Mike Flanagan’s House of Usher series

Well I'm about halfway thru the series. I needed some time to process the end of episode 2. I had totally seen it coming , but actually seeing it play out, with just enough darkness to leave the worst bits of people fucking melting to your imagination. So far the show hasn't topped that ironic death

I’m a sucker for the Masque of Red Death and it was very interesting to see how that was handled.

I binged the series last night.

I got a lot of things right.

I don't know quite how I feel about some of the execution. Don't get me wrong; I liked the series. It's still well above the usual TV Faire. I just feel like I personally would have liked a few different choices here and there.

More specifically, I wanted a more ambiguous portrayal of Death. And I think being "This is actually death making an actually supernatural deal" fucks with some of the narrative for me? I'll get to that.

I do kinda feel like the ending just... happens. It felt half-baked? Roderick lures Madeline into the basement, poisons her, cuts out her eyes for the saphire-eye'd queen thing and she seemingly SURVIVES having her brain pulled out (because they do focus on the tool that was established as "for pulling the brain out piece by piece") and she strangles Roderick while the house collapses. "Did you actually make sure she was dead"??? Why... Why didn't Roderick know she was alive? This feels like Poe references for the sake of it rather than feeling like a natural end for the characters' stories?

What does this actually do for the culmination of the story? What is Madeline strangling Robert while screaming bloody murder saying about their end? It just felt... weird. Roderick and Madeline is an important relationship for the series- don't get me wrong, but "Who will kill the other?" didn't feel like it was a culmination. Instead, I did think Roderick-Dupin was the more important relationship for the series.

Like, I was expecting we were going to get to WHY Roderick called Dupin there for his confession. I was expecting it to be leading somewhere as to why Roderick is confessing and we never quite get there. Death just tells him to go to the house and call Dupin and... I don't know why? I was expecting some "Taking You With Me" bait of Roderick wanting the last laugh of taking Dupin with him or something. ANYTHING as a conclusion to their dynamic but... it felt flaccid? At least some culmination of Roderick and Dupin discussing the story overall and arguing an interpretation of it or something? I guess I wanted a battle of character intellects at the end a bit but Roderick is defeated and dead before Dupin gets there.

Like, ok, say Dupin never showed up at House Usher. Nothing really changes. Presumably Madeline would have made her way up the stairs and strangled Roderick eventually so... Dupin doesn't do anything really? It just felt weird.

Even Madeline's end kinda felt off to me. "Like a queen" is a major point and it's given such gravity... But I feel like the show is forgetting the gross pretention and privledge of it's villain protagonists here? Congtrats? White Billionaire Roderick spent half a fortune getting all these authentic pieces of Egyptian history here so he could kill his rich white sister and bury her in a facsimile bastardization of an Egyptian queen? Why is this given such a grandure send-off for something so... colonialist? It feels like we're missing a piece here?

In general, I feel weird about the villain protagonist bit? Like, for example... does this show demonize sexuality? Is sexuality being used as a weapon to condemn it's characters?

0Like... pre-Deal-with-the-Devil!Roderick when he's "good" and "moral" is happily married with two kids making ends meet. Our, "hero" in Dupin is mentioned to have a husband and kids, but one we never ever see and his sexuality isn't really at play ever. After that, Roderick's divorced, fucking every woman he can, Madeline hates men to the point of she's ambiguously asexual in my book and has been basically forever, Napoleon is bisexual and cheating on his partner (which never comes up outside of his character introduction AT ALL), Camille is fucking both of her assistants, one of whom is gender-queer in some way, Prospero is killed hosting a drug-fueled hedonistic orgy and the characters frequently make reference to the sexuality of it rather than the drug use or the billionaire bastard attendants, Victorine is gay and extremely abusive to her girlfriend, and Tamerline has this kinda abusive cuck-queen relationship with her husband. Are we conflating these character's sexualities with their villainous and immoral traits? And that's not even getting into Morella and the icky-mess that is her character?

I feel... like there's something bothering me here. The show doesn't say "Sexuality is bad", but I don't think it does much to combat that interpretation exactly?

