Happily Never After

The way they jump around with the story like it's a Tarantino movie is annoying and unbecoming of a true crime series. You're not creating suspense, I promise: anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together can figure out from the title of the show that either the wife killed the husband or the husband killed the wife. It's not a mystery. For the love of good tv just start from whatever you consider the beginning (honestly each episode could easily be cut down to 20 min if they took out all the "Her smile lit up the room" and "He'd give you the shirt off his back"-we know. They always do.) and work your way to the inevitable conclusion the way it happened in real life.

This series could be a lot better. Like the glut of other 'true-crime' recreations, the subject matter does intrigue us. But after a while, they all look alike and offer nothing but voyeurism. Scenes are repeated ad nauseam, and the victims' families and friends, interviewed in between, come off as being used for exploitation. Though she's skilled as a narrator, I found Marlo Thomas' nice-girl reputation to be strangely at odds with the material. Any positive lessons that might be gleaned, such as exercising caution when forming relationships, is pretty much overshadowed by the lurid aspects. Three episodes were enough for me.