‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ Review: Mother Ship
Hulu's 'Tiny Beautiful Things,' based on Cheryl Strayed's advice column, will make love Kathryn Hahn even more that you already do.
Our parents fuck us up. Even the best of parents leave some irrevocable damage on us in some fashion at some point, and if you don’t think they did, well, I have some bad news for you. Cheryl Strayed’s work has a lot to do with family and grief, but in Tiny Beautiful Things (★★★☆☆), love is the zenith.
Like Wild, the 2014 film based on Strayed’s writing starring Reese Witherspoon, this miniseries is also based on Strayed’s experiences.
This time, however, Ms. Witherspoon is behind the camera with her Hello Sunshine production company and Liz Tigelaar (Little Fires Everywhere) as the showrunner. Although Tiny Beautiful Things leaves out any life-changing hikes across the Pacific Crest Trail, it once again is a love letter to Strayed’s mother, as well as a look at the repercussions her death had on her life.
Claire (Kathryn Hahn) is a healthcare worker on the verge of 50 who has recently been kicked out of her own home by her husband, Danny (Quentin Plair) and daughter Rae (Tanzyn Crawford) for drinking too much. Amid her personal chaos of being homeless and unsure of what to do next, she writes a letter to a local advice column, “Dear Sugar,” explaining her family troubles and how she hasn’t fully grieved her mother’s passing almost two decades later.
The next day at work, Miss Sugar herself, who Claire learns is actually her college friend James, reveals that he loved her letter, and given her history of being a talented writer, offers her the column feeling that she is a better fit. Despite hesitations, Claire takes James up on the offer, and we see her past with her entirely too kind mother (Merritt Wever) and brother Lucas (Owen Painter).
A lot of shows have covered grief this year alone, yet almost all commit the sin of trying to force the meaning into something that just isn’t there. Tiny Beautiful Things almost does that, but instead of giving empty ubiquitous truths, it tells one very particular story about a messy person going through a hard time.
Even if the platitudes come frequently, there is still a unique empathy for humanity that comes through Hahn’s acting and Strayed’s writing. What redeems the tears is how things aren’t forced, and the answers that come aren’t the easy ones. All the characters are shown doing stupid things, like Claire’s teenage daughter having a threesome or Claire rooming with an Alzheimer’s patient at her job. But by making the lessons they inevitably learn be their own, and not some faux-universal greeting card sentiment, the themes hit really hard.
This series doesn’t break the mold and a lot of the sappy moments can lean toward cliche with dramatics occurring from coincidence — like the constant motifs of a mustard coat and horses — but somehow there’s an endearing element that will keep you seated, at least for a while.
You will cry watching this series. Ultimately, that makes the series (which dropped all 8 episodes at once) sometimes feel like a slog. It would have worked a lot better in a weekly format. The heavy weight of the subject material sometimes gets so gut-wrenchingly sad that you get taken out of the plot while thinking about your own life and wanting to call your own loved one’s while fully forgetting about the show. Tiny Beautiful Things really excels by showing the painful sides of love, especially with your family, and how hard simple things about forgiveness can be.
The writing has some amazing peaks, but also some noticeable lows. Some of the most integral characters, like Danny and Rae, feel one-note, with only the latter eventually getting better. Danny is a well-meaning father, but his marital problems around trusting a clearly rock-bottom Claire end up not really making sense and becoming stale quickly, while their daughter only becomes fully realized in the last couple of episodes, far too late.
In the flashbacks, Weaver and Painter provide some of the show’s best moments, showing how close Claire was once with her family, but feel way too underused, even as the younger version of Claire (Sarah Pidgeon) does as much of a commanding performance as Hahn holding down all the entire flashback sequences. All three actors from the flashback scenes excel at making present-day Claire’s erratic behavior go beyond caricature, and without them would have degraded things to melodrama.
Hahn is the dominant factor in what makes this show great. She is the series’ lone consistency, being the most compelling part. She constantly cries or is going through some trauma, but only someone as good as Hahn keeps it from going stale, even as the waterworks that come are expected.
If you need a good cry, or are a fan of Hahn or Strayed’s work, then Tiny Beautiful Things will make you cry happy and really sad tears. There is a lot to love about the series and the lessons on grief and love it has to show, even if there are some problems on closer inspection. Tiny Beautiful Things is very messy and far from perfect, but in a way, that’s what the best parts of the show are, as well.
All episodes of Tiny Beautiful Things are available on Hulu. Visit www.hulu.com.
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