Set in Southern California in the late 1950s and early ’60s, Apple TV+’s adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ bestselling novel,, smacks its lips over the vintage, candy-colored autos and appliances of the period while baring its teeth at the era’s bigotry. This familiar ambivalence—a less sophisticated version than’s, but of the same ilk—alternates between tempting and repelling an audience who relishes the way the past looked while judging its unenlightened attitudes.
Garmus’ novel—a surprise hit for the now-66-year-old debut author—runs on the energy generated by its villains. They are straight white men in positions of power, the smirking, mediocre bigots who run the worlds of science, entertainment, and industry, and you long to see them taken down. Elizabeth—whose bid for a Ph.D. was thwarted by a particularly horrific instance of sexism—battles not just to be taken seriously but to work in her chosen field at all.
Maybe we haven’t come as far from 1960s America as we’d like to think? Or, rather, we cannot shake that cozy, sunny fantasy of 1950s domestic life, even though we know full well what lurked behind the facade. The world remains a difficult place for women like Elizabeth Zott, women whose idea of a happy ending seems beyond the ken of