The series premiere of Trust opens with a big huge tracking shot that starts in the sky, splashes into a swimming pool during a fun sun-soaked party, and pulls out of the pool to zero-in on the mansion’s garage, wherein a drug-riddled billionaire heir to an oil fortune commits suicide by jamming a barbecue fork into his guts. This tells us two things about the new FX series. Maybe three. Let’s go with three.
- There will be rich people behaving badly
- Danny Boyle, who is executive producing the series and directing a few episodes (including this one), is a pretty good director
- Some really wild stuff is about to go down
But let’s pause briefly for facts: Trust tells the story of the Getty kidnapping, which was also told in All the Money in the World. (You can Google the specifics, if you want to be spoiled by history.) This version stars Donald Sutherland as the family’s frugal sex-crazed billionaire scion. Donald Sutherland is really pretty great in the premiere, from his arsenal of smirks and devious glances to the way phrases like “feckless progeny” slither out of the corners of his mouth. We like him. I mean, the character is not great. The elder Getty was a frugal and exacting miser who put a payphone in his house and complained about a small price increase of his newspaper and, according to this version of events, which are loosely based on history in the way a father’s sweater fits loosely on his toddler, has his butler put his underpants on him every morning.
The feckless progeny is the big deal here, though, and it’s where we begin and what launches us into our story. The suicide-by-fork victim from the opening is the favored son and presumed heir to the family business, and his absence creates a vacuum. Attempting to fill that vacuum is one of the elder Getty sons, whom I’ve been calling Medium Getty (it gets a little confusing with three characters named John Paul Getty, the last of whom we’ll introduce shortly). He’s basically been tossed on the scrap heap by his father after slipping into drug problems and is trying to present himself as cleaned up. Complicating this is the presence of Young Getty, John Paul III, who shows up to his uncle’s funeral looking like a hippie and promptly intrigues his grandfather with his knowledge of art and history and such.
He also owes thousands of dollars to some shady Italians, which he claims is money from woman problems but is actually debt from illicit-type ventures. His plans to get the money from his grandfather are foiled, though, first when the underpants butler catches him trying to steal an expensive work of art (we really like this butler), and then later when his father reveals that he’s been posing in sexy magazines and talking about drug-fueled sex parties, which ends Elder Getty’s plan to have him leap a generation to take over the business after a lengthy internship on an oil rig. This is a heck of a way for your plans to get foiled.
The tl;dr version of all of this is as follows: The Young Getty goes back to Rome and gets kidnapped and we are off and running.
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Folks, I’m gonna be honest with you. I did not expect to see Donald Sutherland get experimental Czech erection medicine injected into his penis. Like, at all, ever, in real life or on screen. Just wasn’t on my radar. I guess that’s on me, though. Gotta consider all the possibilities. Can’t be caught sleeping, just going about your business, and the get blindsided by Donald Sutherland getting experimental Czech erection medicine injected into his penis. Consider everything, be surprised by nothing. That’s my new motto.
Anyway, the point — both puns not intended — of all of this is very straightforward. Elder Getty’s inability to satisfy his harem shows us that he’s become a sad old man, a shell of himself, with loser kids and King Lear problems and an infatuation with presenting himself as something he no longer is. The injection, however, gives him his mojo back and allows him to become the strong and virile titan of industry he once was. And so on.
Which, fine. But it’s gonna take me a while to get over Donald Sutherland getting experimental Czech erection medicine injected in his penis.
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Odds and ends:
– At various points in the episode, the elder Getty references a “Teresa,” who would be coming from Africa to live in the mansion. The implication here is that Teresa is a new member of the harem, which we were led to believe right up until whoooaaa Teresa is a lion. Although, I guess we can’t really rule out Teresa being a member of the harem? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what the side effects of experimental Czech erection injections are. Maybe his veins will be flooded with so much testosterone that he wakes up next episode and shouts “I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH THE LION.” It’s too soon to rule it out.
– The scene where Getty takes his grandson to his room full of women at typewriters was creepy. Getting what amounts to a “sex waiver” takes on new meaning in Our Current Political Climate.
– You can tell I’m good with money because when Elder Getty was explaining the family’s spiderweb network of moving money — shuffling things around so they never pay taxes on any of it — I spaced out and almost talked myself into buying a new television in another tab on my browser. Probably not great!
– Also creepy: The Italian guy pretending to be the statue at the fountain in Rome where Young Getty got kidnapped after dancing shoeless in a nightclub. Statues should not blink. I have always said this.
