#21 Flame, Threat and Match
15/07/20 19:19
There’s a mystery at the heart of Little Fires Everywhere, a puzzle that I’m burning to solve, and six episodes in I’m still none the wiser. How the hell did Elle Woods end up with Pacey Witter? No one in the 90s saw that coming, I can tell you, but here we are, in a Clueless/Creek mash-up that’s making me wonder if Dawson Leery copped off with Angela Chase somewhere along the line.
This week, we’ve been watching the adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel, which takes you back to the era of grunge, giant car phones and The Vagina Monologues. Elena Richardson really doesn’t like talking about vaginas. Reese Witherspoon is carving quite a niche for herself playing upright, uptight matriarchs, and in this series she’s Elena, who is basically Madeline from Big Little Lies, but with more children. Pacey is her devoted husband, but he’s such a bland presence on screen that I’m assuming he’s got a secret family/is a serial killer. Their kids cover the various high school stereotypes – Lexie the spoilt rich girl, Trip the jock, Moody the nice sensitive one, Izzy the rebel. They live in an ACE house that incorporates about seven different types of architecture, but we already know it burned down, so the crucial question is: who did it? Someone with more modernist tastes, perhaps?
It could be the mysterious Mia Warren (Kerry Washington), an artist who moves into Elena’s rental property with her daughter Pearl. Pearl makes friends with Elena’s brood, Mia starts working as Elena’s housekeeper, and soon the two families are uneasily enmeshed. The Warrens are Black, a deviation from the book, which doesn’t specify their race, adding a canny additional layer to the powerplay between Mia and Elena. Scenes between them sizzle, and left me squirming, such is the tension – an unstable mix of hostility and fascination that only needs a spark to ignite it.
This comes in the form of Bebe Chow, Mia’s restaurant co-worker who previously left her baby girl outside a fire station in the throes of post-partum desperation and poverty. The baby is now being adopted by Elena’s friend Linda, but when Mia discovers her true parentage, she sticks a very messy oar in, kickstarting a custody battle. Elena declares war and runs off to New York to investigate Mia’s murky past, while Mia makes mixed media artwork out of Elena and sets it alight.
If it sounds a bit complicated, that’s because it is; there are also numerous teenage storylines crackling away – sex, cultural appropriation, abortion, bullying – all against the Stepford Wives-esque backdrop of Cleveland’s Shaker Heights. It’s kind of soapy, ultimately, lots of different elements never quite taking hold. With so many irons in these fires, if you try to take it all in, your eyeballs start to singe.
That said, I’m enjoying it hugely. There’s a scene early on where Elena carefully pours her wine using a measuring jug and a funnel, which made me love her forever. And this show really, really passes the Bechdel test. The men are barely visible, distant background noise, as the women stare each other down. That’s what I’m in the mood for at the moment – the slow-burn turmoil of Dawson’s Creek and the scorching oestrogen levels of Clueless. It’s a match made in heaven.
This week, we’ve been watching the adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel, which takes you back to the era of grunge, giant car phones and The Vagina Monologues. Elena Richardson really doesn’t like talking about vaginas. Reese Witherspoon is carving quite a niche for herself playing upright, uptight matriarchs, and in this series she’s Elena, who is basically Madeline from Big Little Lies, but with more children. Pacey is her devoted husband, but he’s such a bland presence on screen that I’m assuming he’s got a secret family/is a serial killer. Their kids cover the various high school stereotypes – Lexie the spoilt rich girl, Trip the jock, Moody the nice sensitive one, Izzy the rebel. They live in an ACE house that incorporates about seven different types of architecture, but we already know it burned down, so the crucial question is: who did it? Someone with more modernist tastes, perhaps?
It could be the mysterious Mia Warren (Kerry Washington), an artist who moves into Elena’s rental property with her daughter Pearl. Pearl makes friends with Elena’s brood, Mia starts working as Elena’s housekeeper, and soon the two families are uneasily enmeshed. The Warrens are Black, a deviation from the book, which doesn’t specify their race, adding a canny additional layer to the powerplay between Mia and Elena. Scenes between them sizzle, and left me squirming, such is the tension – an unstable mix of hostility and fascination that only needs a spark to ignite it.
This comes in the form of Bebe Chow, Mia’s restaurant co-worker who previously left her baby girl outside a fire station in the throes of post-partum desperation and poverty. The baby is now being adopted by Elena’s friend Linda, but when Mia discovers her true parentage, she sticks a very messy oar in, kickstarting a custody battle. Elena declares war and runs off to New York to investigate Mia’s murky past, while Mia makes mixed media artwork out of Elena and sets it alight.
If it sounds a bit complicated, that’s because it is; there are also numerous teenage storylines crackling away – sex, cultural appropriation, abortion, bullying – all against the Stepford Wives-esque backdrop of Cleveland’s Shaker Heights. It’s kind of soapy, ultimately, lots of different elements never quite taking hold. With so many irons in these fires, if you try to take it all in, your eyeballs start to singe.
That said, I’m enjoying it hugely. There’s a scene early on where Elena carefully pours her wine using a measuring jug and a funnel, which made me love her forever. And this show really, really passes the Bechdel test. The men are barely visible, distant background noise, as the women stare each other down. That’s what I’m in the mood for at the moment – the slow-burn turmoil of Dawson’s Creek and the scorching oestrogen levels of Clueless. It’s a match made in heaven.
- Little Fires Everywhere, Amazon Prime, 8 episodes
