Mare Of Easttown’s finale is best enjoyed by ignoring the murder mystery altogether
TV Reviews Mare of Easttown
Mare Of Easttown may be the first prestige TV murder mystery worth recommending to people who normally have no interest in mangled bodies or the perpetrators responsible for them. (Perhaps Big Little Lies also counts, provided the wafer-thin second season is ignored entirely.) And assuming HBO resists the temptation to create more supply to meet the unexpected demand for violence and grief in the Rust Belt, Mare will stand up as an incredible character study and an example of ruthlessly efficient world-building. Most of the story works so well independent of the mystery that it’s possible to enjoy the show even if the Erin McMenamin case is regarded as little more than gothic wallpaper.
While it’s possible to watch Mare strictly as a portrait of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, that’s just not how most people consume whodunnits. Most people focus on… y’know, whodunnit. Such is the case here, with most of the show’s buzz built on the race to figure out which of an entire town full of culprits is responsible for a young mother’s death. Surely some people attend a murder mystery dinner party and walk away raving about the cook on the scallops, but they’re part of an exclusive club. So it’ll be interesting to see how “Sacrament” lands with the audience because while it’s a triumphant conclusion to Mare’s emotional arc, as a conclusion to a mystery, it’s a mixed bag.
The episode opens with a seamless transition from last week’s episode as Mare trudges toward the riverbank convinced she’s there to take Billy Ross into custody for the murder of Erin McMenamin. Chief Carter is still frantically trying to track Mare down to tell her about the mystery photo, which winds up being a classic “bae caught me sleeping” selfie with none other than John Ross, the actual father of Erin’s baby. It’s perhaps a shock to the audience, but of no moment to Mare, who arrives at the fishing excursion just in time to catch John trying to murder the only person, so far as we know, with the ability to implicate him in Erin’s murder.
Of course, that’s not quite the situation, because once Mare accidentally stumbles onto the missing murder weapon, it isn’t long before she deduces that they’d convicted the wrong Ross boy. 13-year-old Ryan Ross actually did the murder, the tragic outcome of a hare-brained adolescent scheme to keep his family together by threatening Erin to keep her distance. Yes, after weeks of speculation about all of Easttown’s denizens and their secrets and lies, the murder plot is essentially The Parent Trap if one of the twins hastened her parents’ reconciliation by stabbing the interloping tart with a hunting knife. (Gasp… but which one?!) It was necessary to cast an especially critical eye toward the Billy Ross angle, and it’s equally necessary to consider if making Ryan the killer provides a satisfying conclusion to the story.
Mileage will vary, of course, but for your humble reviewer, Ryan Ross as the killer is a hard no. Beyond the fact that it’s about three twists too many, Ryan’s involvement in Erin’s death significantly blunts its impact. The first episode does such an excellent job of introducing Erin that, even as it becomes obvious she’s destined to become a corpse, it’s hard to emotionally disengage from her. Finding out who killed Erin feels personal, and viewers have been as invested in solving this fake murder as true-crime fanatics are in solving real murders. That investment doesn’t seem as worthwhile when the show ultimately turns a heinous, deliberate act into a messy accident followed by a clumsy cover-up by Ryan’s family. Is it plausible? Certainly. Does it provide enough resolution? Certainly not.
Besides turning Erin’s murder into a tragic accident and little more, this ending proves once and for all that some of these characters served no real purpose beyond muddying the waters. Upon closer examination, the plot holes only get larger and more glaring. Take Jess, for example, who finally decides to turn over the photo that proves John is the baby’s father just in time. Why show them the photo now? Why did she tell the cops about Erin’s Sidedoor account at all? What would she possibly have to gain from implicating Frank Sheehan? Why go to the trouble of breaking into a house to burn diaries that could reveal the affair, only to hold onto a single photo worth a thousand diaries? It’s a senseless errand to begin with, but is more inscrutable given that Jess apparently told the police the diaries had been burned, inciting an armed confrontation with Dylan that was about nothing more than the burning of the diaries. What motivation did Dylan have to burn the diaries aside from Jess’ insistence?
The whole thing just feels arbitrary and confusing and lacks the emotional logic this show is normally so good at. Dylan shows up at the Ross house asking Lori when she knew about D.J.’s parentage and drops off the surgery money Erin had been squirreling away, plus another envelope of money he had hoped to contribute to the baby. It could have been a great moment. Except that the last time we saw Dylan, he was threatening to murder Jess lest she confess either a larger secret we never learned about or a smaller one that’s already been revealed and can’t do much more damage. As far as the audience is concerned, Dylan went from menace to mensch without any explanation as to why it happened. Oh, and where was Dylan on that fateful night when Brianna woke up and couldn’t find him anywhere? Hopefully, you didn’t care, because the show doesn’t care either.
It’s a shame the murder mystery fizzles out because “Sacrament” shines most during the portions of the show most likely to be overshadowed. It’s also surprisingly sunny for such a dreary show. Nearly everyone gets a happy enough ending—save, of course, for the people involved in Erin’s death. Richard Ryan leaves Easttown for another academic opportunity, but is optimistic about a reunion, and winds up actually being just a hot professor with no apparent damage. Siobhan, on the strength of her documentary about Kevin’s death, gets accepted to the Berkeley program and heads west with the family’s blessing. Frank and Faye are on the mend with all the unpleasantness behind them. Even Deacon Burton gets to return to the head of his flock, having been apparently absolved of both Erin’s murder and the shady past that made him a prime suspect in it.
Naturally, the finale saves the biggest wins for its steely heroine. Mare wins custody of Drew after Carrie fails to show up for the custody hearing, later revealed as an intentional decision made because Carrie is in the midst of a sobriety setback. She gets to say fond farewells to her kind-of boyfriend and her daughter, who started the season openly hostile to her. And most importantly, Mare finally begins the hard work of working through the previously unexamined trauma of Kevin’s suicide. That’s the other major plot “Sacrament” was obligated to resolve, and the episode gets it absolutely right. The final shot of Mare ascending the ladder to the attic is as moving and powerful an image as we’re likely to see on television all year.
Kate Winslet’s performance is a gargantuan acting achievement. And the rest of the cast is stellar support, including Julianne Nicholson, who finally gets more to chew on as she and Mare feud following Ryan’s arrest and Lori’s confession. Some of the best scenes in “Sacrament” focus on the abrupt rift between Mare and Lori, two wolf moms who would never let a little thing like a decades-long friendship interfere with the desire to keep the people around them safe. Craig Zobel and Brad Ingelsby will both collect well-deserved awards for what seemed like a meticulous season of television.
But at this point, I’m talking about the cook on the scallops, which again, is terrific, but mostly irrelevant to how people feel walking away from a murder mystery dinner. As fulfilling as this one has been, I won’t be surprised if I get hungry again later.
Stray observations
- So John planned to kill Billy so that one less person would know about what happened to Erin? I don’t get that, but fine.
- While I’m picking at the mystery, I’d love to know how Ryan was able to maintain unfettered access to his father’s cell phone despite having already discovered incriminating information on it.
- I think that the Deacon Burton resolution will rub some people the wrong way, and I understand why. The suspicion that Deacon Burton got transferred because of inappropriate behavior with a young girl is not effectively addressed, but Deacon Burton gets reinstated. More than that, he gets a heartfelt apology from Mare for how he’s been treated. It’s a bit much, no?
- Yet another loose end left dangling: Which boy did Moira end up taking to the dance? Was the other boy pissed? I need answers.
332 Comments
Eh, had the baby-daddy/killer reversed and slandered poor Frank in my prediction, but still had it pretty close. John was going to kill Billy and pin the whole thing on him.
I still have Frank-related questions, it seems odd that he was providing supplies and support for his best friend’s bio-kid without knowing it at all. But I guess we’re not meant to ask.
He was supposed to have been her teacher in the past. It’s a small town – it’s not too hard to believe that a decent guy would help someone he knew but wasn’t related too.
And then lie about it in a murder investigation!
The “small town” angle has bothered me the whole show. The town is big enough to have multiple homicide detectives, a red-light area at the docks, a high school basketball championship, a community college, and multiple kidnappings – all things that scale with community size – but Mare knows everyone and they all go to the same church. She should have personally known the kidnapper guy.
Wasn’t the kidnapper in another town? I had an idea he was not in Easttown, but a couple of towns over.
and his fiance left him for….being a nice guy to one of his students?
I didn’t understand why he lied about helping her, I feel like a teacher buying groceries for a troubled student isn’t that abnormal?
It was directly related to Kevin and Mare was incapable of talking about him at that time. Frank needed some happiness? Altruism? Generosity? after Kevin’s suicide. The darkness around that ended Frank and Mare’s marriage. He just continued the lie/silence he had been telling.
I’ll just say it, it’s because Erin was known as being a ho (whether she had turned pro or not), so Frank rightly felt that any extracurricular attention given to her would be interpreted as something improper, even if it was completely innocent. I still think he was getting some, though.
Erin was known as being a ho Slut shaming a character that’s a teenaged statutory rape and murder victim… how classy.Also the way people in the show kept describing the predatory incest as ‘a relationship’ was really disturbing to me.
His fiancé left him (before reconciling with him) because he was accused of sleeping with, impregnating, and possibly murdering, a teenage girl!
He was quickly cleared of the rape/impregnating part
I agree, there’s more going on with Frank than they’ve shown.He might not be having sex with students, but he’s way to passive aggressive to not have something going on.Seriously; I don’t care how good a deal a house is, you aren’t sharing a backyard with your openly hostile ex-wife. That’s professional level passive aggressiveness.
Frank ultimately seemed like a pretty decent guy! Certainly better than when he was dating Pam in Scranton, at least.My one big gripe with the finale is that it didn’t explain why Jess through Frank under the bus. Unless she only learned that John was the father when they burned the journals?
You are correct. She legimately suspected Frank in the beginning because of the deliveries, and she found the John photo I the diary.
They made the whole thing entirely about children, which is gross. Erin and Ryan are both kids and the writers thought to make them both victims and ultimately scapegoats for their own failures. That is bullshit. I hate this show. The actors nailed it. The writers should never work again.
Yeah, didn’t think it was a great ending. It kind of annoys me how people have to be “emmy award winning “ performance about any half way decent acting job. I thought Kate Winslet was good, don’t know if I’d go that far. Thought they went a little overboard trying to make things dramatic when it all ended up just being window dressing. Overall, I liked it, but it was a little anticlimactic.
The gun couldn’t have been missing for more than a few hours. How did Mr Carroll know it was gone again?
I had thought that Jess was going to have mistaken John for Frank, since they’re both big guys with beards. Is it possible that Jess really didn’t know that John was DJ’s father until she saw the picture? Those sequences with the teens always seemed like just another element of local “bad kid” flavor that was weirdly shoehorned into the main plot.
Mmm so I see they’re waiting until Season 2 to drop the bombshell that Guy Pearce orchestrated all this from the shadows. Very bold.With Joshua on the Jess/Dylan angle not really making sense: we see him secretly retrieve the ear surgery money earlier and hand it over to Lori here, plus… a bunch more money? But when Jess at the station says “oh we just burned the diaries because Dylan really wanted his parents to keep DJ and he thought The Truth was in there”… I was sure it was a lie. That was the motivation behind him cruising around town armed and threatening Jess? Even though at that point his parents knew DJ wasn’t his?
I was certain that after Professor Guy Pearce left, we would hear a news story about a young woman killed near Bates College. Then the credits roll.
Prof. Pierce could’ve been cut from entire script with nothing lost. Also, He drove off screen in same kinda old Jaguar Convertible his character drove in Momento (probably just a coincidence lol)
she sees it and in shocked disbelief drops her Rolling Rock in slow motion onto the floor…
That farewell scene with Richard and Mare was lifted straight out of Fleabag. Without the fox, of course, and the aside to camera.
All the Jess/Dylan stuff was a Red Herring mess.
The whole diary/Jess-Dylan thing, if I’ve parsed it correctly, runs thus:Originally, thinking only about her friend’s murder, Jess implicates Frank Sheehan, genuinely believing that he was the father (and presumably knowing what a piece of shit Dylan is).
Dylan decides he actually gives a shit about Erin’s baby and wants the kid to stay with his parents. (Scene with the pillow)
He (offscreen) calls Jess to enlist her and finds out about the diaries (this would have to basically be immediately after he makes this decision).He and Jess then concoct a (rather devious) plan to mislead Mare as to the location of the diaries. It’s devious because if Jess were to say ‘I don’t know about them/where Erin keeps them’ then Mare would, presumably, do a full search of the house. But by specifying a location, she makes it look as though they were missing.When Mare and Zabel come and interview her in front of her mom, they only ask about how Erin was planning on making money for the ear surgery, and pressure her into giving an answer. Jess, perhaps caving to pressure, perhaps hoping that the killer is one of the johns, or perhaps knowing that this lead is a red herring, tells them about the prostitution account.Mare then doubles back and asks about the journals. Jess, having been coached by Dylan, tells her about the dresser.They then sneak into the house to burn the diaries. I interpret this as being way more Dylan’s idea than Jess’, who isn’t 100% on board – which is why she holds onto the photo. However, it could also be just because then she has insurance against Dylan, or perhaps because she has a piece of evidence that’s easily-hideable but which could be used for whatever reason in the future.
