Tiny Beautiful Things

The writing! The poetry! The music! The art of the acting and mixing of it all together to a perfect musical pitch that carries you away with it and then, with that perfect pitch, rips your heart and make you weep.

This series hits all my buttons: losing my younger beloved, brilliant, kind brother to lung cancer as I view this; lost a mother too soon.

The major problems for me - and costing a star - was the age discrepancies. The Hahn character is supposed to be super young when she has Francis Rae, but the age makes the Hahn character 33 when she had her daughter. Also, to me, the mother seemed to die when she was terribly young. However, Frankie, the mother, was played brilliantly.

What I liked about this series was that while it a deep and dark, there's good comedy interwoven to keep us from getting to far in the pits. Well worth the watch!!

This show is based on the book by the same name, a collection of Dear Sugar letters answered (originally anonymously) by Cheryl Strayed. Anyone familiar with Cheryl's work knows her life story and will recognize the real parts of her story in this show. About half the show is a Strayed biography and half is fiction. The overdubbed real letters are original and beautiful. Cheryl is an extremely gifted writer and advice giver, and she based her Dear Sugar advice on her own life experiences. The show creates a fictional narrative of a woman's messy life partially based on a real woman's messy life, incorporating the letters into the narrative. Although clever and well executed, the parts of the show don't completely add up. But the book is amazing, and given the choice between the book or the show I would definitely choose the book.

The start of this TV series is incredibly confusing, making it difficult to follow. The writing is poorly executed, and only those with an optimistic outlook might be able to endure it. However, there is a glimmer of hope that emerges later on as the writing improves slightly. Many discussions about the fragmented script are warranted, as there is a lack of likable characters in the show. It's challenging to form a connection with them, and when you do start to feel sorry for them, they disappoint you with their nonsensical actions that make you think they deserve their own consequences.

While the occasional use of an out-of-order narrative can be effective, in this case, it creates an unrealistic portrayal of the main character's mother. She is depicted as perfect, which could be interpreted as the protagonist's idealized memory rather than reality. Nevertheless, the entire story feels disjointed, with disconnected elements such as the brother, mother, father, and rebellious daughter. It simply fails to come together in a cohesive manner, leaving the audience feeling unfulfilled. It's a chaotic mess that relies too heavily on excessive swearing, sex, and unmet expectations.

I really wanted to like this show, but it left me totally cold. First, while the characters go through major life events and *talk* like they're deep, they're actually all thinly written ciphers--after watching all 8 episodes I honestly wouldn't describe any of the characters as having a distinct personality. The main character spends half the series mourning her mother, but their relationship is so underwritten that it's hard to really feel the impact of her death other than that we're told it was devastating. The out of order nature of the flashbacks also makes the story hard to follow and left me ambivalent about what was happening. (How can you care about characters who suddenly appear out of nowhere? Or about a character's mistakes when the show skips right past the consequences? For example, why bother telling us about someone's heroin problem if we don't learn anything more about it?) Hahn is fine here, but I don't think she's doing anything particularly new and she's really not even doing that much--Sarah Pidgeon as the younger version of Hahn's character does most of the heavy lifting and while she's very good, good performances aren't enough to elevate what's actually pretty thinly written material. The last episode also hints at a major backstory that barely gets explained (and a result leaves Hahn's character looking crazy), the brother and sister have a weird incest-y vibe, and, though I adore Merrit Wever, she feels miscast and way too young to be playing the mother.

Hahn is a terrific actress, but she couldn't save this. This story had a lot of potential but the muddled narrative makes it difficult to keep up, relate to any of the characters or enjoy. Danny is the only character I liked, but in the end, I ended up feeling deceived by what he does in the last episode. The constant, constant flashbacks gave me a headache. It was difficult to keep up there as well.

Hahn has done another miniseries which is also unconventional, but you could so well relate to her character and the narrative. And I started watching this expecting the same. But it went nowhere near that. After a few episodes I had to skip by to get the gist.