★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
Readers probably know East of Eden best from John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel of family trauma set in California's Salinas Valley as it retells the biblical story of Cain and Abel as the struggle between good and evil in the Trask family. Film fans surely remember the 1955 film version directed by Elia Kazan starring James Dean as the son who learns his mother, Cathy, played by Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet, had abandoned him and his brother to run a local brothel. In the series version, now on Netflix and written and produced by co-showrunner Zoe Kazan (Elia’s granddaughter), Florence Pugh plays that mother as less than a demon and more like a damaged woman reacting to the toxic masculinity she’s been forced to live with since birth.