After the shootout, Mare interviews Dylan, asking him: Did you steal the journals?This question seemingly prompts Dylan to confront Jess, accusing her of telling Mare about the diary theft. Now, it’s possible that Dylan just wanted to ‘check in’ with Jess and came across as confrontational because he’s obviously a giant douchebag, but given what they did and what he had Jess do, he should’ve fully expected Mare to ask him this question – so, yeah, this part is pretty dumb either way. I interpret Jess’ shifty reaction to Dylan’s question as being because of the photo, or because she’s become increasingly worried about scrutiny from the police.After Dylan confronts her, she decides to tell the truth and show the police.
So, like… If you actively try you can kind of see the rationale behind it all. It’s still not great writing, though.
While your sequence may lay out, all of this still makes no sense though because the motivation is missing. Dylan did a paternity test and knows for sure he is NOT Dylan’s dad, so why would it matter who the father actually is? He and his family have absolutely no say about where the kid goes at this point; if he’s lucky he could get visitation. Instead, it’s most likely that Erin’s dad would get to decide this from prison, and given that he hates Dylan the chances the kid would end up with him are nil. And given the fact that the actual father would undoubtedly have been secret for a reason, it’s unlikely that he would have come forward.As a result there is no real motivation for Dylan to steal the diaries to begin with. Threatening Jess and saying the three of them are bound together, etc. also is way too extreme given that at best they are involved in some tampering with evidence in a long abandoned crime scene, and the secret she knows (about the true father of the baby) doesn’t really matter at all. Finally, they never do explain where Dylan was on the night of the murder or why he lied about it.I think it would have worked way better if Dylan was shown to have been a strong and committed parent to the baby all along, and refused to acknowledge the kid was not his or take a test. Looking for the diaries could then be a way to confirm paternity, and he’d then be frantic to keep them secret so he wouldn’t lose the kid. (Mare and everyone else might doubt paternity but if he refused to be tested could potentially not be able to officially confirm it.) This could have easily been done and then kept the rest of your timeline in place and making a lot more sense.They also could have found some kind of explanation about where he went on the night of the murder. He could have been trying to buy drugs for example, or went to go look for Erin and not wanting to tell his bitch girlfriend. As it is, the Dylan plot just seems sloppy and like a really forced red herring.
Instead, it’s most likely that Erin’s dad would get to decide this from prison, and given that he hates Dylan the chances the kid would end up with him are nil. And given the fact that the actual father would undoubtedly have been secret for a reason, it’s unlikely that he would have come forward.As a result there is no real motivation for Dylan to steal the diaries to begin with.My guess is that fictional Dylan is not particularly well versed in how custody works in the legal system. While your point makes sense, it implies he knows all that.
In some of the very first scenes of the show when Erin is asking about the ear surgery he says it all has to go through the courts though. It’s clear that he already has gone through legal processes with the kid and it’s hard to imagine his parents wouldn’t have consulted a lawyer by now or been contacted about surrendering the kid – it seems that it’s been weeks or months since they found out Dylan wasn’t the father?
Dylan did a paternity test and knows for sure he is NOT Dylan’s dad, so why would it matter who the father actually is? He and his family have absolutely no say about where the kid goes at this point; if he’s lucky he could get visitation.
Since these are teenagers, it’s not really a problem for me that they
aren’t familiar enough with custody law to understand that Dylan’s
parents can’t get the baby. I see your comment above arguing against that interpretation, but the show only shows Dylan having court experience arranging joint custody with the kid’s living mother, it doesn’t mean he knows what’ll happen if the mother dies, and up until this point he’s had no reason to consider what would happen if he turned out to not be the father.As a result there is no real motivation for Dylan to steal the diaries to begin with.
There actually was a motivation for this: Jess mentions – both in the interview disclosing the
website (I think) and after she shows the police the photo – that Erin
wanted the baby to go to Dylan’s parents in the event that something
happened to her (I think there’s a line, something like she wanted the
baby ‘to have that kind of love in his life’). So essentially, the motivation here is given as ‘wanting to ensure that Erin’s wishes were honored.’ That then makes Jess’
initial decision to say that Frank was the baby’s father weird, but I’d
attribute that to not really having a handle on all the factors at that
point and/or not having had a key conversation with Dylan.
Finally, they never do explain where Dylan was on the night of the murder or why he lied about it.
He says he was driving around; I suppose there’s no reason to question that if he didn’t murder anyone.
However, as I said in my OP, I’m not trying to argue that it’s good writing. The problem is that in Dylan’s case he changes motivations suddenly and halfway through (caring for the baby/Erin) and the instant he starts giving a shit is suddenly going balls to the wall trying to ensure the baby goes to his parents. For Jess, it’s more a question of bouncing in whatever direction the last character she spoke to set her off in. The motivations are there, but they’re not enough to justify the extreme actions taken by these characters. And yeah, I agree that it would’ve made a lot more sense if Dylan had always been caring towards his son.
He says he was driving around; I suppose there’s no reason to question that if he didn’t murder anyone.The plot hole for me was that he felt the need to lie to his girlfriend about it, and that the show makes a point of him doing that, and being increasingly reluctant to tell her what he was doing. What’s wrong with saying that you went out for a drive to clear your head? There’s a lot of teenagers-doing-dumb things in this, which is fine, but I think in this case it’s just a hole the show forgot to plug.
I would hope that Dylan’s story (with it’s may why is he doing this moments) features heavily into whatever mystery the second season is about.
Many, not may. Damn it.
It will be interesting to see if they have a second season. I feel they are sort of in a similar situation to Broadchurch, where basically every character was a suspect to the core mystery and there’s no way you could plausibly come up with a new mystery that again brought in every person in the town. Broadchurch ultimately created some incredible moments by looking at the devastation a horrific crime leaves behind and how people recover – including not just the victim’s family but the family of the murderer too. It was something you don’t often see on TV and they had an incredibly accomplished cast that really pulled it off. Mare won’t be able to take quite that same path for a lot of different reasons, and it won’t be nearly as satisfying to just have her move on to solving a new, less personal crime. I’m sure HBO will put plenty of pressure on the producing team to give a new season a try but I hope they resist unless they can come up with something a LOT better than Big Little Lies season 2. Maybe they let a few years go by and have Ryan out on parole, surrounded by hostility and suspicion and then implicated in another crime, with his family blaming Mare for everything and her feeling tremendous guilt?
Agree completely on Broadchurch.As far as Easttown goes I feel like Mare and her families (except for Frank, there’s something going on there) arch is complete and I don’t know that I necessarily even want her in season two; mom dies (sorry mom), daughter’s in Berkley and Mare is happy and has moved to live with her writer/teacher.
Like it was Mare of Easttown this season and next season is Dylan of Easttown.To me there isn’t a need to have a horrific crime if the characters and the crime is interesting enough, which Dylan’s obviously odd behavior indicates may be.
Plus I really want to know how he has that primo vintage Bronco, as I didn’t get the impression his parents had the money to buy it for him.
I do think that part of what grabbed everyone with Easttown was seeing a different neighborhood/culture, so they could potentially do a new show that’s just “Easttown” with basically all new characters too? Or drive less than an hour away to my own home state of Delaware – the accent can be similar and Wilmington is an infamous stop for the Northeast drug and gun trades that was called “Murdertown USA” a few years ago. They would need to cast a lot more black people for that though!
I hope this is one and done. I don’t think we really need to get this band back together again.
I think Dylan’s motivation for threatening Jess is similar to Brianna’s motivation for beating Erin up over a single text. They’re abusive hotheads. And the fact that they burned the diaries makes him look more suspicious, not to mention they could be in legal trouble over just that, so he’s upset about that.
So why did Dylan burn the diaries in the first place? I think his reasons were different from Jess’s about respecting Erin’s wishes. There are several mentions that things were pretty bad between Erin and Dylan. Who knows what that means, but being a suspect in her murder, he might not want the police to know the specifics about how he treated her. It makes him look bad, and abusive boyfriends or exes are usually good for the murder. The fact that Brianna has poked holes in his alibi wasn’t helping either, whether he did it or not. If he left the house, that’s another thing that doesn’t look good for him, regardless of where he went. I think he was feeling the heat and lashing out.
You forgot a point. A lot of it is dumb because they are teenagers, who are not known for being criminal masterminds.
Also, that pillow scene. I get the logic of the bathtub scene later on, but throwing a “maybe he’s going to smother this baby” note of morbid suspense into it was a bit much in the gotcha department.
“It was I Mare…the author of all your pain!”
I promise to stop thinking Spectre was awful if it will get me this Guy Pearce thing
“Oh hey there was one other diary by Erin that I also didn’t burn, that had some reference to a mysterious professor who is the biggest drug kingpin on the east coast, known only as Mr. Big. And there’s this encrypted thumb drive too.”
Ooooh and there’s another twist where he got the son to hang himself somehow.
I think Dylan cared more about DJ more than he let on. He thought he was the boys father and he bonded with him. I think he went after Jess because he was afraid of losing his son. People have done worse to protect their kids. Look at John and Lori. I wish DJ had wound up with Dylan and his parents it seems like they genuinely loved him. I suspect the best Lori will be able to do is try not to resent him.
The overarching themes around family and loss of sons/daughters, etc. applies here. Dylan’s a similar side of a coin shared by Carrie about trying to keep a child, ultimately realizing that they aren’t fit to be a parent.
It’s just that it wasn’t needed for anything more than a red herring.
The Dylan/Jess triangle was uncharacteristically messy for a series that was overall pretty tidy in it’s storytelling. I’m choosing to just ignore it and focus on the things the series did really well because if I look too hard at it, it will seriously diminish the series in my estimation. It was that shaky.
I’d rather it be that Kevin faked his death (using controlled breathing and biofeedback techniques he learned while traveling in the mysterious orient) and was actually behind everything.
This finale brought the show’s themes together in a poignant way. As her therapist explicitly said, Mare’s inability to deal with her grief over her son’s death made her a very committed detective, which brought justice to a murder and two kidnappings (saving the lives of the kidnapped women). But it destroyed two families: the Zabels and the Rosses. Two mothers who had their sons taken away from them, one permanently. By a mother who couldn’t deal with losing her son. It would be darkly amusing if the show didn’t have empathy for these characters. Primarily, watching this show was seeing how parental love (or sibling love) was heartbreaking by definition. As soon as a person you love so much in the world is born, or is related to you by blood, part of a family, there’s a chance they could get hurt, and that’s horrible to think about. But the other side of the coin is love from them, your family, like Helen, like Siobhan. And even best friends have this light and dark in their relationships.Thanks to a commenter here who facetiously or seriously imagined the show’s final moments in the review of the ep where Zabel was shot, I was dreading a tragic ending for Mare at the hands of the forgotten Mrs. Zabel. Since the mystery seemed wrapped up in the first five minutes. It was a relief to see that it hadn’t been, but I was still on pins and needles. Even when she was walking to Lor’s house, I thought, “Please don’t die, we like you!” Even when she was hugging Lor, I thought, “Don’t let Lor have a knife she’ll stab Mare with!” See how Kate Winslet has created a very good character I’ve come to care for? (And I should have known the show wouldn’t do what a lesser series would have done.) Her acting tonight was exceptional. So was Nicholson’s.That final shot was lovely. Jean Smart’s Helen stayed true to the character by having another hilarious fall. It was clever of the show to tie in the nuisance neighbor call Mare got in the first episode with the murder mystery. Grade for the series: A.
Mare didn’t destroy the Rosses. The Rosses did.
I kind of presumed some would push back on the Ross kid being guilty of the murder, but while watching while it was unfolding, so many fragments of scenes earlier in the series started to make more sense, because without the context, they were just odd and curious. I didn’t think it a cheap twist especially given how many true crime docs I have watched in the last three years have equally bizarre revelations. And had it not, the salvation of two friends and mothers would not have elevated to such an emotional punch.But for my money, sure it was the detective work that propelled interest but it was the human drama that truly soared with performances that are sure to be recognized. And by god that was the women. Kate Winslet and Julianne Nicholson were absolutely great and Jean Smart, wonderful. Evan Peters proved a great casting choice, and the other supporting male cast members all given moments. I love great series like this that stick the landing. So many fumble even on the twenty yard line (Looking at you The Undoing). This was such a solid series, and Winslet a sheer joy to watch.
