“The Beast in Me” is the perfect story for a predator’s era

Moments after The Beast in Me introduces Nile Jarvis the real estate scion played by Matthew Rhys viewers are left with limited questions as to whether he murdered his wife If you haven t yet watched the limited series you may be under the impression that this is a spoiler Rest assured that it isn t Rhys goes out of his way to ensure that his character isn t the least bit charming His gaze is colder than a shark s his words are spiked with rows of piercing teeth Nile s first interaction with his new next-door neighbor Aggie Wiggs Claire Danes reeks of odious self-importance She comes to his door angry at having her fury-weighted solitude interrupted by his guard dogs running loose on her property and his estate s alarm system shattering the neighborhood s midnight peace Greeting Aggie is Nile s gracious accommodating second wife Nina Brittany Snow who radiates sweetness as she apologizes and admits that they re huge fans of Aggie s work Then Nile emerges on the upstairs balcony popping out not to say hello but to demand why Aggie hasn t acquiesced to his offer to add a paved trail to the communally shared woods behind their homes He then demands that she account to his home office where moments after she moves into the room he tersely says Sit as if issuing a command to another canine Almost as an afterthought he adds Please Netflix Brittany Snow as Nina in The Beast in Me What follows is less of a neighborly conversation than Nile prodding a anticipated victim for exploitable weaknesses Aggie is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and profiler of modern icons who hasn t published much since her bestselling memoir came out in Nile wonders whether the delay has something to do with her young son s death four years ago and not politely As Aggie explodes at this overreach you can almost hear Nile s inner voice exuberantly hiss Bingo Of class he killed his wife Even as we suspect that we also accept that Nile s loathsomeness fails to negate his continued influence in this drama s version of New York Decades of lionizing men like Nile Jarvis have made his detestable personality not just easy to spot but queasily appealing The arrival of The Beast in Me couldn t be better timed with the drama surrounding the release of the Epstein files whirling Aggie and Nile s cat-and-mouse contest is compelling but one part of a larger story about corruption and class-based collusion in a city that is home to more billionaires than anywhere else on the planet That also aligns nicely with several modern precepts we ve come to tolerate about certain New Yorkers who are propped up by political and corporate forces that enable them to get away with just about everything Related We re all living in Murdaugh Country now Nile may be predatory but his father Martin Jarvis Jonathan Banks operates with an overt ruthlessness You get the sense that the ambiguity surrounding whether Nile buried his wife was helped along by Martin who has the pull and wealth to erase anyone he wants from existence Martin s current fixation is muscling New Yorkers out of affordable housing to stomp a permanent boot print onto Manhattan Decades of lionizing men like Nile Jarvis have made his detestable personality not just easy to spot but queasily appealing If you believe the world is divided into hunter and prey and that leadership is preponderance effectively wielded by brutes with twisted appetites you can see why people clamor to be close to Nile and Martin Nina for example was the personal assistant to Madison Leila George Nile s first wife who was promoted to life partner shortly after Madison s apparent suicide It s a story as old as time The city s politicians have almost entirely kowtowed to their pet project Jarvis Yards save for one council member Olivia Benitez Aleyse Shannon She has mounted a loud protest movement to skew constituents sentiment against the project delaying Jarvis Yards construction But the Jarvises have avenues of dragging women like Olivia Benitez through the dirt too Guiding the tension through greater part of this eight-episode thriller however isn t only whether Niles will continue skating free of legal consequences for anything he does but whether he ll devour Aggie as part of the hunt he s lured her into supposedly for redemption Officially The Beast in Me isn t based on any true story although its resemblance to the events of The Jinx The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst is impossible to ignore For one the Jarvises are New York real estate moguls like the Dursts Like Madison Durst s wife Kathleen mysteriously disappeared in Friends and family long suspected he was behind her vanishing which only increased when others who grew close to Durst began dying violently Netflix Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs and Tim Guinee as Rick in The Beast in Me The explosive Jinx finale coincided with Durst s arrest and being charged with the murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman in He was tried and convicted of killing Berman in the same year that New York agents charged him ultimately with Kathleen s death He died in before he could face trial As for Nile the Jarvises point to a suicide note that Madison left one that seemed out of character to at least one person who was close to her as well as the FBI agent David Lyons inspecting Nile s corrupt business deals Everyone else parrots the official ruling especially those who have something to gain The Jarvises intimidation tactics secure particular of this agreement enacted by threats and other grim work carried out by Martin s imposing brother Rick Tim Guinee the family s muscle But the audience is only privy to this after Aggie agrees to Nile s invitation to profile him for her next book instead of examining the unlikely kinship that existed between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia people with starkly oppositional interpretations of the law and justice Potentially fascinating subject matter no doubt but also a snooze Nile tells Aggie Isn t he one of the richest men in America and a guy everyone thinks offed his wife better bait What may be an peculiar persona for Rhys to take on is entirely familiar to anyone who has seen that archival video of Jeffrey Epstein in s party monster mode From an outsider s perspective this is a mutually beneficial arrangement if the circumstances were equal Nile recognizes that Aggie s writer