The Undoing Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Do No Harm
Carissa Pavlica
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It looks like The Undoing Season 1 Episode 3 is attempting to throw our scent off of Jonathan Fraser and onto his wife.
But it's not going to be that easy, no matter how determined the hapless detectives seem to put Grace in the spotlight.
Grace's mind is all over the place, rightly so, but I don't for a minute think she had anything to do with Elena's murder. What is interesting, though, is how The Undoing shines a light on how easy it is to become a suspect through no fault of your own.
"Do No Harm" picked up pretty much right where The Undoing Season 1 Episode 2 ended: with Grace on the phone with emergency services, turning in her husband and claiming to be terrified.
Grace should be terrified of her husband. He's not letting up on his claim of innocence, nor should he under the circumstances. But if Grace couldn't trust him in their marriage, then why should she trust him now?
Let's be clear, adultery and murder are not the same. But the level of trust you need to give you life over to someone else should be sacred. When that sacred bond is breached, you should begin listening to all of the other little nagging thoughts that have ever passed through your mind.
Grace's father, Franklin, wasn't shy about saying pretty much that to his daughter. The reality is that everything she thought she knew was upended, and if Jonathan could lie to her about Elena, then what else is he capable of doing?
Franklin: Are you now believing that Jonathan is innocent?
Grace: I'm just open to the idea.
Franklin: And are you open to the idea of you and Jonathan getting back together?
Grace, though, is fighting back against outside influences and struggling to reconnect with her husband. Her father sees it, and so does Sylvia. These situations seem impossible to navigate.
It would be lovely for Grace to believe in her husband's innocence, but Jonathan just cheated on her, and the lies he's compounding sound dirty out of the gate.
The real struggle I'm having watching Grace consider Jonathan's innocence is that she's a therapist. She sees how people behave and knows how they try to dodge the truth for their own benefit.
Jonathan is doing it for himself, and now Grace is trying to hold on to some semblance of normalcy, trying to remain tethered to the world she knows, possibly to her detriment.
But new information comes her way all the time that should make that tether a little more difficult to hold onto. For example, what did Jonathan do with the $500k he got from Franklin?
Could Jonathan have needed that much money to make it look like he was still employed? That seems like a lot of money for an oncologist for a period of months. But it's just another lie Grace has to weather.
Of course, maybe Jonathan is innocent. But there are too many questionable points for me to believe that.
The first is that he ran after the argument. He does what a good narcissist verging on psychopath does in the same situation: he reveals just enough of the truth to formulate a plausible story. In his case, he admits to being at the studio and arguing, even returning and seeing Elena's dead body.
That story makes it more difficult to prove him wrong. He left pieces of himself there. Very handy.
The second thing he's doing is that is not only questionable, but really dirty pool is blaming the victim. There is little reason to do that. She's dead. But instead of coming off as a decent guy who got caught up in a bad situation, he is literally throwing all of the blame for his situation at Elena. That's lunacy.
When Grace took Henry to visit Jonathan in jail and Jonathan began that line of reasoning with a young boy, I was disgusted. Just like there was no reason to paint Elena as the worst, there was even less reason to tell his son, unless he's hoping that Henry's input will help sway Grace.
And when a grown man needs to toss a woman under the bus and use his son as leverage, well, there's not much character involved with the guy.
What's interesting is how Grace utilizes her background with Elena and hero worship for Jonathan, but she doesn't similarly use it to study his behavior -- lashing out at the suggestion Jonathan is a psychopath -- or her own.
When the subject of hero worship came into play, it dawned on me that Grace sees Jonathan similarly. That's why she's always revisiting him with his patients. But listening his former coworker describe Jonathan, there's little to be impressed about.
In his view, Jonathan fed off of the emotional rush he got being that hero. He saw Jonathan as far less compassionate than Grace, going through the motions so that he could feed his addiction.
Grace's conversation with Fernando was also fascinating. She had no problem playing the wronged wife card, but on the face of it, her card doesn't stack up to his.
Fernando: My son had cancer, I put him into your husband's care; he fucked my wife. What kind of doctor does that?
Grace: What kind of mother ends up fucking her child's oncologist? I'm under a lot of pressure right now, and I've reached the point where I'm not taking shit from anyone. Mr. Alvez, were there other men? Were there other men? Were there?
Grace has a great existence. Her husband cheated and possibly killed his lover, the mother of his illicit child. Fernando has been dealing with a child with cancer, raising another man's body, and the wife that cheated on him was murdered.
Grace came off as cold and unfeeling when confronting Elena's husband, but I still don't think she's culpable.
Those detectives are all kinds of annoying, but at least we know why they have been pushing her so hard. She's a suspect.
Grace is known for her walks. The strangest part of her being out on that particular night and time is that Jonathan wasn't home, so going on a late-night stroll meant leaving Henry alone in the house.
Maybe that's just a loose thread in plot development, but it didn't give me the warm fuzzies for Grace. Between that and taking Henry to see Jonathan in jail, it wasn't a good night for Grace as a mother.
Finally, Grace took her dad's advice and talked with an attorney. I thought she was going to talk about her predicament, but the discussion with Hailey Fitzgerald was all about Jonathan. It wasn't good news.
Jonathan's court-appointed attorney didn't buy Jonathan's innocence for a second. Doctors, being doctors, often work outside of the law and social norms. Although the evidence pointed to Jonathan as either guilty or stupid.
You know, I should say up front that, in my experience, doctors tend to be assholes. The reason they tend to be assholes is because they get to be. They're doctors. My point is, you don't get to be one anymore.
Robert
But by the time Robert got to Grace, he was more of the mind that while Jonathan was a bit of a dick, he wasn't guilty. Or did he say that only to get Grace's impression?
Nonetheless, Hailey didn't sound any more convinced of Jonathan's innocence as Robert. She made it clear that if Grace thought having an attorney who could make a much of the case so that prosecution would be impossible would somehow change the way she sees events or her husband, she was barking up the wrong tree.
And can you imagine? Your spouse cheats and gets accused of murder, but all the attorney can do is make it impossible to try the case successfully. So Grace would never the true extent of the story whether Jonathan is convicted or not.
That's not a win in my book, and hopefully, by the end of the limited series, staying with Jonathan won't be on the table no matter the outcome. Because like Franklin said, if he did kill Elena, he's a monster. You don't beat someone long after their dead without some major issues.
And if the fight in the prison yard said anything, it's that Jonathan doesn't have a problem drawing blood when he thinks he's been wronged. All the guy did was touch Jonathan, and Jonathan went nuts, leaving a pool of blood in his wake.
Speaking of wake, here's hoping Grace's wakeup call is on the horizon.
What did you think of this one? Is there a chance Jonathan is innocent? Should Grace stand by her man? Hit the comments!
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.
