Around the middle of the third episode of Halston, thanks to a mixture of boredom and fascination, I started counting every time someone said the name “Halston.” The new Netflix limited series is about the fashion designer Roy Halston, and sometimes characters say the name to point at the brand: “This bottle says ‘Halston!’” or “Now that’s a Halston.” Often it’s just part of the dialogue, an unrelenting verbal tic.
From that vantage point, the inescapable drumbeat of Halston, Halston, Halston in the dialogue could be read as a purposeful reenactment of the exact trap that caught Halston himself.
That certainly seems like the case on the level of dialogue; characters are perpetually issuing blunt, expositional proclamations to tell the viewer how to feel at each new stage.
The first episode opens with an abrupt punch of flashback, like being socked in the stomach by knuckles tattooed with “tragic backstory”: a dreary Midwestern farm house, a sad child , a yelling father, the gift of a handmade feathered hat to cheer up his mom.
But it’s telling that in one of the few scenes where Halston slows down and allows its protagonist to sit and think about himself, rather than yelling at people, taking a drag on a cigarette, snorting coke, or staring at something coldly, the three things he provides are the same three notes Halston has found to define his entire character.
Krysta Rodriguez plays a pretty good Liza Minnelli, and it grows more comfortable after she performs the requisite “Liza with a Z” number and can then play the character without such direct reference back to the real woman.
But are we supposed to indict him for this? Are we meant to see this as a cautionary tale? Is Halston a villain, or is he a victim of circumstance? It’s another case of the generous reading versus the uncharitable interpretation.
That deluge of his name, stamped everywhere all over everything and rendered essentially meaningless, reminded me of someone: Ryan Murphy, who is the executive producer of Halston and has a co-writing credit on three of the miniseries’ five episodes .
It just makes me hope that Murphy will also reach that stage in his career one day, and that when it happens, he will be free from all the ultrasuede-clad ghosts that haunt this show’s image of Roy Halston.