Yeah, I didn’t find it a cheap twist at all, they’d been planting the seeds for a while and a lot of the general predictions about it included Ryan as a probable suspect. Unfortunately I do think they dropped the ball by planting too many red herring seeds with Dylan, Jess, and company. That ultimately made no sense at all.
Unfortunately I do think they dropped the ball by planting too many red
herring seeds with Dylan, Jess, and company. That ultimately made no
sense at all.
I think it makes sense in keeping doors open for a second season and a possibility that some of the leads may not return or really need to, as their stories have satisfying end points (Mare’s family in particular).
There had to be a reason to do so much world building.
For instance, do we really need to see that Katie Bailey received a house or that Dylan stops by to hand off cash and see how D.J. is doing in the last episode? In my head only if there are stories that need to be told about them.Now if they don’t have any plans for a second season, you are correct and it makes no sense at all.
Unfortunately I do think they dropped the ball by planting too many red
herring seeds with Dylan, Jess, and company. That ultimately made no
sense at all.
I think it makes sense in keeping doors open for a second season and a possibility that some of the leads may not return or really need to, as their stories have satisfying end points (Mare’s family in particular).
There had to be a reason to do so much world building.
For instance, do we really need to see that Katie Bailey received a house or that Dylan stops by to hand off cash and see how D.J. is doing in the last episode? In my head only if there are stories that need to be told about them.Now if they don’t have any plans for a second season, you are correct and it makes no sense at all.
God, not a second season of these beer-swilling, linguistic mangling morons. (Let’s ALL lie to the cops – particularly since she is our ex-wife, mother, daughter, cousin, mother-in-law, partner, best friend, teammate, neighbor….. ) We get it, Winslet nailed the character and the accent. Time to move on to other projects.
It might have been more subtle if Ryan hadn’t had the look of an omen child all the way through.
They certainly foreshadow it: he’s given an odd amount of focus (like when you get a scene that’s basically just “this kid reacts to the murder news”) and all the “Dad’s secret” scenes are purposely vague enough to work, and so on. So I don’t think it’s cheap at all in that sense.I don’t know that I really buy the actual act of him seeing those texts and immediately thinking: a-ha! I’ll save the marriage: I’ll go steal that gun I’ve seen in the shed of that yard I cut the grass in sometimes, and pose as Dad to lure Erin, then lie in wait to ambush her to… scare her into staying away, and oops I killed her by accident. I mean I guess the idea is that he’s a kid and his actions are therefore not supposed to really make sense but… I dunno. It’s okay I guess.I almost feel like I’d like it more if it was more ambiguous about whether he really did mean to shoot her, and maybe even he doesn’t know for sure.
Over the course of my comments on this series, I predicted literally every piece of this finale. (Although I left some wiggle room around whether Lori or Mare’s ex-husband would be the one who aided and abetted the actual killer.)There was definitely plenty of groundwork on all of this—although it’s hard to say whether the narrative beats would have stood out as much apart from casting decisions.I agree that a more ambiguous series of events around Ryan’s actual involvement would have been more satisfying/consistent with the tone of the show as a whole.
I almost feel like I’d like it more if it was more ambiguous about whether he really did mean to shoot her, and maybe even he doesn’t know for sure.I took it as inherently ambiguous. Any 12- or 13-yo was going to SAY he didn’t mean to shoot her, whether he meant to or not.
I almost feel like I’d like it more if it was more ambiguous about whether he really did mean to shoot her, and maybe even he doesn’t know for sure.
Honestly that’s exactly what I felt the show did. I know I didn’t completely buy his “it was all an accident” act. I even got the feeling that Mare didn’t either.
Just as believable as a cop on suspension for planting drugs on someone, going to the home of guy and get her partner killed in an ambush and still being on the force.
I was afraid that the crime would be solved at random, by Jess giving up the photo, rather than Mare’s police work and that really irked me. So, I was ultimately really glad that Mare solved the crime. As for Ryan, there were plenty of seeds there and it all fits, but I totally agree that there were lots of false leads and Erin had an implausibly convoluted evening before getting killed. Just taking the priest out of the equation would have been better. Also, I think John was going to kill Billy and frame him, not just to eliminate a witness. A shitty thing to do to your brother who helped you hide a body, so fuck that guy.
so fuck that guy. Well John’s a pretty awful guy. Look at the destruction and wreckage left in his wake because he couldn’t restrain himself from fucking a teenager.
A teenager who was his cousin! Ew. Ew. Ew.
niece, right?
I’m pretty sure Billy and John were Erin’s Dad’s first cousins, making Erin John’s first cousin, once removed.
I bought it in that there was a definite Lenny and George vibe to them. Billy was the obvious family screw up (it would have helped if he had more character development, though) so why not have him be the scapegoat!
Yeah, your brother can be a “family screw-up” but to blow his brains out for an alibi? I don’t know. He’d have to be a really really big screw up … like dragging the rest of the family to hell in his wake – type screw up. People get sober and people turn their lives around. Now if my nephew killed my brother’s mistress and I was a drunk, would I go to jail for them? Idk. Depends. Would I take a bullet to the head? Hell no. I’d probably just get more drunk and keep my yap shut. I’m good over here rocking a barstool and listening to Flock of Seagulls.
That’s why I wish there was some more character development involving the Ross family. I know it’s mainly about Mare but the impact of what happened is lessened somewhat by not knowing much about the Ross family. They use a couple of signifiers that he’s kind of an idiot screw up (he wears an American flag baseball hat which signifies in tv shows and movies that he’s a dumb redneck Trump lover) and he talks kind of slow but that’s just about it. On the other hand, he’s probably not as awful as Erin’s dad.It could make sense in that Billy is the only one without a family so he’s got less to lose. It’s also that John is increasingly desperate as he’s the one responsible for things and he’s got a son who knows what is happening and a wife who’s already kicked him out for having an affair. But still…not cool
Billy was going to crack and spill his guts, John was in for a penny in for a pound on protecting his son, irrational as that was.
One question I had: What kind of selfie is that? Who poses for an incestuous affair in a smiling polaroid?
Classic genre blindness. A not too bright teenage girl thinks she’s starring in a romance novel – with an extra helping of forbidden love – instead of a murder mystery.
Was it even a polaroid? Didn’t look like it. Either way it’s weird. Who the hell takes actual photographs these days, especially teenagers? And if she had to get it developed somewhere, that’s the kind of thing that gets reported to the police.
That’d be kinda cool. It’d reflect Zabel’s lament.
Billy actually said exactly that. The plan was to shoot Billy and make it look like an act of remorse.
yes it was a very well done series. I think it didn’t understand small town community as much as it thought it did, but it did understand Mare herself.
Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital. I knew it was the kid as soon as he beat the sit out of the kid with the lunch tray.
I think one of the thematic arcs that the author of this review missed or didn’t focus on was the intersections of motherhood, obligation, and guilt. It’s the key theme, I would argue. The powerhouse performances by Winslet, Smart, Nicholson, and to a lesser extent the actresses who played Erin McMenamin and Dawn Bailey (mom of missing Katie Bailey) all center on the weight of motherhood: the sacrifices and compromises, the regrets, the fears. It explores how trauma ruptures families and is passed down through generations. It explores the way mothers try and fail despite their best intentions.These arcs reach a much less satisfying conclusion if Ryan is not the killer, because there is so much embedded in that twist that resonates with that theme of motherhood and its obligations. Mare carries the weight of her guilt for not saving her own son and for not protecting her daughter. She carries the resentment she feels toward her own mother for not protecting her better as a child. And she sees the corrosive effects within her remaining family of not talking about their trauma. Thus, she is also able to understand that, in keeping Ryan’s secret, Lori is not helping her son, but rather setting him on a destructive path similar to Kevin’s. (We see this in retrospect when looking at his behavior throughout the series. He’s clearly troubled and heading down a bad road.) He needs saving in ways that his family can’t because their allegiance is to him blinds them to what he really needs—for the truth to come out. It is up to Mare to expose the truth so that he can heal. The scene where Lori confronts Mare in the car, Lori wails that her family is destroyed, but as we see in the later scenes (like at the juvenile facility), Mare has actually saved the family from the destructive force of it’s own lies. They will survive.* Without Mare, that secret would have festered and infected the entire family. The Mare of episode 1 would not have been able to see and understand these dynamics as well as the Mare of episode 7 does. She has grown, as she has confronted her own trauma and witnessed the tumultuous journeys of the other mothers in Easttown. This is the main takeaway that the series foregrounds moreso than the whodunit of the murder. The murder is the backdrop for this much more intricate exploration of motherhood and trauma. *If I had one critique of this resolution through Ryan, it’s that, like Alston notes, it blunts the effects of the death of Erin McMenamin, herself a mother who tried desperately to provide for her child. In order to show Mare’s growth in this area, the narrative has to create a hopeful ending for the Ross family to show that exposing their lies is better than concealing the truth. It’s a tradeoff that I see the need for but recognize that it minimized or complicated the issue of justice within the narrative for Erin.
Honestly, the reveal would’ve hit harder for me if Lori had briefly snapped and SENT Ryan to confront Erin (or suggested to him that she should die).
the old guy said he knew his gun was missing but during the flashback it appears the kid brings it back the same night…or did i miss something there?
Scroll through all of the comments, that does seem to have thrown people a bit. I believed the kid would have noticed the gun while mowing lawns, kids are curious to look in boxes and drawers in a storage unit. The old guy confirms he moved the gun to the shed for safer keeping away from kids playing in the house. One night after hearing noise he went to the storage unit and noticed it gone (that would be Ryan retrieving the gun). Ryan quietly returns gun after the shooting, the old man not hearing that. Concerned he then checks the next morning to see it returned. with bullets missing, finding it curious but not much else. Later, after he mentions it to Mare, she scrolls through the footage and sees Ryan. At least that is how I parsed it.
Agreed 100%—the clues were there (the whole time!) —my wife and I even mentioned a time or two that “oh I bet that’s important later” at certain scenes that stuck out without the context of knowing the full story. Some of the ‘red herrings’ were a little annoying, as the boyfriend’s reactions now seem pretty well insane—but then again, they’re teenagers and not all that bright (apparently) and were just reacting in the moment.I did think the plan at the end was to make it look like Billy killed himself out of guilt or grief or whatever, not just to ‘eliminate one more person that knows’—pretty sure Billy even stated as much. Not much of a cover-up, but with something like that that people just want gone I can see why he might think it was a decent plan. Billy was damn near ready to kill himself anyway, it seemed.The performances in this show were absolutely terrific, all the way around. Kate Winslet deserves all the awards. Even the smaller roles were great. If the human side of this show hadn’t worked the show wouldn’t have worked—fortunately they delivered in spades. Really enjoyed this show—the bad taste of The Undoing is slowly going away….a few more episodes of “Hacks” and it might be completely gone!
Not to single you out at all, and I get the why behind it, but I have been reading/listening to (podcasts) people still (still!) hating on The Undoing. And I think it is not fair. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was based on an actual book! In which, if you read it, it clear from page 10 or so, that the husband did it, and the whole book was about the undoing of the life of this overly self-confident, entitled, privileged Manhattan psychologist who was about to release a book titled (as the book it was based on) – YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. It was about how even a privileged Harvard-educated elitist person could fall prey to a psychopath, and if you, simple Jane did, it’s not your fault! It showed how these people (psychos) hide and charm their way through life and doing – UNDOING – multiple innocent lives. In that sense – this is what it was. I know that it’s not required to read the book a show is based on, but once you learn that there was a book and what the book was – maybe the view of the show should be re-evaluated based on what the intent was. Not what you wanted it to be.I enjoyed the book. Read it years before the show. So I knew what I was in for. And I feel bad most viewers felt cheated, but that was not intentional.
I loved the Ryan twist and the actor that portrayed Ryan was excellent. Boys that age are utterly stupid, so his plan to scare Erin made sense to me. Fleeing the school and running home to mom, wow, just excellent acting all around.
I liked how it breathed, how it had a natural cadence. Some shows capture that “novel” aspect (The Wire, True Detective Season 1) and this did as well. Such a fantastic achievement.
I think it made sense given all that we’d seen before. It wasn’t out-of-the blue or anything. That doesn’t mean it’s a good or satisfying ending, however. It was just a bridge too far for me. I thought there were too many false solutions before finally getting to the actual resolution and it took the misery of loss in that family too far. I think the reviewer correctly noted that it also kind of diminishes that death of Erin – a kid and a really tragic “accident.”
I feel so sad for Dylan’s parents, who lost baby DJ. It seems very weird that Lori wound up with him. Isn’t Dylan still legally the dad? I don’t know anything about Pennsylvania family law, so maybe what happened in the show is accurate, but it doesn’t seem like “wife of statutory rapist bio-dad who is charged with killing baby’s mom” is in the line of people who would get custody.
