For full opinion, please view post history between June-July.
Nick Antosca's Apple TV series is based on John D. MacDonald's 1957 novel The Executioners, and the screenplays of 1962 and 1991 film adaptations (both renamed Cape Fear).
Episode 1 - Fingers & Toes
Written by Nick Antosca
Directed by Morten Tyldum
Defense attorney Anna Bowden is also a co-director of the Savannah Justice League Project, which is dedicated to freeing wrongfully convicted inmates.
Max Cady is released from Tarwater State Prison after serving 17 years for stabbing his pregnant wife Melissa to death, and was convinced to take a plea bargain by her husband Tom.
However, a note recovered from Cady's mistress following her suicide exonerates him.
Anna hosts a fundraising gala to boost SJLP's finances, where Max makes gives a speech about what non-profit organisation represents. This impresses Anna's colleague Noa, who asks him to help publicise their work.
Meanwhile, Anna and Tom's son Zack (who's recently been suspended from school) has disappeared.
Episode 2 - Why Would I Want to Hurt You?
Written by André and Maria Jacquemetton
Directed by SJ Clarkson
7 years ago in Tarwater, Max is viciously beaten in the gym, but fights back and kills his attackers, suffering a severe head injury in the process.
Back in the present day, Zack returns home drugged and missing a toe. Max surprises the Bowdens and implies he kidnapped and tortured Zack as a form of revenge.
After Natalie finds clues that Max broke in, Anna sends an anonymous tip to the police and Max is arrested.
The toe is found when Zack vomits it up and has no recollection of what happened.
After tricking Zack into unlocking his phone, Anna spams message history and suspects the mystery girl he's been speaking to online is actually Max.
While viewing a house he plans to buy, Max hallucinates his dead wife and unborn son sat opposite him.
Episode 3 - Phantom Sensations
Written by Alan Page Arriaga
Directed by Amanda Marsalis
Still convinced that Zack is talking to Max online, Anna gets her ex-client-turned-private investigator Ray Rawlins to clone his phone, so she can communicate with AngelX while pretending to be Zack.
After AngelX sends a photo of what she's eating, Anna recognises the plate and visits the person at a nearby diner.
AngelX is actually a teenage drug dealer called Nevaeh Valentine. She agrees to break things off with Zack and claims she wasn't there when he removed his toe.
Deciding to earn Max's trust to learn his true intentions, Anna speaks positively on his behalf to prison officials, demanding an internal investigation, a public apology and Tarwater admitting negligence for Max getting beat up by a white supremacist
They agree to pay Max $4.2m in compensation, with SJLP getting 40%.
Although praising Anna for what she did, Max brings up the injustice of 17 years again.
A storm approaching forces them to stay overnight at a hotel, where a woman in a surgical mask comes looking for Max.
Meanwhile, Tom does drugs with his attractive colleague Lexi and naughty boy even kisses her.
When Max returns home, he finds an envelope containing a dog collar, an old-school TV and a recording of the woman removing her jumpsuit. When she starts singing, this triggers a flashback of Max's young self inside a cage.
Shouting hysterically, Max destroys the TV with a fire poker.
Episode 4 - Pierced
Written by Tara Shivkumar
Directed by Reed Morano
At a bar, Max tells Tom that Zack had a dream and drew a picture of his unborn son Adam, confirming Max didn't give Zack anything last week.
After getting ooh la la, Natalie lets Nevaeh pierce her left nipple.
Tom and Zack's fractured relationship intensifies, leading Tom to have a flashback of him discovering that his older brother committed suicide.
Also, Zack has apparently thrown away his toe.
Max leads a rally to free Ruben Ramirez from Tarwater.
Anna asks Max to speak with former convict and snake enthusiast Warren Pitt, as 'Smiley' is the only person who can prove Ramirez didn't kill Maya Cook at a party back in 2003.
Max agrees and surprises Anna by kissing her. She warns shit won't happen again, but reaction suggests she enjoyed it.
At Pitt's house, Max attacks him off screen and gets the evidence required, as a man called Andre King was responsible for Maya's murder.
Ray calls Anna and reveals Nevaeh's mum Faith was a prison nurse and got fired for having sex with Max, saying Nevaeh could be Max's daughter.
