HBO Max’s original series, Love & Death, left the viewers with many questions about the ending of the previous episode, “Stepping Stone.” Pat Montgomery (Patrick Fugit) and Betty Gore (Lily Rabe) had found out about their partners’ affair. While Pat had found a love letter that he had given to Candy (Elizabeth Olsen), it was never shown or clear how Betty found out about the affair. Candy had asked how she found out, but Betty never told her the answer about how she knew. The episode left off with Betty bringing an axe into her home, and Candy was scared, afraid of why she had brought it inside after she had admitted that she and her husband had an affair.
The opening scene in this episode, “Do No Evil,” starts right where it left off, Betty and Candy in the kitchen with the axe visible on the screen. Betty warns Candy that she can’t ever see him again. Betty tells Candy that she doesn’t want to see her anymore. In clear view, as Betty leaves to grab her daughter Alisa (Harper Heath) a towel for the pool, she puts the axe right by the counter, which is a significant part of the story. The murder of Betty had something major to do with that axe. Candy is left speechless, breathing heavily, as she grabs Alisa’s swimsuit from the washroom.
After the scene, Betty puts some peppermints in Candy’s purse for Alisa, and Candy apologizes for everything. She puts a hand on Betty’s shoulder as a gesture of sorrow, then Betty looks at her, shoving her backward. When Candy gets pushed, her back hits the washer. Betty starts to yell angrily at her. Betty grabs the axe, resulting in both women having a grip on the handle. While Betty was trying to hurt Candy, Candy was trying to make sure that neither of them got hurt. Something shocking in this scene is Betty tells her, “I’ve gotta kill you.” It hasn’t been even five minutes into the episode and things are already starting to take a turn for the worst.
As Betty hits Candy’s face and her foot with the axe, the phone starts ringing, which fades in as Candy screams, Allan was calling. Candy walks out of the home with a bloody gash on her forehead, her head, face, and hair was wet and she looked shaken up. Candy had killed Betty in self-defense. As she drives to Target, clips of flashbacks from the moment were shown. As soon as she gets home, she puts her clothes in the washer, takes a shower, and tends to her wounds. Once her clothes dry, she puts them back on and goes back to the church as if nothing had happened. She starts to tell everyone that she had gone to Betty’s, and they had talked, which resulted in her losing track of time, and her watch stopped as she made it to Target.
Allan is on a work trip, and some scenes show him calling Betty, anticipating her to answer the phone. The phone keeps ringing but doesn’t get answered. When he is at the Ramada Inn, he calls her again. When she doesn’t answer the phone, Allan gets fidgety, deciding to call the Directory Assistance. He then calls Richard Garlington (Aaron Jay Rome). Richard, their neighbor, gets asked by Allan to go knock on the door. After Richard tells him she didn’t answer the door, he decides to reach out to Candy. Candy tells her that she saw Betty earlier that day and she seemed to be fine.
After he contacts Betty, he contacts Richard again, along with two other neighbors. He was starting to get very concerned. He had told them that they could do whatever they could to get into the house, just to make sure Betty was okay. Allan knew something was going on. As the three gentlemen search the house, they find blood all over the bathroom. They find the baby in her bedroom, crying and it looked like there was possibly blood on her. The men find Betty’s body laying on the floor in the washroom, blood spread everywhere. They take the baby to one of the neighbor’s homes and Allan calls the house. When he asks about Betty, they break the news to him, telling him that it looked like she had gotten shot, only getting a small glimpse of her body before shutting the door quickly.
Something important in this episode is that the police find evidence of newspapers on the kitchen table. The newspaper that stood out was an advertisement for The Shining, which came out in 1980, the same year in which the murder took place. In that film, the character uses an axe, so Betty visibly had it all planned out, but of course, it all just looked like a planned-out murder on her. The photographs of Betty’s body are just astoundingly horrific. It’s heartbreaking when Allan tells Alisa what happened. Candy gets emotional and as Allan hugs his daughter, she walks over to hug them both, comforting them.
The next day, they have the funeral for Betty and everyone’s talking and gossiping about how she had gotten murdered with an axe. Candy had to go to the police station since she was the last person that had seen Betty. It was noticeable that Candy was nervous, but she tried to keep her cool and act normal, telling the officers what she had told everyone else. The officers question Allan some more, looking for more details to work with. When they ask if he’s ever had an affair, he casually says that he hasn’t. But later on that night, he calls Chief Abbott (Brad Leiland) and tells him he lied and he lets him know the affair was with Candy.
This episode was well written and played out. The action came right off the bat and it gave the viewers answers to questions that were thought of since the first episode, “The Huntress.” The murder of Betty Gore was the first murder in twenty-five years in Wylie, Texas. It will be intriguing to see how the rest of the story plays out in the next episodes. How long will it take for the truth to come out? What else will be found in the murder?
Rating: 9/10