I tried to leave this comment earlier; sorry if it posted twice.
Yes, I was also confused as to how she’d get the kid by default with no drawn-out legal process. But I guess rapists get to keep their rape babies close in a lot of states, that’s just how it works. Depressing.
A rape incest baby, to boot. I assumed she only did it at first in return for her husband taking the fall for the kid (although husband was guilty of plenty of other shit. After the truth came out though, she could have given Dylan’s parents custody.
It’s really a cruel environment to raise a child in. Your brother killed your mom and your dad raped her! Let’s go visit them in prison! (And dad will be out before long, nobody gets a very long sentence for rape/incest, unfortunately. And he’d get a not-awful plea deal for covering for his son.)
Sadly, IRL this does happen. I’ve seen a baby who was shaken so badly by her father that she acquired severe developmental delays go back to that same father. The scenario you posted unfortunately doesn’t seem all that fictional.
So sad because in this scenario there were choices (and there aren’t always!) and they seemed to pretty much go with the worst one for DJ
He’ll probably get time for covering up the murder and trying to kill his brother, but yeah he’ll be out before too long and how do you explain any of that. Plus you know Lori is just going to take that asshole back again.
She probably will. It would be too hard to ever meet anyone else.
True. How do you explain any of that on a date?
And I’m not even sure he would be charged with rape/incest. I can’t recall if the series ever explicitly said how old Erin McMenamin was when she died or when DJ was conceived. But if Erin was over 16, then she was old enough to consent in PA, and PA incest laws don’t make it illegal for cousins to have sex (and now my computer has some really weird google searches in its history). So all John Ross may have been on the hook for would be the cover-up of Erin’s murder.
I think the reunion was in July 2017, which was 2.5 years before the murder. If the age of consent is 16, Erin would have had to been over 18.5 to not have been statutorily raped. I don’t think she was supposed to be over 18, but maybe she was if she took a year off from school? But then she would be older than Dylan and Jess and Siobhan, which seems unlikely to me.
Yeah, I don’t think the timeline necessarily adds up to her being over 16 at the time, now that I thought more about it. The series never explicitly says, but I think the implication is that she was younger than 16, given the way you’ve laid it out. Thanks!
I believe they say explicitly that she’s 17, though I could be wrong.
That’s true, I don’t recall if they ever said Erin’s age. The reunion was in 2017 (why that family needed a special reunion is beyond me, they were in each other’s faces all day every day), but we don’t explicitly know the show took place in 2021 or how far in to John preying on Erin the actual conception was.
I explicitly looked into this and the interrogation tapes of John were dated 2/13/20. So Erin was murdered 2.5 years after the reunion. But still not okay!!
But we don’t know how old she was when she was murdered, do we?
Coming in late since I just binged the whole thing, at the press conference they refer to her as “17 year old Erin”
LOL yeah that was definitely the “awkward conversation of the year”–”before I get sent off to jail for killing my relative that I had an incest baby with and leaving you to raise our family alone, would you also mind raising that incest baby?” But it does fit the mold that John Ross is just a gigantic piece of shit.
I’m pretty sure Erin’s dad inherited primary custody when she died and probably had some say in who DJ would end up with. CPS definitely dropped the ball there, but….yea, not exactly surprising, given the state of the rest of that town.
Speaking of which, I do feel like we were a bit deprived of Erin’s dad in the finale.
She’s the mother of his half-siblings and therefore probably the closest relative who isn’t in jail.
I’m just mad about the whole episode and this is what I’m fixating on. I’ve been worried about baby DJ since the start of the show, and now he’s being raised by a woman who doesn’t love him. And he’s expected to bond with his half-brother who killed his mom. It’s all kinds of messed up.
I would have much preferred DJ to stay with Dylan’s parents. It really did feel all sorts of wrong to have Lori with him, even with that tacked on happy family scene at Ryan’s prison. A bad writing choice.
I felt like neither were good options, honestly. Lori has all kinds of baggage that I don’t see that kid being well-equipped to confront later in his life (like, say, growing up with his mother’s killer as his half brother). But Dylan Hinchey’s parents didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, either. I mean, look how their only son turned out. He’s a monster (up until his last scene in the series).
I saw an interview with the director where he made comments about Lori Ross’s love for the baby being very sincere–a sign of her selflessness and part of her healing as she recovers from the trauma of everything that happened. But, that’s a hard thing to judge based on what is essentially a few minutes in an extended montage episode.
And his half-sister… Won’t see much of half-brother ‘cept for the weekly, then monthly visits…
That was one of the most sinking feelings I had watching the ending. Obviously this is fiction, but I always wonder if there are people in the world with similar life experiences. I mean, the girls who were found in the basement of the bar, things like that absolutely happen in real life.
Speaking of custody I was also not really satisfied with the resolution of the Carrie plotline: it was clear there was going to be movement there after she had her scare in the tub (at which point I’m pretty sure the show was telling us she was still sober and just stretched too thin), but I was figuring this would come in the form of her just making a principled decision to share or not seek custody right now.
She does eventually do that but only after going back to using offscreen between episodes, which just feels kind of cheap. Though not necessarily unrealistic of course. It felt like, after Mare does the whole “plant drugs” thing that she’d have to come to terms with the fact that Carrie is clean and will get custody, and/or that Carrie would decide it was best for Drew not to cut out Mare & Co. but… nah.
Agree with this, and also that Carrie was going to need help with that child, especially as a working single mom, and Mare and Jean Smart would likely be allowed not only regular visitation, but given child care responsibilities.
Duex et methana
I wish that had resolved differently, too. I think there was a space within the narrative for Carrie to realize she wasn’t ready for custody and to work out a shared arrangement with Mare. Or, with Siobhann heading off to college, Carrie coming to live in Mare’s house. I think that latter option would have been messier, but could have connected nicely with the series’ themes of breaking destructive generational cycles. Having Carrie relapse, and off-screen at that, felt like a cheap way to get her out of the picture, when a more satisfying resolution doesn’t seem like it would have been that much harder to execute.
While not (necessarily) depicting her relapse, just her exhaustion, the bathtub scene is frightening enough that the resolution feels earned. It’s a refreshing take, that someone can be genuinely turning their life around and be on the up but still realize they’re not quite there yet.
I think that there were several time jumps during the episode. I think from the Pastor’s speech that the last episode covers 7 or 8 months. She had plenty of time to fall off the wagon.
I think the show did wrong by Carrie. Having her relapse so Mare could
get custody felt unearned. Mare was pretty awful to her and didn’t do much
to try to make amends for it. We see Carrie make the choice to not take the pills only to learn
that, just kidding, she really did take them. Mare got bailed out and Carrie gets to
suffer. I too thought it felt cheap.
I mean, not like Lori is gonna be Mom of the year, but that couple did raise Dylan. They ain’t exactly batting a thousand there.
I would think that Erin’s father would get to decide custody once Dylan is shown not to be the biological father. Of course, given that John would now be considered Erin’s murderer it might not be the most logical thing for Kenny to have Lori raise the kid, but he also hates Dylan and I guess this way at least he might think the kid would stay in the family? If it happened this way it wouldn’t be necessary for John to assert legal rights in that case and could be pretty quick to resolve I’d think. Alternately John would be able to sue to get legal rights and would then probably still get to decide custody although a judge could potentially award Dylan visitation.
From a few episodes ago, John Ross and Lori were asked by Mare if they could take DJ based on Ross being Kenny McMenamin’s cousin. So they were considered closet living relative with Kenny was in jail for shooting Dylan.I feel Dylan’s parents should have gotten DJ after how they missed with their own son.
The whore was 19. Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital. I knew it was the kid as soon as he beat the sit out of the kid with the lunch tray.
That kid is almost certainly doomed. Lori as the mom, yup doomed. She covered up a murder too. I guess prosecutors aren’t really a thing in small towns? And not enough Dylan getting shot in the face or beaten within an inch of his life for being a violent shitbag. I don’t care one iota if he dropped off some cash. He was shown to be a violent, dangerous criminal/misogynist who just skated. Remove the baby and since most of the other decent people left town, nuke the area from orbit and be done with it.
from what I vaguely remember from family law, the biological parents have to be gigantic, colossal fuck-ups for the court NOT to give them custody; the “best interests of the child” standard (remember what happened with Mare’s grandson). An extremely good argument could be made that a young kid like that, having been bounced from stranger to stranger (in his eyes), was being traumatized and should therefore not be moved again, but ultimately John Ross probably had the strongest say in the matter. Judges do get leeway to “call an audible” and in that case it would take me only one look at zombified Julianne Nicholson to award custody to the punk’s parents, but thankfully I’m not a TV judge.
And you’d think Erin’s father would have his lawyer all over that!!! Does the man have no other living relatives?!
I don’t know, Dylan was pretty horrible so maybe they are not good parents. Of course, Ryan ended up shooting and killing Erin… So…..
Another possible plot hole: we see Ryan steal the gun, shoot Erin, then return the gun all seemingly in the same night. And late at night at that. If that’s the case, is Powell just going into his tool shed multiple times a night to look at his gun? Because the way he described the missing gun to Mare, it sounded like it had been missing for days or weeks.
Tbought of that too
Because the way he described the missing gun to Mare, it sounded like it had been missing for days or weeks.
The way he described it, he doesn’t know how long it was missing. He went in there the night it was stolen and it was gone. He went in the shed sometime later and it was back.
This seemed wrong to me also but I think it works, sort of?I think we’re meant to think it happens like this:Ryan steals the gunPowell hears something in the shed (it’s Ryan) and he goes out to check and notices the gun is missingRyan brings the gun back that same nightPowell just doesn’t think about this at all any more (or report it, or tell Mare even who I’m pretty sure had been over at the house after that point) until he just notices it’s back at some point weeks later (and at that point notices there are bullets missing and just thinks to himself “huh”… though by this point he’s grief-stricken)It’s kinda weird.
That’s exactly what he told Mare. I rewatched the scene with Mr. Carroll, because I also thought it didn’t sound right that Ryan returned the gun right away. But the old man never said exactly when he checked for it again, only that he heard a noise and it was missing when he looked for it.
I agree, doesn’t make sense that Ryan returned the gun same-night. That part of Ryan’s testimony didn’t make sense to me.
Actually, the old man is Glen Carroll. Anyway, there’s another issue here: why was the gun loaded? The man kept his gun as a keepsake when he retired from the police department of another town. When he still had all his marbles, he moved the gun from the house to to the shed so that people wandering around the house wouldn’t find it and cause problems by using it. So he wasn’t keeping it for self-protection or any other case where it needed to be immediately ready for use. Wouldn’t he have thought not to store it loaded?
Because Chekhov.
The cop being a fucking idiot and becoming the effective cause of a murder by failing to take care of his gun was the most realistic thing about the series.Since he was a cop, my head cannon is that his wife made him keep it in the shed so she would have some extra time to get away if he ever decided to use the gun on her. When you are a woman married to a cop, you need to maintain multiple escape plans at all times.
I thought he’d said he looked for it when he heard a sound outside – the sound of Ryan getting it – and that’s when he found it missing. Considering he’s apparently struggling with some loss of faculties, it didn’t seem unusual to me that he lost track of that story until well after his wife had passed, which is when he discovered it was back.
This. He even says he noticed it missing. He’s taking nightly walks out there apparently. The writing of this plot was bad.
this bugged the crap out of me!!!
Wait. Did I miss something? Did Mare just not check the Erin’s phone record?How did all that texting not get uncovered during the investigation.
They had special burner phones
Which we were told about, by John
But John also said she texted him on his regular phone. So that doesn’t seem to fit. And the flashback showed the kid responding to a message from Erin (after sneaking the phone out of his dad’s coat). That doesn’t seem to fit with the burner phone. There seemed to be too much communication that night for it not have been noticed by John (his kid responding to the message) and the police (John getting messages/calls from Erin or a mysterious burner phone number).
Those messages were from Erin’s burner though, they didn’t have any reason to check John’s phone since he wasn’t a suspect until he confessed.
Great series. I loved it. My quibbles would be about Dylan and his motivations and Mare and stealing the drugs from lockup. Dylan’s behavior in the penultimate episode really doesn’t make much sense. And his recovery from being shot is nothing short of miraculous. I loved Lor, Mare, Helen & Siobhan. I’d gladly spend my Sunday nights with them if there wasn’t a murder or kidnapping to solve. Zabel, Frank, Chief and Richard were great supporting characters. I liked Deacon Mark’s character arc. I loved his final sermon. I’m glad he wasn’t just a red herring. I cried at the end. Poor Lor. Poor Mare. I don’t expect to see you again, but I will drink a Rolling Rock in your honor.
