Disclaimer
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
From the beginning, theres been a circularity toDisclaimers timelines.
The series premiere opens on a teenage boy and his girlfriend on a sleeper train to Venice.
The boy, we learn soon enough, never makes it home from that trip.
There are the photos their son took, but his mother will keep those a secret from her husband.
A decade after she dies, though, her husband does find it.
At this point, he has no son, no wife, no job, no purpose.
He reads the book the story his wife invented to fit the pictures her son took.
Pictures of Italian vistas.
Pictures of his girlfriend.
Pictures of an older woman in scant clothing.
This book opens on a boy and his girlfriend on a sleeper train to Venice.
The boy, his father will read soon enough, never makes it home from that trip.
The father mistakes this account for reality.
Jonathan is cocksure in one scene and guileless in the next.
Catherine is a tease, a seductress a teenagers wet dream and a mothers worst nightmare.
Is it because Nancy has accidentally landed on the truth?
Or is there some leering, time-stamped photo we havent seen yet of Catherines eyes closed on the sand?
Or perhaps its because Catherine, too, cant be trusted.
After 20 years of secrecy and silence, can she even be sure what happened and when?
The first half ofDisclaimercompelled us to ask how much of what we were watching was real.
Now, were left to ask if any of it can be.
We were warned early on:Beware of narrative and form.
So lets wind down the Jonathan story line as told by Nancy and read by everyone else.
This is a much more confident Jonathan than we encountered inepisode three a sexual metamorphosis, perhaps.
He takes Catherines photo in the hotel suite and, later, on the beach.
Yes, thats how Nancy imagines it.
Jonathan confidently training his lens on his lover as she sunbathes a few beach towels over.
Propriety demands that they pretend to be strangers.
Nancys Catherine speaks fluent Italian; shes glamorous and terrible.
Nancys Jonathan, though, is young and vulnerable.
He believes he is in love with Catherine and pledges himself to her.
Nancys Catherine is heartless and cruel.
The lovers are quarreling when they return to the beach.
Jonathan goes for a walk or a swim.
Catherine lays down for a nap next to Nicholas, who is mercifully okay despite her neglect.
But it wont be long now.
The lifeguards are distracted by tending to a boys bloody foot, as we already knew they would be.
When Catherine opens her eyes, Nicky and the dinghy are far offshore.
Jonathan is a strong swimmer, but in Nancys version, Nicholas doesnt want his help.
Soon, other men join the rescue mission.
Nicholas is pulled in safely.
The others make it back to shore safely.
It takes a minute before anyone notices that Jonathan is still struggling in the turbulent surf.
By the time the lifeguards reach him, its too late.
They cant rescue Jonathan, only retrieve his body.
Episode four also follows Nancy to her end.
She quits her job and stays home poring over Jonathans bedroom.
The Kylie Minogue posters on his bedroom walls become the text forThe Perfect Strangers overwrought foreplay.
Nancy finds photos that Jonathan took with his camera before he left for Europe.
Theyre basic but artsy, and she sees in them a kernel of genius.
On the page, shell imagine her son more confident behind the lens than across the bistro table.
Specifically, Nancy finds candid photos Jonathan took of his mother without her ever noticing.
Resting in the garden.
How interested Jonathan was in her.
How much of his mother he saw.
Soon, shell devote the rest of her life to seeing him.
Nancy moves into Jonathans bedroom.
She stays there for years.
Stephen brings her meals but he doesnt clean the kitchen or make the bed.
Nancy gets cancer and dies in her sons room, drowning in memories as vast as the sea.
The book is done.
Its author is dead.
Its protagonist is dead.
The inspiration for the protagonist is dead.
In present-day, Robert sits in the cafe, where Nancys prose has given him an erection.
Is this the power of her blue fiction, or is this someone elses imagining?
It feels like fiction, of course.
An omniscient female narrator tells us whats in Roberts head, and its mostly over-the-top jealous-male rage.
(These same preoccupations litter the sepia-toned timeline, too.)
Eventually, Robert and Catherine both head to work.
They say and do things that you cant actually imagine real people saying and doing.
No one breaks a smile.
Robert walks into a meeting with his shirt untucked while his secretary fetches him Alka-Seltzer.
It fizzes away in his water glass.
(Does anyone really take Alka-Seltzer?)
The narrator talks us through her thinking, which appears to progress without really changing.
She realizes that calling Stephen was a mistake.
If all Stephen wanted was her acknowledgment, then he wouldnt have sent Robert those dirty photos.
She should have been less secretive.
She should have been less silent.
Shes lost control of the narrative.
He kicks Catherine out of their home in front of their son, but he does it shrewdly.
Hes packed her bag and her passport for her.
He mentions to Nick that theres a big scoop that needs Catherines attention.
The threat is clear: Do what I say, or our son will learn the truth.
Conspicuously, the narrator returns to the second person here.
This is not how a person thinks about her own situation.
Its the same sentiment that was etched on young Catherines face on the beach that awful day.
Poor Jonathan never stood a chance (at least if you ask Nancy).
