Mythical wife and I recently watched All Her Fault, and to cut to the chase, I thought it was pretty good; but I could have one massive major fucking gripe about the show, it had nothing to do with the story, the acting, or any plot critiques, but the fact that the show was filmed and presented with a low-contrast filter that basically made the show nigh impossible at times, or at least, actually impossible to see what the fuck was going on at times.
The above image might be slightly exaggerated, but it illustrates what many scenes throughout the show felt like when watching them. The contrast was so busted up that there are countless scenes where you’re seeing moving silhouettes of people, and completely missing out on all sorts of bodily acting, facial expressions or reactions, and more than once, I found myself trying to tinker with my hardware’s settings, to see if it was something wrong with my configuration, only to find out that it wasn’t.
A cursory Google search revealed that I was not the only person who came to this revelation, and it’s comforting to see that many others endured and felt the same things I did. As good as I thought the series was, I think it would’ve been better had viewers been able to fucking see shit, especially when there’s a lot of emotionally charged scenarios where it would’ve been helpful to see expressions and reactions to dialogue.
But other than the visual flaws, the story, plot and acting were all high quality, and I thought the series was solid from a storytelling standpoint. It was almost laughable at just how lily white the cast and the scenarios were, and there’s something to be said about how fast affluent white people are capable of unraveling, and the types of demons that they all must be hiding in their closets, based on just how fast shit hit the fan with most of the characters in the series.
The point remains, you have a whole bunch of rich white people dealing with problems that stem with miscommunications with their nannies* and how fast they turn on each other when heat starts escalating, and everyone is driving around in Teslas, Rivians, Audis and BMWs throughout the Northside Chicago suburbs, and there are times where it truly feels really peak white people.
*yes, I am aware of the irony of taking shots at rich white people with in-home child care considering I have an au pair, but y’all need to understand just how fucking broke I am
However, what really made me feel like writing about the series, other than to trash their shitty visual execution, was the one thing that I never expected this show to have, that I will considerately hide behind the jump seeing as how it’s just a giant fucking spoiler:
One of the main characters, Peter Irvine, is arguably one of the most deplorable, despicable, and worst characters in history. Like Joffrey Baratheon terrible, Skyler White bad (although I never really understood this one), or Jamie Dutton miserable.
Like, I knew nothing about All Her Fault two weeks ago, and immediately after watching it, Peter Irvine shoots right up to the top of the list of awful characters, strongly contesting his position on the Mt. Rushmore of turrible characters.
So much, that I kind of feel bad for the actor, Jake Lacy, because of his portrayal of the character, I have to wonder that directors and casters in the future will only see him as capable of playing rich white assholes with overwhelming narcissism and control issues, seeing as how it’s also not a far cry from the role he had in the first season of The White Lotus.
I mean, if it gets him paid and working, play to your strengths, but there are crazier people all around the world that assume actors are basically the roles they play, and could react accordingly.
Anyway, the show does a good job of kind of painting Peter Irvine in a light that makes him seem suspicious and generally unlikeable from the onset. Once the situation and players involved start to become clear, my thought was that he was probably cheating on his wife, at the very least, among money laundering and/or skimming in order to have a go-bag full of cash at a moment’s notice.
But when the shit really starts to unfold, and all the truths start to emerge, Peter’s character just continues to sink and sink and sink, and just when you think that he couldn’t possibly be an even worst human being, something else comes up, and it gets to a point where all I can do is just laugh at just how horrible of a person that he is.
Like, full spoilers here on his character arc, what we have with Peter is:
- Narcissist
- Control freak
- Gets off on being needed
- To the point where he manipulates situations to ensure people need him
- Lied about permanently injuring his little brother, pinning the blame on his sister who eventually became an addict from the guilt
- But was so committed to the lie, he treated his sister like absolute garbage and constantly reminded her of the false truth that he was injured on account of her
- Killed his son’s ransomer
- And instead of rescuing his son immediately, he staged his release by abandoning him to the police in order to help cover up his involvement
- Killed his son’s kidnapper, by shooting her with her own gun, even though she had yielded and was trying to beg for mercy in order to hide the truth that she figured out
- That he had t-boned her years ago, leading to a scenario where he swapped her newborn baby was swapped out with his freshly killed newborn baby, and that the son that was kidnapped was actually not his son
- Lied to the police and wife like 1,278 times
It got to a point where the only possible resolution with him, other than getting away with it, and the show ending horribly at the thought of the bad guy getting away with it, was for him to die, and fortunately the show does steer towards a happy ending, and Peter is killed, by his own wife, exploiting his fatal allergy to fucking soy, but he’s such a miserable fuck that his own siblings subtly assist in covering up his death, and the cop that’s in charge of his kidnapping case figures everything out himself and doesn’t narc on Marissa Irving either.
The point remains is that Peter Irving emerges from this show as one of the most despicable and unbelievably evil characters ever created. The guy wasn’t necessarily complete Hitler-level evil, but his narcissism, hunger for power and his delusional ability to believe and live his own lies with conviction, and ultimately his lack of remorse for murder, skyrocket his position as terrible characters with great speed.
For giving us that, I felt that it was warranted to write about the show, because it was good, but it probably wouldn’t have gotten to that level without such a memorably evil character.