Ok, getting onto Verma and why I wanted a more ambiguous take. I don't like it being confirmed that death is killing them like this is Final Destination because I feel like it removes character agency and karmic justice from the story and I think that makes it weaker. And this specifically becomes issue with, say, Lenore.

These characters are not dying because they are terrible bastards who've been digging their own graves through every self-righteous and self-serving evil choice of their miserable lives. They are dying because Roderick made a deal in the 80s and now Death is collecting. That's it. Every single one of them could have been absolute saints even if their father wasn't and it changes nothing; they'd still die. Death would whisper over their shoulder and nudge the pieces into place for them to die like she did for Fredrick to mix the nightshade into his drugs. Or, obviously, as Lenore is just dropped dead on the bed with no explanation given.

I think it would have been all the more compelling if there never ever was a Death figure shuffling the cards. Usher, in all his grandure of ego, cannot fathom his own actions and decisions coming to pay a toll on his family one-by-one of their own decisions. I think it's all the more interesting if Dupin instead refutes his story and we get to the heart of it; Roderick and his family cannot accept responsibility for their own actions. Maybe we can lean into it being a "Audience chooses which is true" ambiguity, but I feel like we lost something here. We already set up that Roderick's mind is going, but the show leans far more into the supernatural camp to play that aspect out.

Also, if Roderick is being haunted by the ghosts of his children, I kinda would have liked to see that tension play out a bit more. If they are *actually* their ghosts, do they know they were fucked the moment of conception? Doomed to die the moment they did? That there was actually nothing they could have done?

The more I sort through my feelings, the more I feel like the show, while not being bad or a failure by any means, could have been so much better if it took that extra step in a few places.

Edited by InkDagger on Oct 13th 2023 at 11:38:32 AM

On episode seven. This is a family of sociopaths. Cartoon level villains.

So who wants to do the character page?

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Oct 13th 2023 at 5:47:15 AM

On episode 8. Given how Verna talks and how Midnight Mass ended, I’m almost certain that Mike Flanagan is an atheist or a lapsed Christian.

^^^I agree re: Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane (I had to remove it from the main page because if we weren't supposed to think Verna was real, we wouldn't have seen Dupin reacting to her twice) but it shows up on the YMMV as well so...I guess it's not an uncommon sentiment? I wish Dupin had gotten to say "none of this matters, you asshole" in person.

The sexuality beat is really obvious with Leo, who otherwise comes off as a fairly okay guy who happens to have a drug addiction and dislike his partner's cat — but okay, let's have him cheat on his boyfriend with a woman to show that he's Bad(tm).

I think the show's take is that if they were all absolute saints, they would have just peacefully dropped dead. But because money is inherently corruptive, they become bad people (Lenore being some freak nature/nurture exception), and 'deserve' gruesome deaths.

Then again my take on the cast makeup is "Flanagan watched Succession and just split the four junior Roys' personality traits into six junior Ushers" so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 17th 2023 at 9:12:24 AM

It also can't be Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane because the show ends on Verma's monologue and placing the items on the graves. That doesn't really work if she's completely imaginary. The show relies too heavily on her being real and doesn't scrutinize her very much.

I suppose it's a matter of "Would you like to die peacefully, or die violently and karmically?" but I still think it robs the characters of too much agency to keep it compelling for me. Does Victorine murder her girlfriend out of a genuine character flaw? Or "because Verma made her do so"?

Idk. I also feel weird about Verma being high and mighty about the death and corruption the family wreaks on the world... when they only could do so because of her in the first place. That doesn't absolve them of guilt, mind you, but is Verma much better than Roderick when she's the one who handed him a metaphorical nuke?

Heck, a twist that she never ever did anything would have worked too. Could have flipped the entire thing on it's head. What if she merely asked the questions and Madeline and Roderick lived their lives *thinking* she'd given them some supernatural edge? She could still have the position of high and mighty and be supernatural without removing character agency.

I'm watching the show and, while I like it a lot, I'm not sure how I feel about Verna. My Tumblr and Twitter circles have been hyping up her and her dynamic with Madeline. However, while she is well acted, I can't help but feel like her being real ruins the whole like moral of the stories because these people were going to die regardless of them being horrible human beings, which like I don't know if I like.

