In the Hulu series The Patient, Linda Emond’s character Candace is faced with a very unique challenge as a mother. She lives with her son Sam, who is a serial killer. Sam wants to get better, but he still commits murder throughout The Patient. Meanwhile, Candace is a passive player, but Emond thinks there’s a chance she could have stopped his crimes before they began.
[SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers ahead for The Patient Episode 10, “The Cantor’s Husband.”]
Sam’s mother, Candace, knows about her son’s crimes in ‘The Patient’
When Sam kidnaps his therapist, Dr. Alan Strauss, his victim initially assumes that he is alone in Sam’s basement. Alan later realizes that Sam lives with his mother, Candace and that she knows about her son’s compulsions and crimes.
Alan brings Candace into their therapy sessions. They discuss Sam’s abusive father and Candace’s refusal to leave him. It also becomes apparent that though Candace wants Sam to stop killing, she isn’t going to take action against him. Candace won’t let Alan go or contact the police.
Linda Emond says Candace could have taken Sam away from his abusive father in ‘The Patient’
The actor who plays Candace in The Patient, Linda Emond, thinks her character could have helped Sam a long time ago. While speaking with Vulture, Emond was asked if there was a point in Sam’s development where her actions could have made a difference and stopped him from becoming a killer.
“Yeah, for sure. For one thing, she could have taken him and herself out of the violent situation that he was in, and she didn’t,” Emond responded. “And that’s hard. Obviously — domestic violence is really potent and difficult and f***s with people’s heads, so it’s tricky for them to leave. She also certainly could have called the police once she became aware of it, many times, and saved people’s lives.”
“In the final episode, Dr. Strauss needs me to take a Kleenex for his last shot, basically. He accuses me of not doing anything to really protect my son, and in the writing, we saw how quickly she disintegrates,” Emond continued.
“So it isn’t far for her either to see her complicity. There’s an enormous amount of denial throughout the show. That’s true of Dr. Strauss’s character, it’s certainly true of Sam’s, and it’s very much true of Candace.”
Candace never called the police on Sam
It’s also worth noting that after Sam began his crime spree, Candace could have contacted the police. She isn’t a prisoner like Alan, and though it would be hard to turn her son in, it could have saved quite a few lives.
“I think there’s a certain martyrdom for what she went through,” Emond told Vulture. “I think in some ways that’s how she made sense of it: She saved her son and stood by him, and it was the two of them together against this horrible thing. She never really recognized that she had the ability to leave and to get out of it or call the police or whatever else.”
All episodes of The Patient are currently streaming on Hulu.
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