Kate Winslet deserves another Emmy.
SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)
Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is a detective in the small town of Easttown, Pennsylvania who was formerly a town hero for her basketball skills. She is ordered to reopen an investigation into the disappearance of a young girl, Katie Bailey (Caitlin Houlahan) after Katie’s mother, Dawn (Enid Graham), complains about the ineffectual police work. At the same time, another dead body is found and it’s connected to Mare’s daughter, Siobhan (Angourie Rice). While Mare tries to solve two different crimes, she is also weighed down by her ex-husband Frank (David Denman) getting remarried, her son’s suicide, and her heroin-addicted former daughter-in-law Carrie (Sosie Bacon) trying to take away her grandson. There are a huge number of supporting characters along the way.
END SUMMARY
I hadn’t really heard anything about this until it was four or five episodes in when some of my siblings told me to check it out. While I prefer comedies overall, this is a drama that you just can’t help but get sucked into. Kate Winslet’s performance is among the best in her career. Somehow she basically embodies the atmosphere of the show. She’s bitter, she’s miserable, and life keeps kicking her in the face, but she’s still working on a way to get through it all. She was the town’s hero, but much like the town she’s wildly past her prime. At one point I was legitimately curious how someone as unbelievably talented and constantly praised as Kate Winslet can so perfectly capture the feeling of having peaked. Then a female friend said “she’s an actress in her 40s, she’s probably constantly worried that she’s peaked.” Whatever she draws from, she’s perfect in the role.
The show’s not shy about directly addressing the drug problems that plague a lot of small towns in America, nor the effect it has on the families of addicts. A great scene early on involves a woman punching her brother for burglarizing her and admitting, privately, that she can’t handle his slow march towards destruction. Many of the people in the show are battling either addiction or someone with it and scenes like that are common. It helps that the show treats almost all of these characters as real people and perpetually defies TV drama stereotypes.
The supporting cast is amazing, but I would have to say that most of the members of Mare’s family are all brilliant. I particularly love Jean Smart as Mare’s mother, but then again I love Jean Smart in anything lately. Much like with the townspeople, the family all feel genuine and not like cookie-cutter copies of most TV families. It also helps that Mare’s relationships with all of them are distinct and it gives the show a number of moments of levity mixed with moments of bold sincerity.
Overall, give Kate Winslet another Emmy and give this show a shot.
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