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It makes sense that Apple TV+ is releasing the first two episodes ofDisclaimersimultaneously.
How easy is it to ruin a marriage?
Stephen may have a flip-book of naughty photos, but his real weapon is his will to destroy.
Young Catherine is in silhouette against the sea, toying with her hair.
She notices Jonathan taking her picture and confronts him playfully, though he doesnt realize shes being playful.
Get it together, mate.
Unless … Catherine must be reveling in how effortless it is, how powerful this boy makes her feel.
Whatever difficulties life holds, theres this to console her: She can make a man shudder.
The dialogue between them is clunky.
She corrects Jonathan for calling the sea the ocean, flirting pedantically, I guess.
They both say aura a lot until 4-year-old Nick gives Jonathan an opportunity to play the hero.
That will be her modus operandi from this point forward.
Step two: identify the author ofThe Perfect Stranger.For this, Catherine heads into the office.
In voice-over, she self-flagellates for failing to research this matter as rigorously as she would a work subject.
Then she takes out a notebook and makes a list entitled Who knows?
She draws a circle aroundMotherandFatherto indicate theyre both dead.
So lets start with Jonathans mother, Nancy Brigstocke (Lesley Manville).
It turns out Catherine and Nancy once met, briefly, at a London cafe.
Already dying of cancer, Nancy reached out posing as a widow.
Nancy wants Catherine to come clean, though its hard to see how that would help anyone now.
Still, I dont blame her.
When you cant have what you really want, you convince yourself to want other things instead.
Rather than getting her son back, Nancy wants this perfect strangers confession.
Instead of that, a consolation prize: Nancy asks to see Nicholas.
How much has Catherine kept secret from Robert?
The affair, of course, but the whole ordeal?
The beach, the police, their son nearly lost at sea?
The waiter (whoever he is)?
How many times did Catherine have to remind little Nicky not to tell Daddy?
Not to mention the brave boy who carried their things and rescued him from the surf.
He saved your son, Nancy pleads.
A son for a son, a mother to a mother.
And then Saint Catherine lets it slip, almost accidentally: Well, I wish he hadnt.
Nicholas would have been about 14 years old when Catherine says that.
Was he already a disappointment to his mother?
Or was it motherhood in general she would have preferred to escape?
Stephen poses as a bumbling old widower in need of a lightweight vacuum.
He eventually bails on purchasing the Dyson but leaves the novel on the counter for Nick to find.
Robert recognizes the hotel in the photos but not the woman in them not really.
His Catherine was never like this: free, seductive, burning.
His Catherine is at home right now whipping up sole meuniere.
His Catherine is always putting off sex, not staring down the lens of it.
Suddenly, Roberts timeline jumps past Catherines.
(Did he borrow Hermiones Time-Turner?)
In this (new?)
Nicholas doesnt remember the trip to Italy, he insists, the one Robert left early.
In a sense, not this family at all.
He hands Catherine the packet of photos; she cant bear to look at them.
These could soon be all over the internet, he barks at her.
Roberts right, I suppose, but that doesnt seem like something Stephen would do.
Stephen is dismantling Catherines world intimately, person by person, blowing it up one relationship at a time.
He likes setting himself little tasks.
Head to Snappy Snaps; bypass the security at Roberts office building.
Stephen, if were being real, could have done all of this more efficiently over email.
That this was all over for her already and rather painlessly, at that?
Im so sorry, she says.
Catherine decided to go back to work when they got home from that trip.
Now, Robert believes it was all connected: a fundamental boredom with being his wife.
The affair dovetails so nicely with Roberts paranoias.
He has long worried that he wasnt sexually experienced enough for Catherine when they got together.
In this new house that isnt yet their home, they fight about it.
Roberts not above a bitchy little potshot: I should have listened to my family.
They fucking warned me about you!
Robert searches for more details to feed his anger.
Did the affair continue?
Did our son hear you together?
No wonder he cant even look at you.
Its hard to predict where the show will travel from here.
Two episodes have covered only two or three days.
Timelines that appeared distinct have collided.
Cats, always sinister, appear and reappear.
So does the toy plane Nick saved from Catherines clear-out of the new house in episode one.
Theres no mystery to solve here.
We know who wrote the book; we know who published it.
Beware of narrative and form, were told, butDisclaimerdoesnt commit to any one narrative or form.
