist to establish a mood the show already established. The trial material, when it comes, is strong, but it arrives after a long build that has already told you what you need to know.
There is also the question of what the show is for. It is a true-crime story about a killing, made by people who know how to make one. It is well made. It is well acted. It is not clear that it has anything to say beyond the fact that it happened, and that the people involved were more complicated than the headlines suggested.
That is not nothing. It is also not enough to justify the runtime.
What the Reviews Got Right
The series received mainly positive reviews. The praise went to the performances, particularly Olsen’s, the cinematography, the set pieces, and the show’s take on Montgomery. That is an accurate summary of what works.
The cinematography is genuinely good. The show looks like a period piece without looking like a museum. The set pieces — the church scenes, the domestic scenes, the moments where the show slows down and lets a room sit — are where the direction shows its hand.
But positive reviews and a great lead performance do not make a great series. They make a good one with a ceiling. “Love & Death” hits that ceiling early and stays there.
The Numbers Behind the Show
On June 1, 2023, Max announced that “Love & Death” had become their most watched original limited series globally. That is a real figure, and it matters for what it says about the audience for this kind of show. People watched it. A lot of them.
The critical score sits at 6.2 out of 10, with a Metacritic score of 62 out of 100. That is a mixed-positive reception. It is not a rave, and it is not a pan. It is the score of a show that did several things well and did not do enough of them at once.
The gap between the audience numbers and the critical score is the interesting part. The show found a large audience. It did not find a large critical consensus. Those two facts can both be true, and in this case they are.
Where the Series Lands
“Love & Death” is a well-made, well-acted, slightly overlong true-crime drama that does one thing unusually well and several things competently. It is worth watching for Olsen and Plemons. It is worth watching for the way it handles Candy Montgomery, which is more careful than the story deserved and more honest than the genre usually allows.
It is not worth watching for the plot. You know the plot. The show knows you know the plot. That is the whole problem with the middle stretch — it is a show that has to fill time before getting to the thing everyone came for, and it fills that time with atmosphere.
The series is a crime drama in genre, and it works as one. It is a character study in practice, and it works as one of those too, mostly. The two halves do not always fit together.
The verdict is a 6.2 out of 10. That is a score for a show that is better than average and not as good as its best scenes suggest. It is a score that respects the performances and the craft and does not pretend the whole thing holds together as tightly as it wants to.
If you are going to watch one version of this story, watch this one for Olsen. If you are going to watch it for the story, you already know how it ends, and the show will not surprise you.
“Love & Death” is a limited series that knows its ending and spends seven episodes getting there. It gets there. It just takes longer than it needs to, and it leaves you with the feeling that the best version of this show was four episodes long.
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