Dylan was trying to hide the fact that DJ want his son so he and his parents could keep him. He was an awful punk ass kid and holding a gun to Jess was unforgivable, but that last scene with Lori was supposed to show he genuinely cared for DJ.
How convenient all the characters are Catholics who go to the same church.
One of those one-church towns, I guess.
The most unbelievable part of the finale was how packed that church was.
So after all that, Mare ascended the attic steps and hung herself? That’s what the fade to black portended. . . right?
She went up there and shot Tony Soprano.
It’s kind of like going through the wardrobe to Narnia, except Mare ends up in the fantasy land known as Westtown.
I so wanted a completely obvious dummy to fall from the attic opening, hanged by the neck, followed by: Fin.
“Oh no! Promootheus!”“Prometheus!”FIN.
I just rewatched that for the first time in like 20 years. So glad I get this joke.
I was literally watching The Critic on Crackle yesterday. Wow.
ha ha ha, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that! I had hoped they would show her at least sitting up there peacefully, sucking on her vape pen or something.
Joshua Alston: “I was shocked at the reveal that Ryan Reynolds was Erin’s murderer.”
Y’ALL MORE OR LESS KNEW WHO I WAS TALKING ABOUT
The rebel yell of current journalism: “It’s on YOU that you didn’t know I don’t know facts!!”My family published a daily newspaper for three generations, then I went and got a journalism degree. Back in the day….20 years ago…if you spelled someone’s name wrong you got fired. It meant you didn’t care and that you were a hack and that you were incompetent. But…gosh…ya’ll know how things change…right?
Back in the day….20 years ago…if you
spelled someone’s name wrong you got fired. It meant you didn’t care and
that you were a hack and that you were incompetent.
That’s not how that worked. Papers employed editors specifically to catch and fix mistakes. They didn’t fire writers simply for making the mistakes in the first place. Maybe if you made them over and over again.
Yes, that is exactly how that worked. If I reported on a story from some John Smythe the editor would ask, are you sure about that unusual spelling? If it had been Smith not Smythe — that was a fireable offense. Basic, fundamental facts are not to be trifled with and not to be taken for granted. It shows lack of care and character and demolishes credibility for reporting the more important facts like how John Smythe killed his lover. And sure— I may be just one iota hyperbolic here that someone would be fired immediately but it WAS something to be fired over and rightly so. So, do not tell me what I fucking know. 20 years ago sitting in a restaurant I was interviewed by FOX news during the election— even though both of my names are common with no unusual spelling— that team made me tell them it three times and spell it out. And that was FOX news.
20 years ago sitting in a restaurant I was interviewed by FOX news during the election— even though both of my names are common with no unusual spelling— that team made me tell them it three times and spell it out.I, for one, can’t think of a single more important journalistic standard than multi-generational newspaper ownership and correctly spelling the last names of random interviewees in a restaurant during the Bush-Gore election.
Good God, are you wound tight.The irony here is that I agree with your implied point that standards here have really fallen. They seem to not really do proofing or editing of their content prior to publication, and the writers are, shall we say, not up to the standards of a decade ago. That unfortunately has become the case across much of the internet as the dream of content monetization ran into the brick wall of reality, and corporate mergers and acquisitions. It’s a pity.
But to at least some extent, it’s not just on the writers. At one time, pieces were reviewed by editors prior to publication; when mistakes were made, they would run corrections later. Nowadays, there are no proofreaders or editors; the endless hunger for content demands posting immediately after typing the period at the end of the last sentence; mistakes are caught by the commentariat instead of anyone on staff; and corrections, if posted at all, are quickly and without apology edited right into the original article.Nevertheless—the idea that journos would be fired over misspelling a single name, once, is more than “an iota” hyperbolic. I am close friends with a longtime career journalist (started at the Indianapolis Star and worked his way up to a couple different papers in D.C., and most recently Politico). I am confident he has made mistakes over the years that didn’t result in his immediate termination. Most of them were probably typos rather than factual errors. Would be happy to ask him about it if you want someone else’s informed perspective rather than my semi-conjecture, though.
Also – back in the days… of the early 2000s? That’s the wild and wooly golden age of journalism where you imagine big burly butch editors were firing all those incompetent, pencil-necked writers at their first mistake? 2001ish?
LOL yeah I call bullshit on that allegation too. Seems like an impossibly high standard to uphold, but it sure makes for a great story years after the fact when it’s unverifiable.
I suspect that a lot of this comes from fuzzy memory and/or a singular perspective that someone is allowing to stand in for everyone’s experiences across an entire field. I mean, there are numerous instances you can find with a quick Google search of journalists for major publications who weren’t even fired for lying, plagiarizing, running unverified stories that proved to be false, and so on. Getting a name wrong, while not a great look, seems like a far lesser sin than any of these, IMO. It is very probably the case that while accuracy was important across the entire field, some papers punished its absence far more harshly than others. Standards are seldom universal in any line of work–it depends where you work, who you know, how well-liked or valued you are within the organization already, and so forth. I would bet that some famous names are joked about within the ranks as regular mistake-makers. I would also bet that some wet-behind-the-ears cubs had their careers cut short over fairly innocuous errors.
The idea was, as spelled out in journalism school, if I can’t trust you to get the small stuff right how can I trust you to get the big stuff right? So spelling of names, locations, other details, were incredibly important. While not so much here, in a news source, if you spelled a murder suspect’s name wrong or gave them the wrong name, you’ve cast douubt on all the reporting in that media outlet and opened up the company to a lawsuit from someone with that name who’d been incorrectly ID’d.
No argument. It’s a detail-oriented profession. I was only contesting the specific assertion that “if you spelled someone’s name wrong you got fired.” I simply don’t believe that kind of absolute statement. There must be thousands of journalists who spelled a name wrong once or twice, and weren’t fired. Not to mention, avoiding those lawsuits is exactly why the old media hired proofreaders. They weren’t axing good-but-imperfect writers every single time their proofers caught a typo. What kind of an insane meatgrinder job would that be? “Pack up your desk, Jimbo, this article you turned in at 4 a.m. while sucking down your fifteenth coffee of the day left an H out of the name John in one out of three places where it appears.”
Depending on the size of the publication, there might be proofreaders or copy editors or fact checkers. But often in leaner operations, you were expected to get your shit right the first time and every time after that. Maybe your first offense wouldn’t get you fired, but it would get you working on stuff that didn’t matter for a while, and you’d better not screw it up. If the first offense was serious enough, you could easily get fired. Since most reporters started out on small local papers (that don’t exist anymore) or small market TV or radio, the offenders would get bounced out before they got to a larger outlet where it would be more noticeable. While I agree some big names has survived plagiarism, made-up sources, and the like, they usually get moved along to another beat or shut out over time. They shouldn’t have been. Like Mike Barnicle, who just kept getting hired after his forced resignation from the Globe.
Idk but I worked in PR for a bit and misspelling a name in a press release that actually went out to the press would definitely get you a written warning, if not fired. Being accurate is part of the job.
It does seem a trifle harsh. I go back more than 20 and that was never a sacking offence.
it’s a typo, barry
I think the big difference is that people paid for your family’s newspaper. And we get what we pay for on this site.
3 reviews in a row for this show, tainted by mistakes and lack of attention to detail.
He killed her with a ridiculously good deal on a cell plan and a bottle of gin!
Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital.
The killer was Detective Pikachu all along!
So do I get half credit for my Lori prediction, given she was an accessory after the fact?
Sure, half-credits for everyone!
If ten of us pool our half-credits we could turn them in for that pencil topper.
I thought the reveal hit hard. They have been playing up the Checkovs Old People’s yard since the first episode. As mentioned already, a lot of things fell into place. Maybe I’m just not super cynical about everything and overanalyze the mindset of the murderer. Just my two cents but I thought it was a fantastic show and I appreciated the last minute reveal…it wasn’t just a final reveal then 40 minutes of filler. I also thought the actress who played Lori crushed it – this was her episode. She’s been simmering this whole time and we finally see her run the gamut of emotions from being composed next to Ryan to completely losing it with anger in the car and then finally, just break down in the kitchen with Mare. Now…why do I think this otherwise A++ episode gets knocked down a few points to B+ in my book…see I got there, just a different way…Siobhan’s song. And everything about her storyline. There’s no way that person exist in a blue class suburb of Philly. And my complaints about the accent…I am from South Jersey so it’s slightly different. We pronounce things similar like “wuder” for water. But most of these people should be Italian, Jewish and then Polish and some other ethnicities of the area. That also comes along with accents of their own. That’s why I think this doesn’t sound authentic. It sounds like what the accent would be if you stripped out the 5 generations of ethnicity, especially Italian. The closest we got was the one bad chick’s parents. That’s more what people sound like in general, Italian or not (not Jersey Beach sterotype Italian). The priest sounded authentic and actually I can tell Guy Ritchie’s character is from upstate New York (good on him).
Tomorrow on the AVClub:
“How to Move Forward in a Post-Mare of Easttown World,” by special guest columnist Angourie Rice(‘s agent).
In fairness tho we finally got to hear the most authentic indie band in television history play a Pat Benatar cover
The mystery was largely secondary to the great characters which only works because of how great they were written and acted. I kept worrying that the last twist of the knife would be that the kid is somehow Ryan’s kid but I’m glad they didn’t go to that extreme.
Mare of Easttown was the best season of True Detective. I mean that as no offense to either show, especially not Mare. It was intimate and epic. It made you question the protagonist and the system they work within. And in the end, justice being done is even messier than the crime itself.
The final scene with Mare and Lori was devastating. I thought at first that after that long moment of trying to ignore her, Lori would break down sobbing Mare’s arms, the way Mare did with her mom after she got slapped, but instead it was as if all the pain and hunger and hurt that has been supporting her just drained away as she collapsed into Mare’s arms and they sank to the floor. Then the way Lori just lay there quietly, cradled in Mare’s arms, as if she could finally breathe: it was like the peace of God that passeth all understanding descending on both of them.
Well, the Christian symbolism was up front and center as she held Lori. It was basically a pieta pose. “Mare” is a variant of Mary.
Yes- this show has a very Catholic take on forgiveness. So many people on this show choose not to press charges or hold grudges against others in situations where most people would NOT let it go. It’s clear the show had a central theme about how you can’t forgive others until you forgive yourself, and we see that in Mare. I don’t know if I agree with it, especially the bit about the priest, but the writers very much do.
Absolutely agree with this take, as well as those replies commenting on the Christian symbolism and Roman Catholic take on needing to forgive yourself. Given all that, in retrospect, I was almost surprised that Mare, Lori and their friends/teammates were not placed in a Girls-only Catholic school that won the state championship. Philadelphia was a hot bed of girls basketball and Catholic schools were huge in the development. Plus, it could’ve meshed their absolutel devotion to each other.Nicholson and Winslet were absolutely stellar, particularly together. I wonder if Winslet watched Nicholson on Law & Order when she lived in NYC. One would never imagine them working together. Now, I just want to see them do it again.
Dylan’s motivation was that he wanted to keep the baby, which he didn’t think would happen if his true father’s identity came out. He was a shitty punk kid but I think that last scene with Lori was supposed to show he truly cared for DJ.The whole “we have a deadly secret to hide” thing last episode was more than a little heavy handed but I think it all still holds together. Just about everyone in the town is a shitty person that will still be decent in the right circumstances. Even John Ross, just about the worst person on the show, was willing to go to prison to protect his son.
And I think the thing with Brianna saying she couldn’t find him on the night of the murder was supposed to be her looking to plead down her assault charge. She made the accusation immediately after Dylan broke up with her.
I think Dylan reacted the way he did about the Journals because he was worried she wrote who Erin’s baby daddy really is. A couple episodes ago when it was reveled Dylan wasn’t the father he at first didn’t want the kid around, but later on when said kid was crying his dad instincts kicked in and he comforted him. This is my long winded way of saying Dylan didn’t want to give incest kid up. Hence the reaction. That’s my two cents anyways.
Comments on a couple of your comments: John was going to kill Billy because he didn’t trust Billy could keep the secret while taking the fall for the murder. If Billy commits suicide, he can’t screw up during an interrogation (like John did). It showed Ryan putting in the code. I wouldn’t be shocked if the kid knew the code even if John had been trying to hide it. One quibble I have is with Frank. His fiancée (briefly) leaving him after he had to take a paternity test solely for that reason didn’t make a ton of sense. I thought he was somehow going to be involved even if it was only by knowledge – I assumed he knew John was DJs father and that’s why he was providing Erin with supplies. But they just sort of ignored all that and quickly made the family cohesive and happy
My random pet peeve is wondering what the whole point was the plotline involving the guy kidnapping the girls and keeping them trapped in his house was. You can’t do a show supposedly completely grounded in reality to the point of everyone do the funny accents and then do a quick jaunt to a completely unrealistic serial killer plot line for about an episode and then go back to realism. I got the feeling that the series was both too short (needed more about the Ross family and Siobahn felt like she was dropped in from another tv show) and too long at the same time (the mystery wasn’t that exciting). The plotline about the kidnapped girls felt like filler they needed to do to draw the series out.(that being said, I liked it and bought Ryan being the killer if only because of how well the performances were. I also enjoyed the hell out of having everyone spend seven sundays in a row listen to the same funny accents that I did for most of my childhood).