One of the things is that Poe stories rarely run on morality anyway. Often bad things just happen to people, regardless of whether or not they're good people.

The Ushers, however, are pretty much all bad people, and it's important that Roderick and Madeline's first serious crime was committed before they met Verna. They wanted wealth and power, and they could have done good things with them, but they didn't. They could have sided with Auggie early on, but they didn't. They could have left Fortunato and found decent jobs elsewhere, but they didn't. After the first death, Camille mentions the Usher's have a charity wing that they can stick any family member's face on—and there's nothing stopping any of them from just making that their full time job.

Verna points out that some of them didn't deserve the level of brutality involved in their deaths, but they all still made poor choices and were given chances not to. Mostly she just gave them enough rope to hang themselves with (Victorine is a prime example of that). And with many of them, they had wrecked their lives even before their deaths with no outside help needed.

Just to use Leo as an example, if you removed the supernatural elements from the equation, he very likely would have died under similar circumstances (that is to say, drugged out of his effing mind). Leo's one of the least malicious Ushers, but he also has nothing positive about him either.

But that's kinda the problem, she gives them enough rope to hang themselves, but there seems to be a degree to which she's also forcing their hands to put the noose on too. Verna has agency here. She has control. We're repeatedly shown that and especially with Napoleon and Froderick. So, the show kinda hinges on the family falling to their own actions, but that doesn't work if she interferes.

For example, Froderick dying because he was too stupid and high on his own supply to realize he mixed the nightshade in by accident is far more compelling if Verna doesn't force him to do anything at all.

She explicitly controls Victorine into stabbing her own heart rather than Victorine doing so out of grief and realization or some other motivation.

Or, let's look at Napoleon; what does he actually do? No, seriously, what does he actually do? Because the action that damns his source material; murdering his wife and hiding her in the walls is adapted out. And, by the end, we're explicitly shown that Pluto also survived the events of the show and was never dead to begin with. Everything surrounding his events is explicitly Verna's doing and manipulation.

Napoleon goes to the pet shop and Verna insists that he shouldn't get the replacement cat and this feels like it's supposed to be his chance to "back out"- She offers a lot of the other Usher's a "choice" and it usually relates to relative sin and depravity- Prospero could stop the party and ensure no one melts into flesh-goo, Camille could have been less blood-thirsty for her own family, etc.

But... What's Napoleon's crime she's trying to disuade him from? At first I thought it was "He's not owning up to what he did to his partner's cat". That not taking ownership and responsibility is a problem and fitting for the Usher line, even if he tries getting clean after. Hiding a crime is as much a problem as committing one. But at the end... he didn't kill the cat. Pluto is still alive with the Gucci collar. So... Napoleon's crime is not owning up to an action he never committed in the first place?

I almost want to go out on a limb and say that Napoleon's cheating behavior that never ever comes up again was something added to the script when someone realized he never actually does something "wrong". The worst that could be said he's idle rich and just funds games; doesn't actually make them, but in comparison to everyone else in the family... Ok then? He's kinda under-developed.

This is kinda why I was waiting for a twist that either Verna was never ever there to begin with and was Roderick trying to rationalize away responsibility for his own family's horrific ends or, probably more interestingly, a reveal that Verna never ever did anything the entire time; She never gave them immunity or took the lives of the family in the first place. She's just been watching and collecting as she does to all others equal in death.

I think it's a very Poe thing for humans to be reacting to things that they don't fully understand or *think* are there. The power of human condition on worldly perception. In tell-tale heart, the heart was never ever beating. There was never someone under the cloak in Red-Death. And in The Raven, the bird was never calling Nevermore; but that's how the grieving narrator hears it.

Verna being more than a passive observer spoils the broth a bit for me. I feel like they want it both ways; she's a passive commentator on the bastard ways of humanity and a cathartic avenger of those whom human justice cannot collect... even if she set them up to do injustice in the first place. Or makes them believe they committed a crime when they didn't?

