This show made my skin crawl. In particular, the way it presents (very) rich people doing (very) bad things and then the brutally violent way in which they face retribution, according to the punishment-fits-the-crime logic of apocalyptic judgment. My problem is the stylized, voyeuristic aesthetic, which seems to encourage the viewer to either take a vicarious pleasure in the House of Usher's transgressions or a spiteful joy in the price they pay for them, namely spectacular deaths. While there may be a certain accuracy to the sins of the .01% on display in this series, moral outrage seems like a much better reaction than watching it; hope for legal justice, as evidenced in the narrative frame of confession to a federal prosecutor, all but disappears after the opening sequence (though again, DNF). The Faustian bargain "Fall" offers the audience is evident in the agent of retribution: a mysterious demonic figure who kills off Roderick Usher's progeny, one by one.