I was certain John had something to do with the kidnapper guy. People were pointing out a couple weeks ago that John mentioned a “Friday night poker game” early on and the kidnapped girls talked about the same thing, their kidnapper’s Friday night poker game. I guess it was just a red herring but why even make that connection?
The creators seem to have just wanted this to be an entertaining murder drama, with a little more realism and grit than usual. And that’s fine.
He wasn’t a serial killer though; he was a kidnapper and rapist (although maybe he did serial killing on the side, who knows). He seemed to be modeled on real life cases like Ariel Castro case in Cleveland. I think it would be more unrealistic for the cases to be connected.
Agreed that it would be less realistic if the case were connected but somebody kidnapping girls and keeping them in the basement of their home/bar is also completely unrealistic. It just doesn’t happen that often, like ever. The whole thing felt like they needed some action and more meat to the story than just the investigation of a dead girl so drummed up that story to add sizzle to the plotline. Which is fine, I guess, except that it just sticks out more because of it.
It clearly does happen, though. It may be uncommon, even rare, but it’s definitely a thing that happens. Ariel Castro, Gary Heidnik, the kidnappings of Colleen Stan, Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, etc. It’s clear the whole show/town is a bit overstuffed with deep dark secrets, though.
Let’s not forget Josef Fritzl…
It’s not remotely unrealistic. Ariel Castro held three women captive for up to a decade in a house that is less than two miles from where I’m typing this.
It just doesn’t happen that often, like ever. That glib assumption is tragically incorrect; others have already given you multiple examples where such inhumane fuckery has happened in reality.
The whole point of the serial killer/sex dungeon subplot was to pad the series to seven episodes.
Seemed like a red herring, keeping us thinking that all the girls were being killed, although only one had been found. In fact the cases of the two girls had nothing to do with the Erin case.
But it did allow Mare some redemption from the early scenes where she gets shit for not finding Katie. II just wonder why rattling the rickety pipework didn’t occur to Katie all those times there were people over to play poker And who in fact wants to spend their Friday evenings in such an utter shithole?
Dylan wanted the diaries burned so that no one would ever find out who D.J.’s REAL father was (Dylan didn’t know either), hoping that that would lead to D.J. being able to stay with Dylan’s parents (and Dylan himself) – as it might have, since they had been taking care of him and were the only people left with a bond to him. (However, the Dylan & friend vs. Jess scene was strange, and the explanation of why Dylan was missing for two hours on the night of the murder never arrived.)Jess suggested that Frank might be the real father because she knew he had been “helping out” Erin in a way that might have looked suspicious to Jess. Erin didn’t tell her who the real father was, and Jess didn’t know until she saw the picture. (And, I must say, that picture, though evidence of statutory rape, doesn’t all by itself prove who the father is.)Yes, Frank was helping out a student who, as it happens, one of his best friends had an affair, and a baby, with, and Frank did not know. Frank was just being nice to a student who needed help, and whose family he had some connection to. It doesn’t seem likely that either John or Erin would tell him about the incestuous (and age-illegal) affair.
“Why show them the photo now?” She didn’t have it before.“Why did she tell the cops about Erin’s Sidedoor account at all?” Because Mare asked her?“What would she possibly have to gain from implicating Frank Sheehan?” Why do you think she was trying to gain something?“Why go to the trouble of breaking into a house to burn diaries that could reveal the affair, only to hold onto a single photo worth a thousand diaries?” Because burning the diaries wasn’t her idea…Big “I didn’t pay enough attention to the plot” energy in this review
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE EPISODE WORKS BEST IF YOU IGNORE THE MYSTERY?As someone who has predicted, over the course of the series:1) That the killer would be an anti-climax in order to re-focus the series as a character study of Mare/the town;2) That the killer and baby daddy would end up being connected but different people;3) That Lori and/or someone else close to Mare would be involved in the murder but not the perpetrator;4) That signs have been pointing to John all along but maybe it was actually Ryan;I CANNOT IMAGINE A MORE SATISFYING CONCLUSION!!!!!4/4 baby. Woooooooo!
Also, while I had a good sense of the general conditions of the ending fairly early on, I did not begin to strongly suspect Ryan as an individual until the last episode. Genre-wise, that is some A+ pacing/plotting.
I.e. episode 6, not like…this episode.
Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital. I knew it was the kid as soon as he beat the shit out of the kid with the lunch tray.
Pretty sure it’s more about John Ross’s inability to keep his dick in his pants. Unless I missed something, he’s the only one whose mistakes/imprisonment had a direct connection to sexual interest in Erin.But yes, the tray incident is definitely what pushed me over the edge in terms of suspecting Ryan seriously, although I figured he was at least a strong possibility due to satisfying predictions 1-3 after episode 4.
Oh yeah, lets not upset the SJWs and try to put responsibility on the victim. One that appeared to be having consensual sex with an uncle, various high school boys, and anyone with $100 on the internet, all while trying to hookup with another guy she was being catfished with. Let’s drop the puritanical act like Europe, were such things are common and only looked upon with disgust like interracial and gay relationships.
Dismiss the troll. This is that idiot that keeps impersonating the user with this name.
I *also* predicted that it would be end up being a Broadchurch-style twist-on-twist-on-misdirect hot mess of plot spaghetti garbage , (like every terribly gritty and serious modern whodunnit)!
Got into this show late on but I’m glad I did.
I do agree with the takes on the Deacon, Dylan and Jess. It’s true that the Deacon didn’t do anything except ‘lie about a bike,’ and the charitable interpretation of his character is that he didn’t think his prior/the potential for being suspected should interfere with helping a young girl in need. That being said, given the sketchy light it casts on his behavior, I’m not sure I buy that full, unreserved apology from Mare. I don’t have such a problem with the reinstatement, though – it did mention it was eight months down the line.Dylan and Jess are all over the map. I don’t think their actions are completely inscrutable, but yeah, I don’t buy the way they were written.That said, I don’t have an issue with Ryan as the killer, and the rest of the show surrounding the mystery was good enough that it doesn’t bother me too much. Really enjoyed it, especially the performances from Winslet, Smart, basically all the women.
The huge problem with the boy as the killer is the approximate 26 MILE round-trip, after-midnight, undiscovered, bicycle trip, complete with a detour to town to retrieve and replace a gun. Absolutely ridiculous contrivance.
It was 13 miles from the park to the area where the kids were hanging out. There might have been much less distance between the Ross’s house and the park where Erin was killed. That’s the distance Ryan needed to go on his bike. John & Billy drove the body later.
So the retired police officer knew the exact window of time his gun was gone, two rounds were fired, and the gun was returned, and had an HD camera pointed right at the shed… but he didnt think to check it? Mare had to have that idea?
Too many red herrings by the end, the writing felt like it just wanted to string the audience along for shocking moments rather than develop out a realistic feeling investigation and town. I don’t even think the character work was particularly brilliant as some say it is, it just has good actors and production values.
That’s what I felt- it was not that great of a show in and of itself but was elevated by the acting and sense of place
It got extremely Losty to the point of falling down a big farce hole. Each bit of dialogue and each scene works, but the whole overarching plot ended up being a wet fart that took most of the wind out of the show’s sails.
The obtrusive Crown Royal ad at the top of every page that you can’t click away and stays there for a whole minute is too far with these goddamned ads. Are you actively trying to get people to stay away from giz sites? It sure as hell seems like it.
It’s so goddam annoying.
The obtrusive Crown Royal ad at the top of every page A suggestion, if I may:Ad blockers make ALL the difference.
I finally reached my breaking point last week, with YouTube now seeming to insert an ad before, after, and every four minutes within a video. I’m all for creators being able to monetize their work, but it’s too much. I broke. I installed UBlock Origin and it was immediately like all the noise on the internet faded away. In one fell swoop, my online life got better.
Two major plot holes for me:1. The whole Billy angle. Why did Billy confess when he knows that he didn’t do it, and there is no indication that he was drunk or impaired so that he might think he had done it? Surely not to save his nephew when his Dad was a far better candidate to take the fall? And didn’t Lori, by falsely telling Mare that Billy was the father when she knew better, at least facilitate her husband’s plan to frame Billy for the murder and then kill him? She tried to get her innocent brother-in-law killed, which wasn’t necessary to protect her son, and she and Mare are still besties?2. Frank talks about John being all lighthearted and jokey when he drove him home. How could he possibly be so after he knows that his son just killed someone (Ryan called him at the party and told him what happened) and his brother is at that moment trying to move the body? Having said this, loved the show overall, and Kate Winslet was magnificent.
1. John talked Billy into it because Billy “had no one,” because the family needed to be protected and Billy has no partner or children and John convinced him it was better for everyone if Billy took the fall. Lori did commit a crime, but I think it’s one that Mare understood even if she wouldn’t allow it.2. The party was in two locations — the bar and then at Frank’s, right? The drive home was from the bar to Frank’s house, before John knew. I think?
Confirm. Franklin Lodge I think. There would be no need to drive Frankenfaye home from the party in their own house.
He drove them home before he knew what happened. That was a key detail that tipped Mare off, I think.
Maybe discussed below, but here’s my plot hole:Mare only finds out about Ryan because the old guy calls her for a chat. He starts talking about missing things. One being his gun, which then turned up, but missing 2 bullets. OK, let’s check the cameras which we set up all the way back in episode 1…great!Except, Ryan then tells his story. He goes to the mans house and takes the gun, rides to the park, accidently kills Erin…and then immediately takes the gun back the same night. So, when did the old man notice it was missing? Did he randomly check on his gun that night?Maybe I missed something there, but that threw me for a loop.Also, you are so right on the too many reveals. I joked with my wife that Ryan was actually covering for his sister Moira, who would be revealed to be covering for her mother. Get the whole Ross family in on it!
The old man said he heard the commotion outside that night, went out to check, and the gun was gone. I missed this initially as well.
Thanks! Totally didn’t catch that, it confused me.Still think it was one too many “plot twists” at the end, but this one seems to hold up at least.
The final shot was too cutesy for me. But I can see why people thought it was a good ending.
loved this. it kept me gripped to the very end. i don’t want a season 2, BUT if they did do one, it would need to be done years from now.
Finding out who killed Erin feels personal, and viewers have been as invested in solving this fake murder as true-crime fanatics are in solving real murders. That investment doesn’t seem as worthwhile when the show ultimately turns a heinous, deliberate act into a messy accident followed by a clumsy cover-up by Ryan’s family. Is it plausible? Certainly. Does it provide enough resolution? Certainly not.I really don’t get how a tidier resolution is more satisfying. Erin died because:A) A 40-year-old father of two decided it was ok to have a sexual relationship with a 14-year-0ld girlB) Medical care is so expensive and out-of-reach that she had to act in desperation to try to pay for her baby’s surgery.C) A kid was desperate to keep his family together, and at like 13 years old internalized a responsibility to fix his father’s mistakes.The whole show is about how trauma spreads through families and communities. John’s actions victimized Erin and his entire family, creating a situation that could only have ended in tragedy. The whole thing is heinous. If we want murder mysteries to boil down to one bad guy with a gun, we’re looking for the wrong thing.
Great post! This articulates what I felt about the ending really well. I don’t mind a ‘bad guy with a gun’ ending either but in this case, it was the right way for the show to go.
I think showing Mare letting Carrie still interact with her son would have been a powerful way to show how recognizing trauma is healthy and healing, and the only way out of it. Carrie may never raise him but she can still be his mother in some capacity, just like his father will always be his father in some capacity. But I can imagine that future for myself I guess 🙂
I also thought that would have been a nice (and seemingly obvious) olive branch for Mare to extend, even after Carrie was an absolute c**t to her (side note—I’m very disappointed that the series ended without her just slapping the absolute shit out of one of Easttown’s plethora of shitty, awful teenagers), but it was as “happy” an ending as one could hope for.
Yes, especially because Carrie’s trauma is largely informed by her poverty and that she is using because she didn’t want an incident like the bathtub to happen again. On the theme of motherhood and breaking generational trauma, seeing her and Carrie unite I thought would have been more powerful than her connection to Lor at the end.
I think she will, but in the epilogue Carrie is presumably off getting clean in the rehab facility and she specifically told Mare to just tell the kid she was sick so he wouldn’t have to see her like that in rehab.
Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital. I knew it was the kid as soon as he beat the sit out of the kid with the lunch tray.
what kind of sentence would Ryan have got? would it have been something like life without parole?
Surely even America doesn’t put 13 year olds away forever? Well, not any more, right?
https://www.thefishmanfirm.com/miller-revisted-batts-gives-juvenile-lifers-new-life/In Pennsylvania, there is life without parole sentences for minors convicted of first-degree murder, but its not mandatory. I believe Ryan is supposed to be under 15, so a sentence for first-degree would be 35 to life would be more typical for that charge.But I don’t think it would end up being that. Probably charged with second-degree murder, so for an under 15 year old, sentence of 20 years to life. I would imagine, he is sentenced to juvenile detention until 18, then serves the rest of the sentence in prison.
Doesn’t second-degree murder require intent in Pennsylvania? If everyone agrees it was an accident, wouldn’t he just get manslaughter or something?
“Oh, and where was Dylan on that fateful night when Brianna woke up and couldn’t find him anywhere? Hopefully, you didn’t care, because the show doesn’t care either.”I guess he was telling the truth when Mare and the chief interviewed him: He couldn’t sleep, so he drove around and smoked some weed. That’s at least one explanation.
What?? Some character on this show told the truth???
I guess he did. But he also threatened his girlfriend when she asked him about it. Those things don’t really fit together.
The threat could have been motivated by self protection IMO. If Brianna starts going around messing with his alibi, the attention focuses back on him.
John was going to kill Billy to pin the blame on him. That way he could keep his family intact while having a plausible killer.
I’m not at all convinced Ryan’s shooting of Erin was an “accident”.That 100% is the way he & the family lawyer should spin it for the judge. But it’s not hard to imagine that angry kid having previously made a decision to kill the next slut who tried to take his dad from his mom.Heading into the finale, the only person I was sure did *not* kill Erin was Billy. John & Ryan were my two leading suspects. So, I completely disagree that the resolution of the mystery was unsatisfying or implausible or a cheap twist or blunted the emotional impact, or any of that stuff. Ryan speculation was all over these comment threads, and Twitter, etc.
I was okay with Ryan being the murderer although I agree that the neat wrap-up of everyone’s mess felt cheap, like Frank’s relationship being back on track. Or Dylan’s secret being … no one could know who the real father is so his parents could legally keep the baby … somehow?
I guess I realized pretty early on like most that this story was exactly what the title tells you: a story about Mare of Easttown. Not Who Killed Erin or Where are the Girls of Easttown. Just Mare, working through her shit during some harrowing events.
The image is what I thought it had to be, given what we’d learned. For it to be incriminating meant it was a secretly taken pic. For it to be in Erin’s possession meant she probably took it. Seemed like it probably was a bae pic.
Anyway, I haven’t even bothered going to the Reddit sub because I am sure that Scooby Central has some HOT TAKES about this ending, lol.
One more thing — am I the only one who was surprised that Siobhan’s parents were letting her drive BY HERSELF from Philly to Berkeley? That’s nearly 3,000 miles. There’s no way my parents would have let me drive that on my own, at that age. I guess the show didn’t feel like it was worth getting into, or else it’s now completely normal for 18-year-olds to drive 3,000 miles alone.
She had to get back to the California drama they borrowed her character from. She did a nice “American” accent (she’s Australian) but the directors left a glaring hole with her completely punting on the native dialect that everyone else in the cast effectively shared.
They seem to have been pretty negligent parents already so it’s at least consistent.
The biggest contrivance that I can’t square is, if Billy and John both know who really killed Erin, and if the whole point was to frame Billy for the murder, what the hell was the point of John getting Billy to say to him that he killed Erin? It made no sense, because John didn’t need to hear it, because he knew it wasn’t true, and no one else was listening. It seemed to only function to trick the audience into believe Billy was the killer, and that was a blatant cheat.
I assumed he wanted to hear him practice saying it to see if he sounded believable for when he was gonna confess to the cops the next day. Then I guess in that moment John decided it wasn’t super believable or didn’t trust Billy to “confess” properly, so he was just gonna take Billy out, make it look like a suicide, and then use Lori to tell Mare so the case would be “solved”.
I took that as John wanting Billy to basically “practice” confessing that he was the killer.
Late to the party – only watched it a couple of nights ago – and maybe I didn’t pay close enough attention, but that entire scene just felt contrived to get Kate Winslet another action sequence.Like, what was the point of the gun? Given both knew what both knew, I don’t think John was going to murder Billy to protect himself, and I also don’t think he went out there with the intent of suicide for either of them, especially when it’s a relative and you’re Catholic.I also missed how Erin ended up with her shirt off.
Anybody else get a Scooby-Doo vibe from Lori at the end? “And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling cops!”
Mare should’ve arrested Lori there in Lori’s car for obstruction of justice.
I think that’s where she drew the line regarding how far she’ll go in the name of justice. Plus, aren’t spouses protected from incriminating each other?
In court they are.Speaking of the spouse, how long is John’s sentence? Was he convicted for the attempted murder of Billy? Was it really attempted if he didn’t pull the trigger? Is merely pointing a gun and threatening to kill legally “attempted murder”? If it was Erin’s murder he’s doing time for, he ought to be exonerated by the time Siobhan goes off to college (likely mid-to-late August). Speaking of, I think Mare should drive with her daughter to Berkeley – she said she needed a vacay and she could fly back from Cali.
Wasn’t Erin like fourteen when he knocked her up? Fuck him.
Does the baby’s ear problem stem from being conceived in incest?
No, but the child is already blogging in support of Trump.
That’s such a tv thing – entering freshman driving alone across country to college. Would Berkeley really allow a freshman to have a car on campus?
My school certainly didn’t.
Would that family even be able to pay for Berkeley?
Protected from incriminating each other, yes. Protected from lying to the cops about the identity of the murderer and conspiring with your husband to attempt to kill his brother in order to complete the cover up- NO!!!! WHAT THE FUCK????
Sure, fine, since you put it that way…
Exactly! She was OBLIGATED to arrest her for obstruction, right?! She knew Lori committed the crime. She’s not the DA. She doesn’t get to decide whether Lori is actually charged. But she sure as hell has an ethical obligation to make the arrest.
Totally. And another thing: This story takes place in 2020. So in August, why aren’t they all wearing masks?
alternate timeline, like BTTF 2
I said that exact thing right after Lori’s line – “and I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!”. My husband looked at me like I was insane.
One unsolved angle: How could Dylan’s parents seem so cool and like really good people only to have raised such a shitbag of a son?
This isn’t a story about resolution. If anything, it’s a story about living with the loose ends.I’m still chewing on this story, but the theme seems to be parents and children; how they hurt each other and how they need each other, and the paradox that sometimes both are happening at the same time.
Another thing, so Erin was naked because…John and Billy wanted to make it seem like a rape? Yeeesh. All in all, there are better ways to show the need for medicare for all.
Angourie Rice’s singing did not play as large a part in this show as I was led to believe.
In fairness, singing Pat Benatar is the kind of indie authenticity whose story can only be told in an oral history
It’s a bit much, no? No. It was explained in the series. Did you not watch it?
I think John was going to kill Billy to frame him. He shoots him, claims it was a suicide and that he admitted to the crime.Been a fan of Julianne Nicholson since Storm of the Century.
That’s exactly what Billy said.
At least they didn’t end it with only Mare and the audience knowing the truth, and her keeping it secret, the way Lori wanted it.
The Mare of Easttown can be safely ignored. Save yourself several hours of your life. It’s a simmering borefest.
Meh, I preferred The Gloaming, for that ”tortured cop solves mystery” goodness.
Damn, that must of been some pussy on Erin. It destroyed 3 families, put 4 guys in jail and 2 in the hospital.
The Ross’s aslo get off pretty light. Ryan is a juvenile, and John is in the same boat as Billy, for fucking with the investigation. Probably gets a year or so, then probation.
Here’s my big plot hole. Mr. Carroll knew that his gun had gone missing, but the way Ryan tells it, he had custody of it for 2 hours in the middle of the night. How would Mr. Carroll have known that??? Considering this is the thing that leads Mare to Ryan, that should have been considered.
It was. He says when/why he went to look in the shed and noticed it was gone and then when he went back and noticed it was returned. There are earlier comments that clarify in detail.
The Ryan situation was, for my money, the worst possible choice for resolving the mystery. It also made a mockery of episode 6 and Dylan’s extreme heel turn. Plus plot holes galore. You know they didn’t trust their own ending to the crime story when it cut to Ryan and Erin no longer having dialogue but soundlessly and slomo shouting at each other to show how intense it all was without actually having to put that into a convincing scene. So plotwise this is a solid C-, just another disappointing whodunit folding inwards far too much (everyone involved has a big personal link to the investigating cop) and the lameness of Mare only now looking at the security footage when she could and should have done so much much earlier in the series is shamefully weak writing.However, the acting remains extremely powerful, and that’s what keeps you watching. Though the avalanche of happy endings (well, happy-ish) seemed over the top compared to the unrelenting gloom and misery that infected everyone’s lives in the previous six episodes. Easttown is a shitty place full of shitty people living shitty lives. And for the Deacon to make his speech about a great spirit rising… What is this, Underground Railroad??So yeah, acting honors will be well-deserved. But personally, I won’t be visiting Easttown again if it would come around for a second season. One crappy mystery is more than enough.
Except that the last time we saw Dylan, he was threatening to murder Jess lest she confess either a larger secret we never learned about or a smaller one that’s already been revealed and can’t do much more damage. Yep. It was blatant red herring garbage, tossed in at the last moment in episode six, for no reason other than to have an “OOOOOOOOOOH” moment. Which did not pay off.
my big takeaway from the reveal that the 13 year old kid was the killer was: THIS is why they had Julianne Nicholson as the mom…she was biding her time until it was time to drop the nuclear bomb LOL. There aren’t many actresses I know of who can radiate grief like she does. Although my son raised a good question—what happens to the dad who took the rap for him? I guess he’d still serve some time for obstruction of justice, perjury, etc.?
Agreed on Nicholson. I watch most every one of these types of shows—which are pretty much the same at this point (there’s probably 20 or so between the various UK/EU series)—and I love playing the game of guessing which character is actually going to be part of the twist(s) based on the actors. Old Law & Orders are the cheap version of this. In hindsight, I was thrown that Mare’s cousin wasn’t involved in something nefarious based on the actor.
I mean the dad also did have a kid with a teenager.
how could I have forgotten the statutory rape that the dad AND his brother committed? On second that, maybe I don’t want to revisit Easttown, it’s an amoral shithole.
I can’t say I was surprised Ryan was the murderer and by “catching” his dad in less than 1/3 of the episode made it more than obvious that John wasn’t the real killer and he was protecting his boy.
Although I have to say I was surprised Pearce wasn’t a villain!
Mare of Easttown was a patchwork of many other similar shows. I didn’t like the writing, but I really enjoyed the stellar cast. Winslet, Nicholson, Smart were amazing and made the series fun to watch.
although this was as “happy” an ending as one could expect from such depressing circumstances, I was disappointed that Mare didn’t get to line up all the super bratty asshole kids who abused her during the show and slap them all Three Stooges style. (that would have been a killer end credits scene.)
That investment doesn’t seem as worthwhile when the show ultimately turns a heinous, deliberate act into a messy accident followed by a clumsy cover-up by Ryan’s family.Ironic that the reviewer sees this as a fault in the concept of the story (I hesitate to say plot. The plot of this show…. whoo boy what a shaggy dog mess) when this is exactly the entire point of this exercise in grief porn, obscure accents and, ultimately, terrific acting. Things happen that we expect to have bigger meaning or reason, but don’t. Then we deal with it, or don’t, as the world moves on.The plot holes in this story are massive. This town has to be the size of Mayberry to have everyone so up in each other’s business. I just wrote that off as social science fiction early on.
The real problems come in the tying of the ends, and the assumptions made to provide massive jumps to the twist of Ryan as the killer (not a shocking one as the “the moody kid who never says anything did it” trope is becoming maddeningly overplayed in “prestige” TV).
For starters, I hesitate to think there are many 20-somethings that even print photos anymore. Like at all. To have the entire mystery hinge on that one printed photo is… utter boomer-contrived nonsense. But let’s just ignore that for a moment…. A kid who mowed an old man’s lawn in the summer. Somehow still has the key to his shed in November and remembers that he once saw a gun… in a box… locked in a drawer. When? When he was looking for the weed whacker? Come on. Literally. Terrible.
The race to give every freaking person a resolution in this story was also utterly annoying. While I’ve loved Jean Smart in this series, the scene in the pizza place where they basically solve their maternal issues between the three generations was, while feasibly possible in the real world, randomly chucked into the story.
