The Fall of the House of Usher Premiere Recap: Grade Mike Flanagan’s Poe-Inspired Take on a Twisted Pharma Family
Roderick Usher’s got more family members than a raven has feathers. So let’s make like Mirabel Madrigal and kick off this recap of The Fall of the House of Usher’s premiere episode with a round of introductions.
We’ll start with the man himself, Roderick (played by Bruce Greenwood, The Resident) and his twin sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica), the heads of a pharmaceutical company that has made billions off its patented opioid painkiller. Madeline has no children but Roderick has many: Frederick (Henry Thomas, The Haunting of Hill House), the eldest offspring, yet a manchild; Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan, Midnight Mass), a tightly wound, wannabe Goop-style entrepreneur; Camille (Kate Siegel, The Haunting of Hill House), a snarky PR maven; Victorine (T’nia Miller, The Haunting of Bly Manor), a purveyor of biotech; Napoleon (Rahul Kohli, iZombie), a video-game financer who loves to party; and Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota, The Midnight Club), the youngest, a club kid no one takes seriously.
If you don’t have everyone straight, don’t worry: Most of them are dead at the start of the Netflix series’ first hour. Macabre, right? Well, that’s only fitting for a series that takes great inspiration from — and creative license with — the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe.
In a moment, we’ll want to hear what you thought about Episode 1. But first, a recap of “A Midnight Dreary.”
ROUGH WEEK | We first see Roderick Usher as he sits in a nearly empty church, attending a funeral for three people. We’ll later learn that the dead are Victorine, Tamerlane and Frederick. Madeline sits near him, as does his teen granddaughter, Lenore (Kyleigh Curran, Secrets of Sulphur Springs). Roderick keeps having disturbing visual flashes, including one of a masked woman standing in the balcony near the organ. When Lenore asks what’s going on, Roderick ominously says, “She’s here.”
Elsewhere, in the office of United States Attorney Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly, Alias), a bulletin board full of photos and newspaper clippings clues us in to the various members of the Usher family. It also informs us that, in addition to Freddie, Vic and Tammy, Napoleon, Camille and Prospero are also dead — and all six of the kids have died within the past week or so. Dupin gets word that he’s been summoned to meet with “him,” and when he pulls up to a decrepit old house lit only with hurricane lamps, we see that the man in question is Roderick.
A puzzled Dupin sits as Roderick greets him, asks him to sit down in the living room — the place is Roderick’s childhood home — and pours him some very expensive booze. Usher waives his right to an attorney and then announces that he’s going to give the prosecutor “the only thing you’ve ever wanted: my confession.” Apparently, Dupin has brought 73 charges against Usher, including defrauding the U.S. government; Roderick says he’ll confess to everything “and I’ll throw in a bonus: I’ll tell you how my children died.” Dupin is even more confused, because the siblings’ causes of death are already public. But Roderick sadly says nope. Settle in, everyone: It’s story time!
THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE OF USHER | Roderick takes us back to 1953, when he and Madeline lived in the house with their very religious mom, Eliza (Annabeth Gish, The X-Files). She was the personal assistant to William Longfellow, the head of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, who lived nearby with his family. But she forbid Madeline and Roderick from ever going near his house… which, naturally, only made them want to see it more. When one time they did get caught snooping, Longfellow (Robert Longstreet, Midnight Mass) got angry and revealed himself to be a class-A jerk. Oh, and though it’s not stated outright for a while, let’s cut to the chase: Roderick and Madeline are Longfellow’s unacknowledged bastards.
Nine years later, Eliza is bedridden and writhing in pain, though she won’t let the kids call a doctor because she believes faith will heal her. So the siblings to go Longfellow’s again and ask him to tell their mom to seek medical help, because she’s more likely to listen to him. He gets angry and throws them off his property, yelling about their “insinuations” and “grift.”
Eliza dies soon after. Knowing that their mother wouldn’t want to be embalmed, Madeline and Roderick call no one; instead, they a coffin and bury her in the yard. There’s a thunderstorm that night. Roderick wakes and quickly rouses his sister when he sees that the coffin has been broken open. The tension builds as the kids realize that there are footprints from the grave to the house, and a muddy handprint on the doorframe. And the power is out inside, which means that Eliza’s appearance in the home, lit by a flash of lightning, is truly scary. She grabs Roderick by the throat but then seems to think better of it, dropping him so she can march outside and down the street to the Longfellow residence. As Madeline and Roderick watch, their mother finds her former boss/lover/sexual harasser/it’s not really clear outside and chokes him to death with preternatural strength. Then she collapses next to him, really most sincerely dead this time.
