Murder Mysteries About Very Specific Whites
Would you rather: Mare of Easttown, The Undoing or Search Party? Plus, living without booze and living with PCOS.
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There is something so oddly satisfying about watching high-strung, wealthy white moms plan school fundraisers in immaculate homes. It’s why I loved Big Little Lies, and more recently, The Undoing. Where the former gave me ocean views from minimalist, sweeping balconies on the West Coast, the latter had me in the marble and chandelier-laden rooms of Upper East Side walk-ups. In both, I’m watching Nicole Kidman as the tortured wife of an undecidedly abusive husband trapped in a murder mystery (unsurprising since David E. Kelley is behind both shows).
The Undoing, a five-episode HBO miniseries based on the 2014 novel You Should Have Known, centers on the mental distress of psychotherapist Grace Fraser (Kidman) after her famed oncologist husband (Hugh Grant) is accused of murdering another mom at the school (with whom he’s having an affair).
Even without the enticing storyline, the show holds up for being pure lifestyle porn—like watching the “Primates of Park Avenue for the city’s eleventh-hour pre-pandemic moment,” as Naomi Fry aptly reviews. But I eventually get sucked into the plot, because Nicole Kidman, with those razor sharp eyes, is impossible to read and so good at keeping you on your toes, while Hugh Grant as a viscous villain is so unbelievable, I keep watching because I want to believe he’s innocent.
The Undoing adds to a growing canon of ensemble cast, moody, post-feminist melodramas that focus on the minds of high-strung, rich white women—Sharp Objects, Little Fires Everywhere, Big Little Lies. Ultimately it fails to dig beyond the surface to the issues of class and race it raises.
If The Undoing is a murder mystery packaged as big city lifestyle porn, Mare of Easttown is a murder mystery packaged as small town tragedy porn. Here we’re trading Nicole Kidman in lavish floor-length coats for makeup-less Kate Winslet in a frizzled ponytail and beaten up police jacket playing Mare, the town detective. Like The Undoing, it’s a whodunit centered around a murdered young woman; it stretches our capacity for empathy, and digs into the psychology of its protagonists (it helps that Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet are so interesting to watch). It too has that moody, melodramatic, Twin Peaks vibe—so much so that it’s prime bait for mockery, especially when you add the unique Philly accent.
Even though it has a bit of a cringe cheese factor (of the cheese spray variety), I’ve fallen for Mare of Easttown, because like The Undoing, it’s really a show about women bearing the weight of men’s actions. “Mare of Easttown explores the repression of the American male of a certain class and race, with little fetishizing,” writes Doreen St. Felix. “Between Mare and her crabby mother, Helen (Jean the Smart, who always has a wisecrack), it is the women who manage the masculine tempers in their neighborhood.”
The feminist in me likes that space is made for the psychological neuroses of each female protagonist; that we get to dive into their pasts and see how deeply they’ve buried their pain under a veneer of strength and composure (see also—Amy Adams in Sharp Objects, Elizabeth Moss in Top of the Lake), even if these stories ironically center around the gruesome deaths of young, sexualized women.
I just wish these heroines weren’t always of the same walk of life—white and wealthy. Mare of Easttown is refreshing for portraying a downwardly mobile town and for going beyond the murder plot to incorporate other storylines that explore sexuality, race and gender, but it does this without much success. It’s been suggested that the show does, in fact, explore race by exoticizing whiteness, that the specificity of this particular kind of small town white person is a reaction to multiculturalism; but I think the show fails to do this effectively by playing too many genres.
Of all the genres Mare of Easttown dabbles in, domestic comedy is the one I wish it leaned into more—I could watch Jean Smart and Kate Winslet bicker in the kitchen all day. The show could’ve gained more gravitas if it delved deeper into their relationship, and Mare’s grief over the loss of her son to suicide. Her daughter’s queer, biracial relationship and Evan Peters pining after Mare feel like shallow distractions. It all makes the show seem disjointed; like each episode has a different director. In the end, Mare of Easttown tries to be more layered than The Undoing, but the attempt falls short.
A murder mystery that successfully expands the conversation? Search Party. Where The Undoing and Mare of Easttown take themselves too seriously, Search Party excels by making fun of itself. Like The Undoing, we see the pitfalls of being an entitled narcissist (also in NYC), but here, the critique is actually able to transcend the characters to make larger cultural statements about the millennial condition.
The show centers on four friends in their twenties (albeit still white and wealthy) who are all a little unsure of who they are. They’re unlikable (they lie, they’re obnoxious and clueless) but we love them because they’re human. Unlike The Undoing and Mare of Easttown—where the psychological exploration only goes so deep because the viewer remains stuck in the voyeur role—here we feel closer to the characters’ struggle, perhaps because their lifestyles are more relatable.
Where The Undoing and Mare of Easttown uses genre as a contextual layer, Search Party uses it as a tool. It’s mainly a dark comedy but takes on a different genre to elevate the plot developments of each season, with the most recent being more of a psychological horror. The writing, acting and costumes are fabulous too. (I also just love watching John Early on screen ever since he walked by my apartment in Brooklyn years ago 🙊).
