Netflix's adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden breaks your heart more often through its supposedly good father than its murderous mother. That is where this uneven series finds its strongest drama. The show is at its most affecting when it follows the damage parents pass to their children, giving its ideas about choice a force that its explanations often lack.
Zoe Kazan's departure from Steinbeck's treatment of Cathy is a welcome decision. The novelist introduces Cathy with the idea that someone can be born with a «malformed soul», asking readers to judge her before they really know her. That sits awkwardly with the novel's belief in choice. If Cal can resist his worst impulses, why should his mother's nature seem settled? Giving viewers more reason to question that judgment is one of the adaptation's better choices.
The series gives Cathy a past that explains more than Steinbeck did. She wants to teach, but someone else has already decided she would make a lovely wife. Her own teacher exploits her, making male attention something to fear and loathe. The show does not need to agree with Steinbeck here. Cathy deserves the same sympathy often granted to predatory men whose childhoods help explain their behavior.
Florence Pugh makes that attention worthwhile. When Cathy reaches the Trasks' house, she looks barely capable of surviving, and that vulnerability is never entirely forgotten. Yet her past only explains so much. Faye, played by Martha Plimpton, loves her and even calls her daughter, planning to leave her everything. Cathy poisons her anyway to hasten her rise, even making herself ill to escape suspicion. The planning is especially disturbing because she has so many opportunities to reconsider. Her distrust of affection does not make killing Faye inevitable, and the show is more interesting when it leaves that contradiction unresolved.
Her conversations with the dead Charles, Adam's brother and the man she slept with on her wedding night, work less well. He gives her fears a voice when Pugh could leave us guessing. Adam's failure to understand Cathy is more revealing because she makes herself clear. She does not want California; he insists she will be happy there. Christopher Abbott makes Adam's sincerity believable. He seems to think promising Cathy happiness excuses him from listening to her. By the time he locks her in a room, the audience is furious. Her shooting him is horrifying, but he has decided her departure requires his permission.
His refusal to see the family he actually has continues after she leaves. The babies remain unnamed while Lee raises them and Adam retreats into grief. His depression is believable, but repeatedly returning to his despair is less effective once its cost to the children is clear. Samuel Hamilton, played by Ciarán Hinds, brings welcome impatience, insisting that Adam notice his sons. It is a relief to hear someone challenge his neglect so directly.
But Samuel's role also exposes what the adaptation loses by narrowing its focus. Hinds gives him warmth, while his family's own story gets less attention. Samuel too often seems summoned to help Adam. Steinbeck's valley has more room for people whose problems do not concern the Trasks. Some of the novel inevitably had to go, but the repeated attention to Cathy's schemes makes the reduced space for the Hamiltons harder to accept. The series can feel relentless within this family crisis. More ordinary life elsewhere would make the valley feel inhabited beyond the people caught in it.
Lee shows how rewarding that wider focus can be. Hoon Lee excels when confronting Adam for never asking about his family. His is the standout performance. Adam depends on Lee every day without showing basic curiosity about him. The complaint is so reasonable that Adam has nowhere to hide from it. Lee's pidgin speech comes from Steinbeck, too. He speaks as white people expect, concealing part of himself to put them at ease.
The bookshop story changes emphasis. In the novel, loneliness brings him back. The series shows racism obstructing his plans, making his return feel less freely chosen. That change makes the reunion harder to celebrate. Lee misses the boys, but he has not had a fair chance to build something elsewhere. At least Lee returns with conditions. His demand that Adam listen is satisfying, even as the family continues expecting him to solve its problems.
That inability to listen resurfaces with Cal, played by Joseph Zada. He hopes replacing Adam's business losses will finally earn his father's approval. The adaptation's central tension remains whether the next generation can escape the patterns set before them. When the series trusts its actors and lets those contradictions breathe, it finds genuine power. When it stops to explain, it loses the thread.