Episode 5 - Faith
Written by Peter Blake
Directed by Steven Piet
Following an argument with Anna outside a movie theatre, Nevaeh gets hit by a car.
But it's cool, as she just gets up and flees.
Max is confronted by his still unnamed stalker and after they briefly kiss, he threatens to kill 'disgusting sick delusional freak' if their paths cross again.
After discussing Nevaeh's whereabouts with her mother Faith, Anna finds a picture Max sent her of a grave above ground with "One Day I'll Take You Here" written on the back.
Anna returns to Faith, but discovers she's been brutally murdered.
When Max comes sniffing around Natalie, it's revealed the house he bought is opposite them.
Episode 6 - Possum
Written by Brian Evenson
Directed by Trey Edward Shults
Two months after he was viciously beaten by white supremacists in Tarwater, Max is inducted into a religious sect by an old man and hallucinates his dead wife and unborn son standing before him.
Back in the present, Tom and Anna have upgraded their home's security system.
Max receives a postcard and a message from C (presumably his stalker) on the back:
"On TV you play the martyr. What if I tell the world what you did to me?"
In the most ludicrous sequence of the series so far, the Bowdens realise their tea has been spiked with LSD, leading to bizarre accusations, resentments and Natalie destroying a drone with Tom's shotgun.
Oh, a grinning Tom reveals he's been micro-dosing acid himself.
Now sober, Tom and Anna visit Max, who stole their cat Peanut Butter. He wants them to publicly apologise for what they did to him and stop practising law. Tom makes threats to kill and Max infers he slept with Anna prior to being sent down, which she vehemently denies after they leave.
In flashback, Max stabs the old man to death for orchestrating his beating, declaring the gods want him to build a new family.
Okay then.
Back at the house, chaos descends.
A fire has been lit and Zack's toe is burning on top. Tom finds a secret passage behind Zack's closet, crashes through the floor and finds a hidden living space.
When Tom is attacked, Anna and Natalie smash through drywall and a possum scurries away. The intruder is revealed to be Nevaeh, and Anna cracks her head with a paint can.
As the police are called, Zack walks zombie-like towards Max's house.
Episode 7 - Mongrel
Written by André and Maria Jacquemetton
Directed by Jon S. Baird
Immediately after last week, Tom heads over to Max's house, leaving Anna to babysit Nevaeh.
Tom repeatedly punches Max in the face and Zack literally stabs Tom in the back for hurting his 'father'.
Nevaeh is arrested and Max smiles at Anna as medical orderlies treat his wounds.
Ray is sent to find Max's stalker and Natalie learns that Tom is not her biological father.
At a psychiatric facility, it's revealed that Zach has been taking scopolamine to prevent nausea, vertigo and motion sickness, but over time, drug causes permanent psychosis.
So I guess that explains the toe thing?
Max returns Peanut Butter to Natalie and insists Nevaeh is obsessed with him.
Prior to taking a ride with Max (seemingly for the hell of it), Natalie hides a gun in her bag and Max injects a peach with a mysterious liquid.
By tracing a car licence plate to a woman called Val, Ray discovers Max's stalker is actually his sister Crystal.
Max goes looking for Crystal at his childhood home, where his abusive father Robert (Ron Perlman) more or less confirms he used to cage Max like a dog.
When they leave, Natalie eats the peach.
Ray breaks into a boat docked at Bluff's Point named Galilee and finds multiple photos of Max.
After a brief chinwag, Ray clocks Natalie unconscious and Max shoots him dead.
In the aftermath, it's heavily implied that Max is Natalie's father.
Tom and Anna call the police on Max, as they earlier got Brandon to plant narcotics at his house.
Episode 8 - Los tiempos de Dios son Perfectos
Directed by Stephen Williams
Title translates to God's Timing is Perfect.
The following morning after Brandon planted suspicious medication at Max's house, Natalie takes a swim in the pool and finds a box containing Ray's body parts at the bottom.
When the police arrive and ask Tom if he owns any guns, he goes in the safe and realises that one has been fired. But instead of doing the sensible thing, he foolishly gives them a different gun.
Max tells Natalie that Tom and Anna killed Ray to frame him, but she smells bullshit.