s block is a byproduct of an all-consuming rancor directed at the young man who caused the crash that killed her son who walks free after the tragedy was ruled an accident Aggie also has a stellar reputation in the literary world making her a worthy instrument to persuade the world of his innocence Since she s immune to Nile s intimidation tactics he secretly does her another favor she d never ask of him mainly because doing so also satiates his sociopathic urges Danes and Rhys each starred in popular critically acclaimed prestige dramas she in Homeland he in The Americans That is the simplest explanation of why The Beast in Me has caught on with viewers Homeland co-developer Howard Gordon serves as this show s showrunner and he s amply familiar with Danes preternatural ability to break out an anxiety-squinched expression and quivering lower lip precisely when the action calls for them Limited humans pretend to hover on the brink of a total breakdown more convincingly Rhys portrayal of Nile though is another story As Soviet spy Philip Jennings on The Americans Rhys stood fast in his character s compassion for others despite his escalating body count Nile though is unencumbered by empathy guilt or the urge for compromise a mile-long bunting of red flags spooled into one cashmere-clad creep We need your help to stay independent Subscribe in current times to sponsorship Salon s progressive journalism What may be an unique persona for Rhys to take on is entirely familiar to anyone who has seen that archival video of Jeffrey Epstein in s party monster mode You know the one right Donald Trump whispers something in Epstein s ear causing him to break into a ghastly smile It has been played dozens of times across TV since Epstein became America s Baba Yaga because that moment more than others encapsulates our predatory era People from every stripe of the partisan spectrum have clamored for the Epstein files to be made citizens on the simple assumption that the renowned pedophile had damning relationships with wealthy people they ve long detested Trump is only one of them The thousands of pages of emails text messages and other communications that the House Oversight Committee obtained from Epstein s estate provide insight into his links to famous writers university administrators political advisors everyone from Steve Bannon to Peter Thiel to Woody Allen News outlets have focused on what Epstein s emails reveal about his friendship with Trump and what the president knew and did versus Trump s clumsy disavowals of his old friend But it shouldn t escape notice that a large number of of the communications soliciting Epstein s advice and favors occurred after the financier pleaded guilty in for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution in Florida People who knew what he was doing still desired to benefit from his influence Netflix Jonathan Banks as Martin Jarvis in The Beast in Me Although releasing the files was a campaign pledge Trump s political hijacking of the Department of Justice made it a near certainty he thought that he could renege on that assurance without losing his base After all the other and more important promise he made to his followers was that once he returned to office he would mount a revenge campaign on everyone who had wronged him I am your warrior I am your justice he noted in And for those who have been wronged and betrayed I am your retribution More than two years after giving that speech Trump s retribution campaign has materialized as terrorizing blue cities with Immigration and Customs Enforcement jackboots haphazardly assaulting American citizens and detaining law-abiding immigrants He s shaken down the media with flimsy lawsuits that a few of the biggest companies elected to settle instead of battling He s compelled his Justice Department to indict current and former personnel who dared to hold him legally accountable for selected of his wrongdoings None of it has expanded employment opportunities for Americans or helped the cost of living go down a factor of reckless tariffs imposed on foreign commerce partners another revenge target Want more from practices than just the latest trend The Swell highlights art made to last Sign up here The Beast in Me says nothing directly about any of that of curriculum but it doesn t have to It functions as a parable confirming our resentment of class abuses distilling that hostility into a dance for dominance between a hostile prince and a pursuer of truth he persons he can fool just like everyone else Ultimately it isn t Aggie s curiosity about Madison s murder that spurs her on well past the borders of dangerous territory Rather it s her realization that Nile set himself on exploiting her darkness for his own benefit Retribution is seductive like that promising a clean line between good and evil But it s an illusion she eventually concludes in her book I know because I felt its pull after losing my son I cradled vengeance like a second grief a sacred companion I recounted myself a story about right and wrong about punishing the guilty Netflix Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs in The Beast in Me Niles caught the scent of her bloodlust she says at a community reading and like certain dark angel made manifest a wish too horrible to name Improbable scenarios are part of this show s bargain with viewers I will never understand why people refrain from locking their doors for example But the series demonstration of what numerous of us are willing to excuse to rise on the wings of wrongdoing makes absolute sense That too various pardon the worst sins of the wealthiest evildoers is the fatal social flaw The Beast in Me observes with a piercing stare Whether this situation s resolution can be characterized as realistic is open to interpretation as we declared it s entirely fictional But the one certainty it hints at is that the Nile Jarvises among us will continue to get away with murder and worse because it s safer to turn a blind eye to those crimes than to insist the perpetrators be held responsible regardless of how wealthy they are Sadly that is the nature of willing prey The Beast in Me is at this time streaming on Netflix Read more about lifestyles of the rich who get away with it The Jinx Part Two was seemingly inevitable The Jinx Would Robert Durst exist without Andrew Jarecki The consequence-free life of Charlie Sheen The post The Beast in Me is the perfect story for a predator s era appeared first on Salon com