In its penultimate episode, Feud: Bette and Joan feels to me like it's running out of steam. Maybe it's the repetitive drama on the set of Cousin Charlotte—Bette micro-manages Joan's performance, Joan throws a fit, rinse and repeat in a downward spiral—or maybe it's just that this episode feels particularly heavy on emotional exposition, hammering home once again the contrast between Joan, the stunning movie star, and Bette, the respected character actress. But there's still a huge amount to enjoy here, as Bette confronts lifelong self-esteem demons and Joan continues to self-destruct. Here are the seven standout moments from "Abandoned!"
1) Victor's wavering sympathies.
As it turns out, Bette and Joan's returning Baby Jane co-star Victor Buono isn't as firmly on Team Bette as we, or she, expected. Bette and Victor bonded initially because he was such a fan of hers, but his fandom isn't limited to her. Joan's performance in the 1946 melodrama Humoresque, in which she walks into the ocean to her death because she believes her younger lover has shunned her, meant a lot to Victor. "You should be nice," Victor tells Bette, noting that for a woman like Joan, who's always been defined by her beauty, losing her looks—and her hair—is genuinely traumatic. But Bette, who's spent decades feeling inferior to Joan and her beauty, is not here for it.
2) Bette's promotion.
It was clear in last week's episode that Bette had staked out her territory on the Sweet Charlotte set before Joan ever arrived, but in "Abandoned!" it's revealed that she's actually a producer on the movie. This was how Aldrich persuaded her to sign on—a contractual confirmation that she is more valuable to the production than Bette—and of course, this is news to Joan.
Even worse than the power imbalance is the way Bette lords it over Joan on set, sitting next to Aldrich behind the camera making loud, tactless notes on Joan's performance mid-take. Joan's been guilty of diva behavior on plenty of occasions throughout the show, but she really is trying with Sweet Charlotte, and is understandably thrown off her game by Bette's needling.
3) Bette's most vulnerable moment yet.
Bette and Aldrich have rekindled their affair, because of course, but Bette's head is elsewhere. Despite now being so clearly in the power position, working with Joan again still stokes up deep insecurities for Bette, who tells a heartbreaking anecdote about her first screen test for Jack Warner at 22. After the audition, she overheard Warner say she had zero sex appeal, asking "who would want to fuck that?"—a remark that stung because nobody ever had. Warner's final slam? "If only she looked like Joan Crawford."
Like a lot of Feud, this story feels too neat to be true—although I don't know for sure that it isn't—but Susan Sarandon plays the hell out of it, and it goes a long way in redeeming Bette's pettiness in this episode. I really like this interpretation of the feud from Bette's side: that Joan is a trigger for her deepest and most raw insecurities, which she conceals with bravado.
4) Bette and Joan's no-holds-barred confrontation.
This has been a long time coming—since before the 1963 Oscars, at least. After Joan and Mamacita are "accidentally" left behind on set, just as they were "accidentally" stranded at the airport, Joan goes to give Bette a piece of her mind. Bette claims she had no idea about Joan being left behind and accepts no responsibility for undermining her on set, explaining "I need you to be brilliant. I'm just trying to help you get there."
This patronizing phrase pushes Joan to hit her exactly where it hurts, snapping: "The answer to feeling unattractive isn't to make yourself even uglier." Now that they're in real-talk mode, Joan and Bette reach a strange kind of common ground, both acknowledging that their different kinds of success as the most beautiful girl in the world, and the most talented girl in the world, respectively—never really fulfilled them. Being desired by everyone was "the most joyous thing in the world," Joan says, "and it was never enough."
5) "Now the only bed I can find any power in is this hospital bed."
Joan might be down and out, but at least she gets to deliver this episode's finest zinger! After one indignity too many on set, she feigns illness and checks herself into the hospital, holding up production until Aldrich more or less threatens to sue, and promises her that Bette will lay off if she comes back to set. But Bette doesn't hold up her end of that bargain—despite presenting Joan with a symbolic de-thorned rose—and within a day Joan's back in hospital with a mystery ailment the tabloids are calling "a rare form of pneumonia."
There's no question, at least in the on-screen telling of it, that Joan is really sick—this is a purely strategic play, and even being served with papers by 20th Century Fox doesn't deter her. Joan's hope seems to be that the movie will be cancelled altogether, thus screwing over both Aldrich and Bette, but it soon becomes clear that she has miscalculated.
6) Olivia De Havilland's Swiss chalet.
THAT. VIEW. THOUGH. Being offered a movie role when you've "just aired out your Swiss chalet for the season" is really the definition of first world problems, and yet I also 100% understand why Olivia would be reluctant to trade that stunning green-screened panorama for a trailer in Louisiana. In any case, she ends up accepting Bette and Aldrich's offer, and arrives on set a few days later to replace Joan in the role of Miriam.
The actual best thing about that phone call to Olivia, though, was her reference to Lady In A Cage, which is a real movie that really exists, and really features Olivia De Havilland as a wealthy widow trapped in a small private elevator. Olivia's disdain seems to be a pretty fair reflection of the movie's reception.
7) Joan ends up alone.
This was both brutal and inevitable, after the opening of last week's episode. When Joan hears the news that Sweet Charlotte is going ahead with Bette and Olivia, she's completely blindsided. She was so certain that nobody would have the gall to replace her, claiming, "There isn't an actress in town who would take food out of my mouth." This is a strange sentiment, because Joan has always seemed clear-eyed about the ruthlessness of Hollywood, and certainly has no illusions about sisterly solidarity.
But she truly didn't see this coming, and in her blind rage she throws a vase of flowers, narrowly missing Mamacita. On the one hand, it didn't look as though Joan was throwing the flowers at her, so much as near her. On the other hand, that is a pretty insane distinction to have to be drawing, and Mamacita has put up with more than enough abusive BS at this point. And so she makes good on her promise to leave the next time Joan threw something at her, walking out for good with the solemn parting shot, "You have done this to yourself." Maybe debatable, but what's not debatable is that Mamacita deserves her freedom!
Putting the final nail in the coffin is the documentary interviewer, who asks Olivia during her talking head segment, "Do you feel bad at all, about ending Joan Crawford's career?" Oof. Next week's finale should be a barrel of laughs.