As Natalie comes clean about the gun and her trip with Max, Tom is arrested for Ray's murder.
Noa alerts Anna about Max appearing on the news and it's confirmed that Brandon betrayed her.
What an asshole.
When Natalie puts Anna on the spot about what Max did to her, Anna reveals she was experiencing blackouts at the time when she was defending him, so can't be certain who her father is.
However, she dismisses that Max raped her.
Natalie pulls a gun on Max and shoots him in the stomach (but bullet misses all major organs).
For her troubles, she joins Nevaeh in prison.
At the hospital, Anna poses as Crystal and becomes enraged when Max reveals his motive to 'rip her family apart'.
Pulling up location data from one of Ray's iCloud photos, Anna takes a gun and heads for Bluff's Point.
Episode 9 - The Scar
Directed by Amanda Marsaus
Anna arrives at Bluff's Point and Crystal is nowhere to be seen. After nipping over to Max's lakehouse and drawing a blank from Robert and co, she falls off the wagon at a bar and wakes up on the Galilee with Crystal waiting.
For shiggles, Crystal's middle name is Delilah.
Crystal reveals the photos she took of Max protects her from him. Max's mistress (called Amy by the way), committed suicide at his behest and manipulated murder confession.
Meanwhile, Max visits Tom in prison and warns a 'gift' waiting in his cell (a noose) for him to end it like his brother did years prior.
Of course, he doesn't.
Nevaeh takes a call from Max on her hidden cell phone, and we definitively learn from clumsy conversation that Max has been his accomplice all along, and part of Max's endgame is for daughter to kill Natalie so Anna can feel what it's like to lose a child.
At Amy's trailer, Anna finds a photo of a boy with a scar running down the side of his body, and deduces that he's Crystal's son, fathered by Max.
Zack's doctor tells Tom that son bypassed security and escaped. Noa bails Natalie out of prison, and because causal lover stole Nevaeh's phone, that's probably the last we'll see of her.
Back on the boat, Anna holds Crystal at gunpoint and forces her to confess that she killed Melissa and 'Adam'.
Robert conveniently turns up and the creepy kid Luke is actually the boy from the photo. A text on Crystal's phone reveals that she's been in cahoots with Max from the off.
I'm honestly NOT stunned.
A family argument breaks out and Anna jumps overboard, as Max pulls up.
Episode 10 - The Executioners
Written by Nick Antosca, Peter Blake and Tara Shivkumar
Directed by Jonathan van Tulleken
After learning Anna escaped, Max shoots Crystal and Luke in the gut, locks them in the hold, and appropriately cages Robert like a dog.
Max covers the deck with gasoline, sets the Galilee ablaze and watches as it floats down titular river.
Considering scene picks up immediately after last week, it should still be daytime, but we've magically transitioned to night.
(Laughs).
Anna humiliates Max at the grand opening of his restaurant by playing a conversation Natalie secretly recorded in prison with Nevaeh. Then Noa chips in with a video proving he manipulated Amy Brancato into confessing to Melissa's murder.
Max strangles Anna, but the police intervene.
Lexi bails Tom out and Natalie meets Zack at their house.
En route, Max assaults a police officer and escapes.
At the house, Max holds a knife to Zack's throat and puts Anna Deveraux and Tom Bowden on trial.
Anna admits she could've got Max acquitted, but didn't want Natalie to know that her father was a monster.
Here's the big reveal.
Shortly before killing Melissa, Crystal ripped the baby out of her, so Luke (not Adam), was Max's son all along.
A struggle breaks out, resulting in Tom and Anna holding Max underwater.
They decide against drowning him and agree he should die in prison.
Some time later during a family barbeque, it's obvious that trauma still resonates, demonstrated by Tom thinking he's seen a movement in the trees and Anna nervously looking over her shoulder.
To quote Juliette Lewis's masterful monologue in 1991 remake:
"We never spoke about happened, at least not to each other. Fear, I suppose, that to remember his name or what he did would mean letting him into our dreams. And me, I hardly dream about him anymore. Still, things won't ever be the way they were before he came. But that's alright because if you hang onto the past, you die a little every day. And for myself, I know I'd rather live. The end."
