Ever since Kerry Washington gave a
performance that put Little Fires Everywhere on my top ten list of 2020
it answered for me a question that I'd never put into practice: could I as a
reviewer remove the bias I held against a series I considered overrated (such
as I did for Scandal) if the cast did better work in other projects?
This pattern has more or less
continued throughout the decade frequently whether it is with Aja Naomi King's
work in Lessons in Chemistry, Jonathan Bailey's work in Fellow
Travelers (Bridgerton) and James Marsden in basically everything
he's done since Westworld. So
when Sarah Snook, who in 2024 won the Best Actress Emmy for her work in Succession,
a series that I still consider an overrated mess despite the brilliance of
its final season, announced her first follow-up project on TV would be in
Peacock's limited series adaptation of All Her Fault I know that I might
very well have to test that theory with her. The fact that this past week the
Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Awards gave both the series and Snook
nominations gave me a more reasonable excuse, considering it will likely be a
contender for Emmys in 2026.
Like with so many literary adaptations
I went in knowing nothing about the book or for that matter the series. I knew
some details from the largely favorable reviews but I avoided as many spoilers
possible. Now I have seen the first two episodes and am prepared to argue both
Snook and the series are more than worthy of the recognition my peers have
given it.
The series begins was Marissa Irvine
going to an address to pick up her five year old Milo at a playdate. She very
quickly realizes the address is incorrect but she reacts very much trying to
figure out what is wrong. She calls the nanny who she only knows as Carrie
Finch and finds out the number doesn't exist. She's puzzled but not yet
alarmed. Then she calls her own nanny and asks about the five-year old who's
been playing with and she sees that Jacob is there. Then slowly panic begins to
seep in as she realizes her son was picked up at school but has disappeared
completely.
In that opening scene Snook, no more
than five minutes long, Snook shows more real emotion then I ever saw in almost
all four seasons of Succession. So
the argument that this is what Shiv would be like if she gave birth to the
child she was pregnant with in the final season of that show doesn't hold up to
scrutiny. It is clear that Marissa is very much the kind of professional we've
seen in so many other shows over the years but unlike the majority of the
limited series built on this fabric of working moms (from Big Little Lies on)
this is a show about working moms who are trying to balance work and
motherhood. And as we see from the start Marissa has barely been holding it
together ever since.
Marissa we will eventually learn is an
introvert who's life has been swallowed up be the family of her husband, Peter.
Peter is played by the master of 2020s limited series Jake Lacy, the man who's
good-hearted exterior you just know contains darker impulses. He plays the supportive husband while the
police are there and while the investigation begins but at a critical moment he
breaks down and tears Marissa apart for not doing what he considers the bare
minimum. We know this is a horrible thing to say (for reasons that I'll make
clear in a minute) and he immediately backtracks but the damage is there.
To be fair to Jake we see very quickly
everything he's carrying when it comes to his
brother and sister, Brian and Lia. Lia is played by Abby Elliott, who we
all know is the bastion of maturity on The Bear. All Her Fault is also
set in Chicago but before you accuse the writers of typecasting it's very clear
that Lia is Carmy in this family and at least so far doesn't have the
excuse of a horrible family to cover for it. She has no filter, making
everything about her including the abduction of her nephew and while she seems
supportive of her brother who is forced to live in a wheelchair, we learn in
the end of the second episode Brian was in a car accident – and Lia caused it. Peter has been essentially supporting his
siblings his whole adult life, mainly because of Lia. "If I take my eyes
of her for a second," he tells a detective. And while there may be to the
story in the first two episodes we really think this is possible.
The real problem comes when we learn
who the nanny worked for Jenny Kaminski. Jenny is played by Dakota Fanning who
in the last year and a half is starting to become nearly as ubiquitous on TV as
Nicole Kidman. Dating back to The First Lady this is the fourth major TV
project she's been in in as many years and it is by far the one where she gets
to show the most depth. Jenny is a working mother herself, much like Marisa and
its clear the two of them are outsiders in the private school they send their
children too. Indeed their official bond in the last few weeks is when they are
cornered at a school fundraiser and are told that because that they only have
one child it is expected that they have to do more work then the other parents
who have more. Jenny breaks down in the bathroom and its there she encounters
Marissa, who is just as upset as Jenny is but angrier.
Jenny did all the vetting for Carrie
the first time and when the police come
to see her she is shocked to learn that all of the people she talked to were in
fact actors. Her husband equally holds her responsible – until we learn that he
left the responsibility on her shoulders. And he seems more concerned about
liability then anything else and seems just find putting the burden of
mothering now that their nanny is a suspect in an abduction. The fact that
Jenny and Marissa bond during this trauma is far from shocking, in addition to
the crime that was committed they have been carrying the burden of parenting
entirely by themselves.
What's just as clear is that the media
is more than prepared to put the full force of their blame on both women
without knowing anything. In the second episode Jenny listens to a call-in show
where she is savaged by a commentator for not having a clue as to what her
nanny did and at a press conference done to raise awareness the media
immediately chooses to seize on the fact that her company was losing money and
that her family staged this for wealth. They have made it very clear that both of
these women are not victims but monsters.
And at the end of the first episode
there is a possibility they may be right. We see the two detectives
investigating the case after little more than a month has passed looking at all
the regulars we've seen. The last line is: "All those nice people. Killing
Each Other." How many of these people are dead and who's the 'she' they're
trying to break is not yet clear.
But we get a hint at the end of the
second episode when we see 'Carrie' (Sophia Lillis) taking off her wig and with
Milo hiding in a new condo. She's removing her wig and putting on that is black
hair. A woman comes in to give her the key and it's not clear she puts it
together. She's already spreading the gospel that all this was staged. "So
this is all about money" "Carrie' says.
Snook is magnificent in every scene
she's in but frankly so's the entire cast. Last week Lillis received a Critics
Choice nomination for her work as did Michael Pena, who plays one of the
detectives investigating the case. But
all of the actors especially Lacy and Elliot. The only actor of note who has
not yet been given sufficient work to do is Jay Ellis who plays Colin Dobbs, a
work friend who we don't know nearly enough about. The structure of flashbacks
is not overused the way it often is in series like this and the writing and
directing is very sharp.
In a relatively short time Peacock has
proven to be nearly as good at limited series as its streaming brethren,
particularly when it comes to adaptations. I saw it done in 2024 with Apples
Never Fall and again this past year with Long Bright River. The only reason the Emmys seems to be
holding back against recognizing these series with nominations is their
squishiness towards the service in general despite the quality of their
productions. We saw that with their failure to recognize Eddie Redmayne or Day
of The Jackal and Natasha Lyonne and Poker Face this past year
despite the fact that the Golden Globes and other awards shows were fine
recognizing them with nominations. (In Lyonne's case it happened after this
year's Emmy nominations came out but the principle is the same.) It would be
too easy to say that if they fail to recognize either Snook or the series next
July it will be all their fault: a lot can happen in the next six months as I
myself am aware. But right now Snook and the series so far look like something
close to a masterpiece.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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