While I’m still waiting for my POC-led psychological murder mystery, Search Party gives me hope the female-led murder mystery is stretching out of its comfort zone. Will you be watching the Mare of Easttown finale tonight? Have you seen any of these three shows? And what murder mystery should I watch next? Should I finally watch The Wire?
(I normally don’t go so deep on what I’m watching, so thanks for indulging me this week!)
Best,
Anna
Published 📝
Forbes - How One Entrepreneur With PCOS Uses Clean Beauty For Confidence
Have you heard of PCOS? It stands for polycystic ovarian syndrome, a hormonal disorder characterized by excess male hormones, irregular periods and cysts on the ovaries. I know, because I’ve had it for over six years. Despite affecting upwards of 5 million women in the United States, I, like many women, rarely talk about it, perhaps because it remains a bit of a mystery condition with no cure. While I was inspired to see Keke Palmer share her struggles with PCOS-related acne last December, we need to keep the dialogue going.
I talked to beauty guru Mehir Sethi about her personal experience managing the condition’s most common symptoms—hormonal acne and weight gain.
“I’m from Pakistan. I went to the U.S. for college. Anywhere in the world—Pakistan, India, U.S.—every single gynaecologist fat-shamed me as if it was my fault,” Sethi tells me over the phone, explaining how doctors insisted weight loss was her only solution, and her responsibility. “‘You’re having these symptoms because you’re fat, studies show that if you lose even 20 percent of your body weight, these symptoms will calm down.’ How do you lose 20 pounds of your body weight when your insulin is out of whack?”
Growing up, Sethi found confidence by applying makeup and creating custom foundations for her South Asian friends (since mainstream brands had just a few shades for white and Black women). Her journey inspired her to create True + Luscious, a clean makeup brand free of hormone-disrupters commonly found in makeup.
Reading 📖
👶 On the potential power of the mind to reverse your age.
⚰️ When sweating the small stuff, it helps to remember you’re going to die.
“The ancient Stoics believed that when you are doing a particular task, you should reflect on the possibility that this might be the last time you do it.” - Katie Hawkins-Gaar.
👵🏼 Although, if people have been gradually living longer over time, does this mean we eventually will be able to live forever?
“If we are one day born knowing that we can reasonably expect to live 200 years or longer, will our minds easily accommodate this unparalleled scope of life?” Ferris Jabr writes.
💻 Are we upon the great offlining?
“Just two years ago, we thought we were more online than we could possibly stand. Then the pandemic hit, and we realized we were wrong.” - Kaitlyn Tiffany
👫 Can we also agree to set a two-hour cap on hangouts post-pandemic?
🐻 On growing up brown in Halifax (and chasing bears along the way).
🇰🇷 And on the other side of the country—a South Korean writer who grew up in Victoria questions what the ‘Asian American community’ means.
“Writing was an act to preserve myself against forces that tried to diminish and distort me.” - Emily Jungmin Yoon
🇨🇦 Also on the West Coast, a mass grave of 215 missing children is discovered.
“Indigenous communities throughout Canada, Chief Casimir said, had children who were forced into residential schools only to vanish.” - Ian Austin.
☎️ What it’s like working on a suicide helpline.
“When we speak to a friend, we rarely give them a blank slate. We make assumptions about how they feel based on what they’ve said in the past. We let past resentments bubble up in our interpretation of their words. We talk about things that were safe or helpful to talk about in the past rather than creating a new baseline, a new space for growth.” - Natalia Dashan.
🥬 When I lived in Barbados I worked with the UNDP on an organic farming program that served as mental rehabilitation and skills training for patients at a mental health institution. I’m inspired to see the same approach taken at a prison in Maine.
“If the goal of prison involves not only punishment but also rehabilitation and lowering recidivism, then sending a healthier person back into society is in everyone’s interest.” - Patricia Leigh Brown.
🥚 Also, did you know prison-made foods are sold across state lines in the U.S.?
☕️ On the existential dilemma of your local cafe running out of your kind of milk.
Listening 🎧
In the quiet of COVID-19, we’ve been able to listen to ourselves a lot more, prompting us to notice how (un)comfortable we are with our feelings, and how much we turn to vices—like alcohol—to deal with them. For recovering alcoholics, it’s become harder to abstain. But for non-alcoholics, it’s prompted the question—why do we drink?
This episode of The Cut explores our cultural addiction to alcohol. “We rely on this substance as a crutch for our emotional well-being, why is the thought of taking alcohol away so frightening to so many people?” asks Emily McCombs.
What happens when we repeatedly choose to not take the edge off for an extended period of time? We work on our “spiritual fitness.” The term is used in the 12-step program to describe the ability to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Let’s be real, even if you go 100% sober, there’s always something that can fill the void. But becoming “spiritually fit” when it comes to booze means eventually you reach a place where you can go to a bar, not have a drink and feel 100% okay with whatever feelings come up.
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