Warning: this post contains spoilers for the season finale of Feud

I’m still waiting for the grief counselor to show up at my house to help me get past the fact that the first season of Feud is over. Ryan Murphy really struck gold, in my opinion, with his interpretation of the events that occurred during the filming of 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the relationship between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford following the cult classic.

The season finale, entitled You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?, dealt primarily with the last days of Joan Crawford. The actress, desperate for work, took on a role as an anthropologist in the 1970 B-movie howler, Trog. Joan suffered the indignity of having to change costumes in a van and share the makeup area with a guy in a bad bigfoot costume. Post-Trog, Joan wrote a lifestyle book, My Way of Life, which offered helpful tips including telling ladies to sit in hard chairs because soft chairs make the hips spread. (I am taking that one to heart.) Seeing photos of herself in the newspaper that she felt were unflattering (most likely from the 1974 party she threw for friend and fellow actress Rosalind Russell), she left the limelight. She laid low until her death from cancer on May 10, 1977. Upon hearing the news of Joan’s death, Bette notoriously said, “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good…Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

Bette was also having trouble landing parts in Hollywood. She shot eight unsuccessful television pilots and even allowed herself to be the subject of a Dean Martin Roast. She and daughter B.D. Hyman had a falling out over Bette’s care of her grandkids and B.D. forbade her from taking them into her home again. Of course, B.D. went on to write a scathing book about her mother, My Mother’s Keeper – just in case you didn’t think Joan was the only one whose was immortalized in a nasty tell-all.

The pivotal and most talked-about scene in the finale was a laughter-filled get-together between Joan, Hedda Hopper (played by the wonderful Judy Davis), Jack Warner (played by the equally wonderful Stanley Tucci) and Bette. When left alone for a moment, Joan tells Bette she wishes she had been more generous to her and Bette wishes she had been a friend to Joan. Unfortunately, that conversation never occurred, it was Joan’s illness-induced hallucination. When asked about the scene, show creator Ryan Murphy told Entertainment Weekly that he learned that prior to her death, Joan was “having hallucinations where she was having imaginary conversations with people. So when we found that out, we were like, ‘Well wouldn’t it be great if she hallucinated….'” He went on to explain:

So we thought we know that Joan was talking to people in her mind, and what if one of those people was Bette. I wanted to give the audience something that Joan and Bette actually did not have: a sense of closure. They talked about it individually, like “Oh I wish I would have handled it better.” But I thought what if they said that to each other’s face? Obviously that conversation never happened, but it could have happened in Crawford’s imagination. Also, it was inspired in part by the fact that Bette Davis said she had regrets. So I felt like I wasn’t putting words in her mouth. So that’s how that very long, great scene happened. It was based on the Crawford death research and what Bette Davis told me.

[From Entertainment Weekly]

As for the significance of the title of the episode, Ryan told Variety, “I have always had a wistful dream that Bette and Joan could have watched this [show] together. I think that my favorite line from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is at the end of the film, when Jane tells Blanche, just as she is dying, ‘You mean all this time, we could have been friends?’ To me, that’s what the whole show is about.” And, when asked what he wanted the audience to take away from the series, Ryan said:

When I started it, for me, I was really interested in telling a story of women working against the system in Hollywood and shining a spotlight on sexism and misogyny and gender wage differences. But I think at the end of the day, the thing that I was so moved by was a personal one. I got into Bette Davis because of my grandmother. Bette Davis reminded me of my grandmother. That’s how I discovered her and started to write to her. At the end, Allison Wright’s character says, “Is your grandmother still alive?” and the interviewer says, “Yes.” And she says, “Call her.” I feel like for me, the whole show was a tribute to my grandmother and the difficulty of her aging as it is for any older person. So I feel like it was some weird tribute to my grandmother I didn’t know I was making until I was watching it. It was about my feelings about her, about how hard it is to grow old in our society and how hard it is particularly to be a woman growing old. You kind of become invisible, not just to society but sometimes your family. So I think that’s what it became.

[From Entertainment Weekly]

I am going to miss this show so much. I think Ryan’s creative touches made the show even more compelling. It leaves you with a lot to think about – how Hollywood (and society in general) perceives aging, it shows that fame and fortune doesn’t always buy happiness (Jessica Lange was tearing my heart out this episode. I have always been #TeamBette, but I really felt for Joan as the series went on). I’m not sure how Ryan can top this one, but he’s telling the Prince Charles and Princess Diana story for season two – which could prove interesting as well. I am curious to see how the Emmys are going to turn out this year. There are so many strong performances here. I think Jessica Lange is a shoo-in for a nomination and, if there’s an “Emmy God”, Jackie Hoffman should be getting a nod as well. With all of his upcoming projects, I’m sure no one is going to be asking “Whatever happened to Ryan Murphy?” anytime soon.

Photos: Getty Images, WENN.com, Fame Flynet