FX
This week on Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, we’re back in 1975. Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) has just published his doozy of an Esquire article, which, if you already forgot, detailed the scandalous lives of his swans. Babe Paley (Naomi Watts) and Slim Keith (Diane Lane) are avoiding Truman like the plague. Truman has spiraled into writers’ block. And Feud is getting a bit tedious, going into the fourth week of what’s starting to feel like the same old, same old.
Truman can’t cope with the reactions to his Esquire article. Bill Paley (Treat Williams) curses Truman out on the phone, telling the writer to move to Patagonia and die alone—ouch. Pills and alcohol smoothie concoctions don’t make Truman feel any better, but a call from his old pal James Baldwin (Chris Chalk) lifts his spirits. James drags Truman back to La Côte Basque, although Truman fears he will be flayed alive if he sets foot in that swan-infested joint ever again. But if La Côte refuses them entry, that will be a brilliant story in and of itself, says James.
For whatever reason, James is committed to helping Truman stop feeling miserable for himself. James gives Truman some convoluted reasoning as to why he’d like to offer help—something about how gay men have no sense of community, especially in the literary world—but this still feels odd. Over the course of the episode, which is almost entirely spent between James and Truman, James not once talks about himself or his writing. He devotes himself to assisting Truman, and in doing so, becomes a bit of a racist cliche: Here is a Black man, swooping in to save this white man from depression and alcoholism, pushing him toward working on his next book. But will the white man help the Black man in return? God, no!