Tear Jerker / Feud

Feud: Bette and Joan

Pilot

• The scene where Bette and Joan watch some finished scenes. Joan gets distraught when she sees how old she looks on camera while Bette cries when she watches the scene where Baby Jane finishes her song and sees her aged, haggard appearance in the mirror.

The Other Woman

Mommie Dearest

• Bette and Joan are talking about their childhoods and when they lost their virginity, Joan reveals that she lost hers at 11. Bette smirks and asks "Who's the lucky Cub Scout?" and after Joan said it was her stepfather, you see Bette's face get glum and she states "your mother should have kicked him out"; it gets sadder when Joan stated it was an act of kindness in the desert of her childhood.
• Whatever the audience feels for Joan overall, the episode is damned sad in two scenes: when she arrives home to an empty nest and talks to Mamacita about how the "noise" and "joy" the children brought into her life, and later when (admittedly after some drinks) she stumbles around her children's old playroom remembering when they were young. It leads her to try to adopt again, but unfortunately, she's turned down due to her age, which is a huge contributor to most of her current issues.

More Or Less

And the Winner Is...

• Bette's explanation about how she holds her Oscar at night in bed, because it reminds her of the night she won him.
  Bette: And when I need it, he reminds me of that perfect night when I won him. The whole world stood up and cheered. And I was loved. (Beat) God, that's sad.
• Joan, sitting alone, all dressed up, after her victorious payback at Bette taking her Oscar. The way her head just tilts down in shame as the camera pans back is painful.
• Bette lamenting that she thought she was back in the game if she'd have won the Oscar and would therefore be given more roles and get her career back. What's even more tragic is that, unfortunately, she was right. Bette Davis never received another Oscar nomination, though she did continue acting for some time after Baby Jane.

Hagsploitation

• As Bob prepares to depart for the filming of Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, he tells his wife that he wants her to join him this time. She tells him that she wants a divorce; She can't stand the prospect of taking a backseat to Joan and Bette again. Bob is devastated. However, this is still part of his karma and comeuppance for repeatedly cheating on her, so it's only so sad with that in mind.

Abandoned!

• Joan confronts Bette and they have an argument, instead of snarking back, Bette asks "What was it like being the most beautiful girl in the world?" while Joan asked what it was like to be the most talented. Both of them came to the same conclusion: that it was wonderful, "but it was never enough".
• When Bette reveals that in her first audition for Jack Warner, he exclaimed she had no sex appeal, insisting, "who would want to fuck that?" and poor Bette reveals she was only 22 and was still a virgin. Extra crushing as Bob tucks her in and she says that Jack also said he wished she'd looked like Joan Crawford.

You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?

• Joan's career and health both fall apart; her participation in a bad B movie officially turns her into a has-been and the experience is so terrible that she swears off doing any more movies, while her health declines thanks to an old dental surgery she underwent when she was 23. She develops cancer, but refuses chemotherapy, hoping to die with dignity.
• When Cathy comes to visit, Joan and her talk about Joan's choice to not seek treatment, she asks Cathy about what she has told her children about the adoption and Cathy replies that she and Cindy had the best Mother in the world, which has Joan in tears.
  • The above scene is extra bitter because Joan talks about Christina and Mommie Dearest, Joan admits that she might have been harsh due to her career but she only wanted her children to be grateful for what she never had.
• Suffering from untreated cancer, Joan hallucinates that she is young again and reunited with Jack Warner and Hedda Hopper (the latter of whom is long dead by this point) and that she gets a chance to reconcile with Bette Davis. The illusion falls apart when Mamacita appears and tells her that no one is there. The episode then cuts to an interview with Mamacita, who reveals that Joan died days later.
  • Mamacita delivers a scathing monologue about how, while it was lovely people showed up for Joan's funeral and pay tribute, they weren't there for her when she was alive and needed them.
• Bette's relationship with B.D. ends entirely as B.D. accuses her of beating her grandson, to which Bette protests that she struck B.D. plenty of times and B.D. never complained about it. She then realizes just how screwed-up that sounds. The post-scriptum reveals that B.D. would end up publicly accusing Bette of abusing her, and Bette died hating her.
  • Bette found out how much her beloved mother, her best friend, resented her.
    • Bette tries to talk to her daughter Margot, but there is no connection between the two of them.
• The post-scriptum reveals that Victor Buono died at age 43 from a heart attack....Bette Davis outlived one of her best friends by five years.
• When the Oscars present a montage of stars who died in 1977 all of the deceased, including Joan, only received two seconds for their screen shots. Joan Blondell laments how little that was for half a century in the industry and Bette somberly and sincerely notes that's what they all get in the end.