With Leo, the thing is that he's an addict. And that's not a personality quirk like chewing loudly or being freaked out by cotton swabs. It's a serious disease that he explictly commands his S Os not to mention to him. Sooner or later, he would have started spiraling, and death by OD or misadventure is very likely for a person like that.

He conceals what he thinks he did from Julius, but then he was going to dump Julius anyway for complaining about the drug use. It was never about the cat, the cat was just a spark and Leo had been soaking himself in oil for years. That's why he never actually questions what he thinks happened with Pluto—because he already knows such a thing is out of the ordinary for him, but not out of the question altogether.

The torment Leo is plagued by is bad, sure, but it's the same thing with Tamerlane—her existing self destructive habits were already there and were always going to become a problem, sooner or later.

Fair point to him saying he was going to dump Jules for complaining about the drugs at all.

I guess where I see it is that I see addiction as a disease. In the moralistic "Villain Protagonist" role the Usher family inhabits, I just don't see being a victim of addiction as being a 'sin' and certainly not one worthy of a gruesome death. The event the story uses to say "Napoleon's drugs are the problem" is also the event the story then retcons.

I did consider the Tamerlaine angle earlier and I spent the day sorting why I had less issue with that one. While I don't like the degree to which Verna takes a personal involvement in tormenting her by the end, I am less bothered by it with her's because Tamerlaine's character flaws were already demonstrated to be rooted in jealousy, self-criticism, and self-sabotage- Flaws that were already present before the show begins.

It's also a story that already plays with Tammerlaine's sanity slippage and loss of perception over time. That's baked into the situation. We have a long build up of her talking to people who aren't there, seeing things that eat at her insecurities, and completely losing track of moments or falling asleep and not realizing something happened in between. We strike into this with Tamerlaine striking the mirrors to attack Verna, but hurting herself and, obviously, the metaphor here is that she's attacking herself. Self-destruction. There's a version of this story where Verna isn't there at all and Tamerlaine is doing this all to herself.

Verna doesn't force Tammy to break up and say the awful things she does to Billy T. Tammy is already losing it long before the Gold Bug conference. Verna never ever forces her to do anything. Same with Camille- Verna never forces Camille into that lab room. In fact, she dissuades her from it. Camille's wrath and pride get her in that room. Prospero's pride and gluttony and general stupidity set up the dominos to fall on his party.

Napoleon's story doesn't quite have the same angle here. His torments don't stem internally, but externally.

I also finished watching the show and absolutely enjoyed it

I've recently started watching this as well. I recently finished episode 3, and I'm really enjoying what I'm seeing so far.

I'm getting a kick out of the whole super rich people who never had to face consequences now have to contend with something that's very likely supernatural thing, especially with all the references to Poe's works.

EDIT: I'm about to start watching the episode based on The Tell-Tale Heart. This is one of the first Poe stories I've ever read, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how this series handles it.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Oct 29th 2023 at 4:02:08 AM

Wrapping up a rewatch of Hill House (in many ways this is a Spiritual Antithesis, father + siblings saved from the supernatural by their love for each other vs father + siblings unable to band together and the causes of their own undoing), and I find myself agreeing with:

when Hill House makes it a point that even though Luke has screwed his family over so many times as a result of his addiction (theft, lies, wasting their money in rehab) that he is still worthy of redemption.

I'm not saying Leo did nothing wrong (far from it), just that there were other avenues possible to make him unsympathetic.

I mean, he was implied to physically abuse his boyfriend regularly while he was high on drugs

So I’m entering this on the WMG page for Honest trailers. Anyone wanna help me with the Starring list?

I admit it's been a few months since I watched the show, but I don't remember it being said he abused his bf while on drugs. He abused drugs around his boyfriend and ignored his bf's protests to not do a ton of drugs, but abuse him while on drugs?

I would also protest that, if that's what was intended, it's not on screen and "implied" isn't exactly a resounding condemnation compared to actually showing the abuse. Again, if that's Napoleon's "sin" or bad behavior, why aren't we taking the time to physically show it?

I also recall Napoleon accidentally hitting his bf during sex and both of their reactions to that don't exactly scream "physical abuse is completely normal here".