"Does the show want us to eat the rich or pity them? It slips a disk bending over backward to do both. Ferrentino and Schwartz's subtitle is "An American Fable," but, crucially, their Queen's Versailles is never lost; the well-connected real-estate élite recovered differently from 2008 than the rest of us did. And so, to maintain a sense of moral compass, Victoria's real death has been (distastefully) incorporated into the dramatic arc, presented as the cost of Jackie's avarice."
"Gold leaf blooms across everything-Corinthian capitals, empty picture frames, rosettes. It's all so familiar. When Donald Trump stuck ormolu tables into every available corner of the Oval Office, comparisons were made to dictators with similarly ornate taste. But Jackie and David's Florida décor, particularly as captured in Greenfield's documentary, may be the closer parallel. In America, since 2008, gold leaf and white marble aren't just the aesthetic of ersatz aristocracy; they suggest collapse and bankruptcy, too."
The production traces the Siegels' rise and fall, then focuses unevenly on their subsequent decade, including TV appearances, David's regained leverage, and a family tragedy. The daughters' overdose is dramatized as a consequence of parental failures and used to restore a moral compass. The show vacillates between satirizing the rich and eliciting pity, leaving its stance uncertain. The set reveal emphasizes ornate, gilded excess—white marble and gold leaf—invoking comparisons to ersatz aristocracy and recent political ostentation. Those aesthetics are framed as symbols of collapse and bankruptcy, with a striking image of domestic squalor lingering in memory.
Read at The New Yorker
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