‘East of Eden’ Review: Can Cathy Ames Finally Own the Story?

‘East of Eden’ arrives on Netflix on October 1 as a seven episode limited series, and the pressure on it is enormous. John Steinbeck’s novel is a book people carry around for decades, and the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan has long been the version most viewers know. Now his granddaughter Zoe Kazan has written and created a fresh take, which makes this season of ‘East of Eden‘ feel like family business with a lot to prove.

The story follows the Trask family across generations in California’s Salinas Valley, starting with half brothers Adam and Charles, played by Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, and their father Cyrus, played by Tracy Letts. Then Cathy Ames enters their lives and everything starts to curdle. Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre handle the directing, and the mood is solemn from the very first scene.

Florence Pugh, who also serves as an executive producer, is the reason to press play. Her Cathy is calculating, wounded and genuinely frightening, and Pugh plays each stage of her life with a clarity that pulls you closer even when you would rather look away. The writing refuses to treat Cathy as a monster to gawk at and instead gives her real motives and a fierce hunger for control over her own fate, which changes the whole shape of the story.

Hoon Lee is the other standout, bringing warmth and dignity to Lee, the man who ends up holding the Trask household together. Faist is wonderfully volatile as Charles, and his scenes opposite Pugh crackle with a danger the rest of the show cannot always match. Abbott plays Adam with a quiet restraint that suits the character, even if it sometimes keeps him at arm’s length from us.

The craft on display is impressive, from the sets to the costumes, and it gives the whole world a lived in texture. Still, the adaptation can feel hurried. Seven episodes is plenty of television and yet not quite enough room for a novel this sprawling, so some of the humor and the quieter breathing moments get squeezed out.

That compression hits the younger generation hardest. Cal and Aron, played by Joseph Zada and Joe Anders, arrive later in the run, and because we spend so long with the older Trasks their rivalry does not always land with full force. The show’s careful faithfulness can also leave it feeling a little stately, as if it is afraid to wander off the map.

Even so, the central question of whether people can choose who they become stays alive throughout. The series keeps circling that idea, and its best scenes treat it as an open wound rather than a lecture. It is heavy, adult and often hard to sit through, which feels right for this material.

I came away impressed, a little bruised and slightly wishing for an eighth hour. Pugh and Lee alone make this a season worth your time, and everything around them is handsome, serious and mostly sure of itself. My final score is 8.5 out of 10.

Do you agree with my verdict on ‘East of Eden’, and does Pugh’s Cathy beat every other version you have seen, so tell me in the comments?