Crazy Mom Funny
Kristen Bell in “The Woman Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”
I’m a 50 year old mom. Occasionally, I’m up for a good “whoa, this chick’s mess is about 1,000 degrees hotter than mine” series. You can imagine my delight while watching, “Big Little Lies”. High fashion, high drama and up the road from where I live? Yes please! For the most part, I’m right there jealously watching every female lead consume massive amounts of wine and committing the high crimes of mom bitchery I only aspire to, but toss in a murder and now you’ve made my life seem all sorts of boring and normal.
This is how I found myself watching Netflix’s new series, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”. (I literally had to look at the title three times to type the entire damned thing in.) The run-on sentence, 2X4 to the head title alone should have warned me that this was not your average Netflix feel good movie. But I’m a sucker for a good Kristen Bell comedy. And the cover image of her drinking wine out of her glass without using her hands, well cue the heart swelling music please.
The show hit all my high points right away: upscale, gorgeously-styled, pin neat home that I can’t afford, unabashedly disgraceful amounts of red wine, off the rails Kristen Bell with a cute hairstyle and a lovely neutral fashion palate, extremely pretty yet bitchy side characters. What? She has a prescription drug problem that causes hallucinations? And she has an obscure phobia of the rain that makes her blackout in the middle of her suburban street? Let’s do this!
My husband was sent to bed (cause no, I don’t want to watch another “Ancient Aliens” with you) and I was all into my binge, loving that I too wanted to chug red wine like it was pomegranate juice and wishing I too could run over the girlfriend in my Volvo, but then the writers of… (wait for it)… “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” took my immediate love and connection with poor alcoholic Anna and blew it to smithereens.
In episode two, Anna fed up with cooking nothing but casseroles and having conversations with her dead kid, calls her therapist demanding some help. The pill prescribing therapist suggests she finally talk about the day her kid died. (Really? NOW you’re going to talk about this? Doesn’t she have like six prescription bottles already? You couldn’t think to ask about this earlier?) So, Anna, while chugging wine (that’s my girl) decides to jump into the backstory.
Anna’s husband Douglas is a forensic psychologist with the FBI who specializes in serial killers. It is “Take Your Kid to Work” day, so he takes sweet, eight year old Elizabeth with him to the insane asylum where he is scheduled to assess “Massacre Mike” a serial killer who has killed and eaten 30 people. While they sit with Mike (who is not restrained in any way), the warden asks to speak to Douglas. Douglas steps out of the room, accidentally locking the door behind him and leaving his child to be murdered and eaten by Mike.
I’m just going to let that plot point sink in for a minute.
Now, let’s break this down:
1. You married a man who’s passion is to dig into the minds of serial killers. Red flag? Nah. He’s cute and super into you. Time to get hitched and have kids.
2. You allowed your daughter, who is in the 2nd grade, to accompany him to an insane asylum, rather than hang with you, an artist who paints flowers for a living. How exactly did the bed time conversation with Elizabeth the night before go? “Elizabeth, do you know what the word ‘necrophelia’ means? Have you ever seen a human kidney pinned inside of a pizza box? Your father and I think it is time you learn what happens to children who don’t finish their homework.”
3. As the love of your life, the man you chose to father your children, was about to drive your only child to meet a man who had tortured, killed and consumed almost three dozen people, you ran to the car to make sure your kid had her umbrella.
4. Now, three years later, after your child was locked in a room with a serial killer and eaten, in front of your husband, who left her in the room and who also left you because you have a drinking problem, you are cyber stalking his Instagram account to see who he’s dating.
The people around Anna are as unhinged as she is as they all seem rather unfazed by the entire experience. Her neighbor tells her to get over it and her best friend wants her to just paint some flowers already. I kept trying to read the license plates in order to figure out what state these people live in simply because apparently becoming a serial killer’s snack is as common as a car crash.
Astounded and completely baffled, I read through IMDB and learned the show creators are from “Robot Chicken”, “Evan Almighty” and “Mike Tyson Mysteries” and features the work of Michael Lehmann, director of iconic dark comedy “Heathers”. “The Woman Across the Street…” is supposed to be a spoof on movies like “The Girl on the Train” and “Woman in the Window”! Well smack my ass and call me Sally! But wait, didn’t Anna have a heartbreaking moment where she hallucinates her kid is still alive and then realizes she’s lost her mind? And doesn’t Anna lose her shit trying to recapture her lost artistic self only to fall back into the bottle again, failing like so many of us do? I’m confused. Is that the funny part?
A movie about angsty teens wanting desperately to break out of their prescribed social bubble by murdering the privileged elitists who hold the power? Dark and funny. A movie about a mom hitting bottom because her daughter was murdered and her husband left her, leaving her to figure out if she’s crazy or has witnessed a murder? Not so much.
I’ll keep watching “TWATSFTGITW” if only to see if I can sort out if the story rights itself and chooses the path of the murder mystery rather than the cold hearted spoof. Don’t get me wrong, Kristen Bell does an incredible job keeping Anna likable, broken and the right amount of funny. But thanks to TWATSFTGITW, I’m kinda over the “mom is crazy and let’s all laugh at her expense” trope that has almost defined a new genre. After three years of moms trying to hold it together while being locked inside hiding their kids from monsters, I think we need a new story.