It’s a shame that the final episode tried to be so many things when the heart of what made the show strong was Mare’s dealing with grief. All the other stuff (non-investigation related) hung around way longer than it needed to and got in the way.
Ultimately enjoyed it for what it was, a well-acted character study wrapped up in a lazy procedural mystery where there were so many red herrings you knew that there would be one more twist in the final 10 minutes.
a clumsy cover-up by Ryan’s familySo clumsy that it completely fooled the reviewer, twice removed. Reading the review of last week’s epidode about how it the show “revealed it’s killer” is even more comical now. Most of the comments in that post are from people who actually seemed to be paying attention.
wait a second… are you telling me this murder mystery is actually about MORE than just a murder? Are you telling me this show invites us into a world of quirky characters and compelling small-town visuals each week, and that’s not even the POINT of the show? Are you for real?
I have so many unanswered questions.1. How many times is Lori allowed to obstruct a murder investigation and not be charged with a crime? Also- she was going to let her husband kill his brother to save her son. Isn’t that criminal conspiracy to attempted murder?? And the legal system was like “sure, let this lady continue to have custody of two kids, one with special meeds”???2. Why the fuck didn’t Jess report Dylan threatening her with a gun? And if she did, why was he not arrested? And why were none of the three people who burned the journals charged with destruction of evidence and obstructing a murder investigation?3. Why were we not updated on what happened with John after Ryan was arrested? Was he sentenced for attempted murder and obstructing a murder investigation?4. Did Erin’s father disappear off the face of the Earth? Wouldn’t he kick up a fuss having the mother of his daughter’s murderer and wife of the older dude who fucked his teenage daughter have full custody of his grandchild? I know he’s probably in prison for shooting Dylan but did he have NO other living family that could help with the baby???
Question for you all. If this is a one-and-done mini-series, which I think it should be, do you think HBO should have just made this Season 4 of ‘True Detective’?Also, shouldn’t quite a few more Easttownians be in considerable legal trouble in the end? Lori for the damn cover up?? John and Billy’s Father withholding what he saw for so long? Dylan and Jess for messing around with evidence? I shouldn’t nit-pick considering all the other clunky plotting going on.
Dylan thought Jess narced on him because his (now ex-)gf narced on him for not being home that night. The whole Jess storyline was an unholy mess and burning the journals made NO sense especially as Dylan didn’t actually know who the killer was (even if he thought it was the priest) and the journals could have helped…they already knew Erin was on an online escort site.I agree that this was a great show with a very well wrought sense of place and rich background characters that got REALLY messy and confusing in this last hour (why did Mare think/know Lor lied to her about John? Didn’t we think she thought Billy killed Erin and that John and Lor thought that also? Mare assumes what we later find out, but without proof…right?) (apparently the Colt revolver was only missing for a few hours?) (BOTH the killers were extremely tangential characters?). It did take away for the death to be accidental. Just take the good parts and try not to think about it too much. I think they did such good background work that I hope they will come back to these characters. Next time the victim doesn’t even have to be so bound up in Mare’s family.
two wolf moms who would never let a little thing like a decades-long friendship interfere with the desire to keep the people around them safe. one of my favorite parts of this last show was watching them reconcile as she collapsed onto Mare unexpectedly while hugging. That was a nice touch and I wish they would squeeze in one more episode of just the two of them sitting around for an hour, getting drunk and commiserating while propping each other up.
Really, are writers for this site really that stupid? What motivation did Dylan have to burn the diaries aside from Jess’ insistence?Dylan and his family wanted to keep the baby even though they knew now Dylan was not the fathe3r. And try to follow me here, he burned the diaries to prevent anyone finding out who the real father was, so they had a better chance of keeping him.
the murder plot is essentially The Parent Trap if one of the twins hastened her parents’ reconciliation by stabbing the interloping tart with a hunting knife.I feel like there’s a less labored comparison than The Parent Trap.And I really don’t agree with the thrust of this review; for the previous six episodes I found myself mostly drawn into the drama and characters more than I was by the mystery, and the twists of this finale actually got me wrapped up in the whodunnit. Especially since once you fully understand what’s happened and how this family has been completely ruptured, you’re left watching the characters, which form the backbone of the show, pick up the broken pieces of their lives.
no mention of the other “happy ending” in the show—when Beth gave her brother’s house to her friend’s Dawn’s daughter? That was a really lovely moment (also nice to see that apparently Dawn has beaten cancer).
I figured all along that Lori did it, but having her son as the murderer was a perfect ending. This show was about how broken all of these people were even without the murder…having all the baggage fall on the kid fit the show entirely.
I thought John was planning to make Billy’s death look like a suicide and to blame the murder on him. I don’t think he was just trying to kill a witness. Billy said he realized that John was the one with a family and that he wanted to use him to protect it.
My understanding was that if he staged Billy’s death as a su*c*de, then that would be tantamount to a posthumous confession. And with the rest of the family going on record saying “Yeah Billy confessed and then he killed himself from the guilt,” the case to be quickly closed with nothing pointing at Lori’s husband, or her son. (The issue of the missing murder weapon wouldn’t necessarily matter if you have already ‘gotten’ the killer.)
>people who normally have no interest in mangled bodies or the perpetrators responsible for them>that’s just not how most people consume whodunnits. Most people focus on… y’know, whodunnit.
Yes, because Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was all about catching the perp. Seriously, do you even know any fans of detective fiction?
I haven’t got time to read through all 250 plus comments so maybe someone addressed this already, then my apologies. But in addition to the plot holes pointed out in the review and in the initial comments (yeah, that Jess/Dylan thing made no sense even as a red herring of sorts) – here is my major question/questions of the episode:- So, John Ross confessed, understood. And with the photo as an indisputable evidence of his “relationship”, they really do not feel like digging further, he’s the father, he’s the murderer.- BUT – he is clearly lying and covering up for someone about the murder. Firstly, he does not exactly know how/where Erin was shot, the angle and such. A simple re-enactment (as they do like in L&O all the time) would totally show he wasn’t there and has no idea what went down (during the actual murder, not when he was moving the body).- BUT, also, most importantly, for me – the MURDER WEAPON??? Where is the murder weapon? John says he got rid of it. Where? Don’t police look for it then as standard protocol? He must know where he dumped it. But even worse, they ask him what kind of gun it was, and he says he doesn’t know, just hmmm some gun. Really? A guy like him from Easttown and a gun owner himself (Billy’s intended murder weapon) – cannot tell what kind of gun? Even like ballpark? – BUT – even if (BIG IF) – didn’t anybody have a question where ERIN could possibly get a special issue 1980s police weapon? Where did she get it? Nobody bothered looking into any of this? If I am wrong about any of this, please correct me, thank you.
these series, as most of the TV Peak era ones, only care for setting up big dramatic scenes usually carried by great actors. Realism, even in murder mysteries, doesn’t count. What counted was showing us amazing Kate acting 50 shades of being sad.
You could argue that all of those things did “happen” because they were Mare’s job to do, she did them, realized the details didn’t add up, found the real killer, and caught him. I know it’s fun to dunk on writers but all of this stuff literally happened in this episode. It was just played to make Mare look like an even smarter detective.
Mea culpa to all the commenters I argued with over the last two months saying that it Definitely Wasn’t Going to be Ryan. (Though the theory that Ryan was the father is dumb and I will die on that sword) You were right; I was wrong, and leave it to Mare of Easttown to leave me crying over how the murderer is going to suffer for the next however many years. (Also Juvie seems to have a very nice library, which I doubt is actually realistic) The mystery does seem awfully messy. What was John Ross’s idea, exactly. To plant seeds of doubt in Billy’s mind so that he thought maybe he HAD murdered Erin? Wouldn’t Billy wonder what the hell his own motive was, given that he wasn’t sleeping with Erin and was, apparently, just a concerned – if often blackout drunk – uncle figure? Also wouldn’t Erin’s hands have shown gunshot residue, considering her hands were on the gun when Ryan shot off her finger? What was in the diaries? Was all of this just a way for Dylan to try to keep DJ? (Also, John Ross, you have a hell of a nerve, friend. Asking your wife to raise the baby you had with your cousin’s underage daughter) I’m glad that it seems Lori is warming up to DJ at the end, though – none of this is that baby’s fault, and seeing her blankly staring at him crying made me so sad. That kid’s going to grow up with attachment issues.I can easily see this show getting a second season, but I hope it doesn’t. As a mystery, it was meh. As a character study, it was great, but I can’t see a season 2 focusing on character over mystery.
I think that John was getting Billy to confess to the murder and then he would say Billy committed suicide because of his guilt. Billy gets the blame their dad and Lori, corroborate the story and Ryan and John keep their secret.
One other hole you glossed over (or I missed) – Mare found the gun because the old man said it was one of a few things that had gone missing, but in Ryan’s story he took the gun and replaced it in the same night so it would never have been missing besides the 2 bullets.
I was also irritated by that plot hole. Plus he didn’t call Mare about it for, what was it a few months?
Spoiler Alert! Loved the show but there was a glaring hole. The gun that was missing from the shed was stolen after Ryan saw the text that Erin sent John. We know that this is after 10pm. Ryan accidentally kills Erin then returns the gun before telling his dad who then moves the body with the uncle. So the gun was missing for maybe 3 hours, at night, in January. Then the owner reports that it was mossing and returned weeks later?
As a reviewer do you do other things while watching the show? Because you miss a lot. John was not trying to kill Billy to remove a witness. He was setting up that Billy was the murderer and he took his own life out of guilt. It was right there in the show. How could you have missed it?
Let’s talk ridiculous logistics to go along with the heaping red herrings and plot holes. How did this young kid overhear his dad outside on the phone, (which had to be approaching 10 to 11 PM already), mull around to discover the text on Dad’s phone, slip away to ride in to town and steal the gun from the shed, and ride, as we were repeatedly told (set up if you will) – that it was over 13 miles to the park at what was past midnight. He then lays in wait, shoots her, rides all the way back to town to return the gun and then rides home, all undiscovered. It was a ridiculous contrivance set up by repeatedly telling us the park was so far away SHE needed a car ride to get there.
And Dylan’s idiotic gun threatening and her friend’s lying and journal-burning and picture -saving. It’s all just a clusterf*** of nonsensical misdirects while we wait for the inevitable HBO “pull the resolve out the ass” ending.
Right up there with The Undoing with hiding a gun in an exposed outdoor grill when the f**king ocean was 20 yards away.
HBO fare is just ridiculously bad writing saved by ridiculously good acting.
It wasn’t 13 miles to the park from the Ross’s house. It was 13 miles from the woods where the kids were hanging out. Could have been much closer to the park from Ryan’s house. And Ryan mows the lawn where the shed was, so probably not too far from his house as well.
These are very good points. Evidently parental negligence is really the takeaway from this show.
I have to agree with you. While I enjoyed the show and all that, they spent 6 episodes showing us that Easttown was almost nothing but criminals, morons, and other types of shitbirds, and then we get these heel/face turns in the final episodes, particularly with Dylan, King of the Shitbirds.
One thing I picked up on throughout the show was how luminously beautiful Siobhan and the DJ were, and how they were dressed in brighter colors and generally nicer clothes than everyone else. I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to do with that, although I’ve got two ideas:1) It’s your basic “Yay, Gay! and their fashion sense”, or2) (my pick) It was to show that they don’t fit in there, and need to escape that shithole and be out in the rest of the world to live their full lives.
I didn’t find this show as awesome as most, it was a decent watch and the acting from KW and a few others elevated it above mediocrity but in agreement with the review it had far too many characters just there to muddy the waters, to the point where I was rolling my eyes. Having John as the killer would have made a decent resolution to the main plot, but revealing the kid as the killer was over-egging the pudding.
The endless misery didn’t help either, and the completely irrelevant subplot of the daughter and her tedious relationship problems and lame band. I’d rate it a C+, a B- at a push.
Just watching this series after multiple Emmy wins, and whoo-boy! The acting was great. The writing was borderline nonsensical. One—of countless—cases in point, the widowed old man that alerted Mare to the kid, Ryan, having access to the shed, and by extension, the gun, gave a long story of plot-convenience that the gun was missing for some period of time, which he noticed at some point, and then returned later at some point, which he also noticed. How long a period of time might an old ceremonial gun, packed away forever—and loaded for some reason—be required to notice it both missing AND returned (unless you’ve got some form of memorabilia OCD)? 6 months, maybe? A year? Well, according to Ryan he went to the old man’s shed prior to midnight on the night of the murder, killed Erin, however accidentally, and immediately returned it thereafter. The whole plot narrative which led Mare to crack the case even further and to implicate Ryan is complete and utter rubbish! I call bullshit!Tune in for Mare of Easttown Season Two: The Case of the Old Man’s Missing Favorite Pizza Cutter.