‘Fatal Attraction’ Episode 3 Recap: From a Certain Point of View

Well, that was a good idea now, wasn’t it!

After two episodes, the title element of Fatal Attraction was already a done deal. Dan Gallagher and Alex Forrest met and began flirting in the first episode, then began and ended their affair in Episode 2. Where does the show go from there? Backwards, it turns out, and very effectively at that. 

Fatal Attraction Episode 3 (“The Watchful Heart”) does contain some brand new material. In the present, Dan tries and fails to reconcile with his family, whom he resents, in the incoherent fashion emotions often provoke, for following his orders not to contact or think about him while he was in prison too stringently. Both his daughter Ellen and his ex-wife Beth are angry at him for this, but not unreasonably so; as Beth’s father (and Ellen’s surrogate “Dad”) Arthur puts it, “Those seem like crazy things to expect, but I don’t know what it’s like to lose my whole life.” Neither do they, so they have sympathy for Dan even as they chafe at his anger and self-pity. This is nuanced writing, and nuanced writing has been what distinguishes Fatal Attraction from the start.

Dan also moves in with his buddy Mike, who’s helping him investigate the case once again. Their old colleague Earl (Reno Wilson) literally slams the door in their faces, but Mike has a lead: the fingerprints of a doctor turned convicted drug dealer named Paul (Josh Zuckerman).

Which leads us back to the bulk of the episode, in which we see the formation of the affair from Alex’s perspective. The most interesting thing about this is that while it presents Alex as more instantly deranged about things than it initially appeared, it also fleshes her out as a human being, with her own likes and dislikes, fears and hangups, friends and colleagues — a life, in other words. It’s just not a very good one.

Alex’s therapist from out of state unceremoniously breaks up with her over the phone, ostensibly because she’s not licensed to practice in California but also, by the tone of it, because she’s tired of dealing with Alex. Paul, the doctor from across the hall, tries to slam the breaks on whatever they had going on; Alex responds by unsubtly threatening to call the cops on him over his extracurricular pill-peddling. She recounts trying and failing to get closer to her dad by getting really into his favorite Civil War movie, to the point of memorizing the real and moving letter from a soldier that closes the film. You get the feeling this is the story of Alex’s life: She gets intensely close to people, inevitably alienating them, then turns against them on a dime when they fail to live up to her expectations. (This is literally textbook borderline personality disorder stuff, by the way.)

Equally revelatory, though, is Alex’s perspective on the affair. For one thing, we learn that she engineered much of it behind the scenes. When she just so happened to notice something was wrong with him at that retirement party? She already knew he hadn’t gotten that judgeship. Later that night, when they almost hooked up in the elevator? She saw him staggering around drunk, followed him up to his office, then scurried down to the next floor so she could join him on the elevator oh-so-coincidentally. The lovely bit where they get caught in the restaurant’s sprinklers? She set a fire in the ladies’ room to set them off. When they meet up in his regular restaurant? She’d been going there every day in hopes of seeing them, which she all but admits. For crying out loud, the dying declaration she secured from a coma patient about the man who assaulted her? Totally made up as a way to stay in Dan’s good graces. And on and on it goes.

We also see that she’s been self-harming pretty much the whole time. The day of their sojourn on the beach, she burned her fingers badly on a hot coffee pot when she realized he was leaving, even though she gives no sign of distress other than that rueful “just my luck” when he does so. She hits herself in the knees with a dumbbell. 

Meanwhile, we see she really is attached to Dan. The thing about jurors watching his pretty mouth? That was her doing that. When they’re on the beach, she sneaks a few surreptitious selfies of her with him and his dog, wanting so badly to be his family for him. After he breaks things off, she returns to a memory of them on the beach over and over; tellingly, it’s of her smiling and chasing after him as he runs away. Again, this is probably the story of her life.

Then we move past the end of the affair and get a mainline dose of the stalker behavior that made such a scary impression in the movie back in the day. Popping into his office unannounced? Check. (He makes the literally fatal mistake of hugging her when she does this; he really does feel affection for her, but it will only fuel the fire.) Calling him over and over? Check. Showing up at his house and meeting his wife by pretending to be an interested buyer of the home? Check. Dumping acid (stolen from the apartment Paul vacated, or was perhaps murdered in by her) all over his car? Check. “I’m not going to be ignored!”? Check. 

Heck, we even learn the origin of the mysterious white bunny: It belongs to a neighbor she doesn’t much like. Plus, there’s a wink-wink joke at the audience when Mike discusses how little one wants a bathtub in the house when one has seen a few crime scenes revolving around one. I guess we’re not getting the movie’s final bathtub showdown this time around, haha.

Dan, for his part, fucks things up royally. I mean, perhaps there’s no way out for him at this point regardless, but it’s important to note that he’s the first person to escalate their budding feud into something physical, laying his hands on her and shoving her against the wall when he angrily storms into her apartment to confront her about the lie regarding the coma patient. “I can end your career,” he tells her, “and if you come after my family again, I will.”

The thing is, I believe Alex’s words, and the look on her face, when she swears to Dan she has no idea what he’s talking about regarding threatening his family. She just wanted to see him again, you know? She just wanted to see what his life was like. She’s incapable of acknowledging that her very presence in the home is itself a threat, implicit or not. She can’t do anything wrong, she can only be wronged.

All in all, this is a fascinating glimpse at the affair from a perspective the film couldn’t afford us — very, very smart of Paramount+ to debut the first three episodes of once in order to show the central relationship from both sides — and an unexpected way to keep playing out the string of the affair itself. Meanwhile, the dialogue still sings and the performance still compel. Keep it up!

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.