The true manner of Longfellow’s death never got out to the public, Usher tells Dupin in the present. And when Roderick casually mentions that his mother is standing behind the attorney, Dupin thinks it’s a power play meant to scare him, and refuses to turn around. Anyway, the point of this whole story? Even though Roderick vowed to be nothing like his biological father, he has six children by five mothers. Still, “they’re all mine, and I treated them so. If you’re an Usher, the gates are open, period. Matter of principle.”
WHO’S THE LEAK? | And the last time the entire family was together and alive was in court two weeks ago, at the opening of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals’ federal trial. The family’s lawyer is a gruff guy named Arthur Pym (Mark Hamil, the Star Wars films), and he’s very good at his job: As Dupin says in his opening statement, the family has not had any consequences of its actions stick for the past 40 years. But this time will be different, he vows, because this time the feds have an informant from the inside who’s going to testify.
This announcement rattles the family, particularly when Dupin refuses to identify the person in question in order to protect them until the moment they take the stand. So Roderick has Pym round up all the Ushers, “spouses, too,” for a mandatory family dinner. That’s where we get to know Frederick’s wife, Morella (Crystal Balint, Midnight Mass); Victorine’s fianceé, Alessandra (Paola Núñez, The Purge), a physician who’s helping Vic develop some kind of heart device that they’re testing on monkeys; Tammy’s husband, Bill (Matt Biedel, The Midnight Club); and Juno (Ruth Codd, The Midnight Club), Roderick’s significantly younger current wife. Napoleon, aka “Leo,” also is dating a guy named Julius, but he sees very casual about the relationship (even though they live together), and Julius is not present at dinner.
Right before the meal, Prospero — or “Perry” — pitches Madeline and Roderick on a business idea for an upscale, elite, erotic nightclub. All of the kids are promised an entrepreneurial nest egg, after all, and this is the idea for his. Roderick is in an awful mood and vetoes it right away. “Being an Usher is about changing the world. It’s not a f—king b—wjob whiskey bar,” he growls. Might this bad mood be connected to the fact that his doctor showed up and wanted a private word before dinner? Or maybe it’s because Roderick just had a startling flash of a woman (played by Carla Gugino, The Haunting of Hill House) who’s not actually there?
Anyway, after dinner, Pym passes around new non-disclosure agreements. Is Madeline joking when she says those who break them will be killed? Nobody wants to find out. Then Roderick offers $50 million to whichever family member can identify the informant. Let the accusations begin!
‘IT’S TIME’ | That dinner was the last time all of the Ushers were together and had a pulse, Roderick tells Dupin. And though he’s got more to say about their deaths, he wants to tell the attorney about a woman who figures prominently in the family’s story. So we flash back to Dec. 31, 1979, when Roderick and Madeline as young adults (Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights and Willa Fitzgerald, Scream: The TV Series, respectively) walk into a bar. They’re dressed as Gatsby and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and the bartender — the woman Roderick had a vision of after Perry’s pitch — correctly surmises that they’ve come from a costume party. Her name is Verna, and she notices that Roderick’s hands are roughed-up, but doesn’t say anything.
When the siblings are alone, Madeline doesn’t want to talk about where they just were or what just happened, but she does want to make it clear to Roderick that they’re only at the bar to establish an alibi. In the present, Dupin seems more interested than he was before: After all, that’s the night “everything changed” at Fortunato, though there have been only rumors and mystery about the evening for decades.
Then we’re back at the funeral that started the episode. Roderick sees his dead children, their bodies mangled, standing on the balcony. And when he opens the door to his limousine after the service, a very creepy harlequin is sitting in the backseat. Roderick’s nose starts to bleed. He falls backward and lands on the ground. And while Madeline and Pym quickly work to get him to a hospital, a raven stares down at Roderick from the wrought-iron fence. “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time,” a bloody Roderick repeats to himself.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Grade the premiere via the poll below, then sound off in the comments!
