Getting It Out There — Mare of Easttown Episode 4 Review
All the pieces of the show are beginning to spin out of control in Mare of Easttown ‘s fourth episode.
We were horrified when it appeared that Mare was getting thrown off the case. By turning in her gun and badge, the stakes were high that the police chief wanted Mare to get some psychological help, after she went overboard by planting heroin on her daughter-in-law’s vehicle. But, it turns out, little of this mattered. She arrives to her first therapy session bright-eyed and bushy tailed, eager to relay the news that she has no intention of being turned around, despite obvious signs in the past two episodes that she is expressing her vulnerability and is embracing honesty with her family. She gets lambasted by her mother, but other than that, Mare returns to Zabel with a hunger that the detective is only too willing to satiate. He asks her not only questions about the case, but also about a possible date on Saturday night. It’s the same Saturday night that Richard offered to take her out on his own birthday. So many men! Now Mare must play Bathsheba in Far From the Maddening Crowd in deciding between the younger and stiff (in more ways than one) Zabel, or the award-winning and old Richard. What’s a girl to do?
The tone, which was a delicate line strung perhaps between despotic and cancerous, is now more like network television. Watch as the delicate minutes fly by while Mare’s mother hides her Häagen-Dazs in a frozen vegetable bag, complete with staccato violin accompaniment reserved only for moments in Grey’s Anatomy where they force you to laugh. Siobhan breaks up with Becca, or so she says, yet here Becca is, coming to make one last ditch attempt to win her back. But Siobhan is not there, as she’s busy with her new older lady. The two, on a romantic spur-the-moment enter the basement in a naughty make out scene that Becca screams out at, and flees, smacking the door right into Siobhan’s grandmother. We’re not sure what exactly to feel when Mare turns up. “Is that it?” Mare says to her mother on the gurney *canned laughter*. Once again, Siobhan’s antics take up precious time that could be spent elsewhere, all done up in a set piece that should never have been in this show.
On the other side of this tone is some pretty dark shit. Dylan, annoyed with his crying toddler, appears to be approaching the crib with a pillow, as if to smother the boy in the hospital. They’re already there, why waste the commute? Dylan has not been feeling very good about his predicament, having been shot by Erin’s father and faced with mounting bills for a child he now has incontrovertible evidence that he is not the father of himself. He bullies his parents around and his parents, strangely, oblige. Freddie, having gotten out of an overdose, is now so desperate for cash that he’s calling up Katy Bailey’s mother and suggesting that she’s alive. He attempts a meet up to steal $5,000 from a woman with cancer. Mare experiences a flashback of her own as she recounts her son Kevin locking her in her own bedroom while they rifled through her purse, trying to find money so they, too, could score. “I hate you!” Kevin screams as Mare cowers behind the toilet. Meanwhile, Deacon Mark Burton’s transfer from one parish to another is coming to light, drawing attention from Detective Zabel as well as Burton’s religious colleagues. Whether it is true or false, both are tragic, and the promise of more heckling from the townsfolk in the preview for next episode shows it’ll only get worse. And, oh, by the way, Katy Bailey is alive! She is trapped (along with a new victim) in some sex dungeon by a man, someone we either know or don’t know. And someone who happens to be related, or not related, to Erin’s case.
Suddenly all the effort that went into the subtleties of the show, as well as the not-so-subtle state of affairs that Easttown happened to be, fell apart. In a miniseries of seven episodes, we suddenly feel as though we are checking in on the entire cast like a regular nighttime drama. In a similar pace not unlike a show from the CW, each setting with characters and dialogue feels like the treadmill speed settings got ramped up to eleven. How’s Richard? Oh, Saturday is his birthday and wants to go on a date. Oh, how’s Beth? Her brother is still doing drugs, but now he’s at home, and it’s straining her marriage. And we learn so much more about Erin that she is beginning to win the same award as Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks and Rosie Larsen from The Killing did for most spheres of influence. Erin had several possibilities for fathers, an online account for prostitution, and many diaries that as yet have gone unread. Get it all out there! Keep ’em guessing. Also, why didn’t the police think to look in between the desk drawers!? Leave it to Mare to sort it all out, as she continues an investigation she is barred from, doing the routine search work that seems obvious to anyone with a Netflix account. Packing in all these details leaves little room to breathe, and reminds me of the directorial dream sequence in Inside Out, where Panic, overwhelmed by the amount in front of the camera, shouts, “Boo! Pick a plotline.”
The show is offering serial television style details and plots in a miniseries format. The longer we go on, the more apparent it is to me that the show is unwilling to show off what a miniseries is designed to. Where is the focus? Where is the thematic interlocking subplots? What does episode four’s title “Poor Sisyphus” give us besides the obvious realization that Mare cannot let a case go? Is her mother’s Häagen-Dazs really important enough to pair it with a Greek myth?
Similar to HBO Max’s Big Little Lies, maybe this is the future of prestige television. Write a smaller first series, call it a miniseries, chock full of A-list actors, and if it does well? Hey, maybe it won’t be just a miniseries after all.
Mare of Easttown looks to have a tagline: All truths come to light. I am not sure I want all of the town’s truths. If the truths amount to a flurry of red herrings, sad attempts for subplots to steal from the main drive, detective ladies spinning from one date to another, and shoving “content” in front of the camera, count me out.
Dave Sedaris mocked young writers like me who blog, when he recently published his collection of diaries. “Young people just want to get it out there,” Sedaris said. “There’s a lot to be said for not getting it out there.” To me, that is the difference between a miniseries and a multi-season show, and it is that lack of balance, that desire to “get it out there” that is detracting from the experience.
Unfortunately, once it’s out, it becomes very difficult to tuck it all back in. We now are circling the drain on so many characters that to drop them entirely would be even worse than checking in. I could be wrong, and the widening diamond of possibilities could return, could narrow back into a beautiful point where all plots converge. I don’t see it happening. But I’m here. I’m willing. Just, please, no more slapstick.
Originally published at https://theroyleline.blog on May 13, 2021.
