It is 10:52 A.M., and I’m drinking my second beer of the day. This is happening because of this episode of Monsters. I am not handling it well.
I did not handle it well while it was playing, either. Sitting alone on my couch, watching it in an empty apartment, I gasped, howled, cried, sobbed, moaned in what can only be described as psychic agony. To an outside observer I’d have seemed like some kind of mental patient. Again, I did not handle it well.
After it was over, but before I went to the fridge for my first beer, I dry heaved into the toilet for a while. Like I said, I did not handle it well. That applies to my body as well as my mind. My own history of childhood sexual abuse is far less oppressive and intense than Erik Menéndez’s was, but it’s still with me, every day. Every goddamn day.
There are a grand total of two actors in this episode of Monsters, titled “The Hurt Man.” There are a grand total of two actor’s voices you hear. There is a grand total of one actor’s face that you actually see. There is a grand total of one unbroken shot for the entire episode. There is a grand total of zero cuts or edits.
The camera simply brings us in closer over the course of the episode. It moves almost imperceptibly. Eventually, though, you realize there have been no cuts — and hey, didn’t we used to be able to see the door in the wall behind them? Couldn’t we see the end of the table they’re sitting at? Couldn’t we see more than just Leslie and Erik? Couldn’t we see more than just Erik?
It’s like having a knife driven slowly through the plate of your chest into your heart. There’s just you, and a room in a jail, and the back of Leslie Abramson’s head, and the face of Erik Mendéndez as, for a full half hour, he recounts being sexually tortured by his father for so long he can’t remember a time before it. And Monsters literally won’t let you look away.
It’s hard to say which member of what is effectively a five-person team — actors Cooper Koch and Ari Graynor, director Michel Uppendahl, director of photography Jason McCormick, and writer/co-creator Ian Brennan — is most impressive here, but let’s work backwards.
Brennan’s script — to the extent that the gorgeously naturalistic performances by Graynor and Koch and the endless take by Uppendahl allows us to know what was scripted and what was the result of actors reacting to each other in the room — is a masterpiece of writerly chiaroscuro. He’s constantly hiding the latest horror wrought by José Menéndez against his hated son Erik behind verbal elisions and demurrals; when Abramson presses, or when Erik returns to the topic, the horrible truth that was once simply implicit will be stated in no uncertain terms.
But even then, Erik’s voice tends toward uptalk? Ending in question marks? It’s as if he’s seeking validation or permission for having experienced what he experienced. Is it okay if he insists that being slashed open by his father during oral rape made him feel bad? Is it okay if his mother’s routine inspection of his penis to keep him from catching AIDS from the guy he was in love with in high school upset him? Is it okay? Is this okay? Am I okay? those last three questions lurk behind everything he says.
Uppendahl’s camera is kind to Erik, to be sure. By simply sitting there and letting us watch actor Cooper Koch act for over half an hour, he’s allowing us to really sit not with the crimes committed against the guy, but with the guy himself. We see him react to Abramson’s kindness with either a smile of acceptance if he thinks she gets it, or a frown of rejection if he thinks she doesn’t. We hear him clear his throat, bob and weave around the most sensitive topics, passionately defend his loving feelings toward his parents one minute and recount horrors I’d call unspeakable if he wasn’t speaking them right then and there. In short, we get to see him be a person, unfiltered. We live in that cell with him. We live in his pain.
So does Abramson. We never see her face in this episode, just the back of her power suit and curly hair. But we hear her gasp “wowwww,” we see her grab her hair in anguish, we hear her argue with Erik about whether his love for his parents prevents him from judging them properly. We hear her talk about her own shitty father, not to make it about herself (though, of course, it does) but to impress upon Erik that he has the option not to love his father, the way she doesn’t love her own.
But here’s the thing that really stuck with me.
“I don’t know what I am,” Erik tells Leslie toward the end of the episode. “I can’t tell what I am. And I never will be able to tell.”
Then: “I can’t remember a time when my dad wasn’t fucking me. He broke me. I am a broken person. I am not a real person.”
“You are real,” Leslie insists.
“Stop saying that,” he tells her. “Stop.”
What is Erik, if he’s not a real person? For this, he really does have an answer. “I am the Hurt Man.” That’s his name for himself since childhood, since as long as he can remember, “since forever.”
And now he’s alone, without either his brother Lyle or the friend and lover he met in the previous episode, who’s since been abruptly transferred without a word. He’s alone with the staggering thought that he can now love his father, because thanks to him and Lyle, his father is no longer a child molester, and thus they are capable of loving him. How to wrestle with the enormity of that? How to wrestle with the fundamental questions of his identity — is he gay or straight, is he a sociopath, is he irrevocably broken — if he can’t talk to the only other person who can understand, or process it all with a new life where he isn’t trapped with himself forever? “I will never really know who I am,” he concludes, “if I don’t get out of here. I’ll never know.”
Go ahead and check the Mendéndez brothers’ wikipedia page, and get back to me if you can read that last bit without wanting to vomit your guts out. Go ahead and do it to the gorgeous, humming closing credits theme by Thomas and Julia Newman while you’re at it.
Written by series co-creator Ian Brennan, filmed by director Michael Uppendahl and cinematographer Jason McCormick, acted by Ari Graynor and Cooper Koch like people’s lives depended on it, “The Hurt Man” is one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot. Jesus Christ Almighty. Absolutely breathtaking work. Absolutely harrowing work. Absolutely vital work.
If you or someone you know needs to reach out about sexual abuse or assault, RAINN is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at RAINN.org.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.