Within the past few years, it seems every peer on my Facebook feed sent their first child off to college and, good lord, the grief. Such buildup, such rivers of tears. The existential anxieties along with all that Container Store extravagance — all because of what's supposed to be a good thing, a successful departure from the nest. I thought we were made of tougher stuff, but apparently not. Barely a few weeks pass before you see celebratory photos of the kid's first visit home. There's loving your children and then there's being besotted with them.
Perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to Eve Fletcher, the fed-up single mother so relatably portrayed by Kathryn Hahn in HBO's scrumptious new dramedy Mrs. Fletcher. Eve's popular but brutish 18-year-old son, Brendan (Jackson White), is a self-absorbed jerk on the day she drives him to his freshman dorm at a campus several hours away. With Brendan gone (and never answering her texts), Eve realizes that she spent too many years forgetting to have a life outside of raising him and working at her job as the director of a community center for senior citizens. That she comes home, pours a glass of wine and opens her laptop.
Mrs. Fletcher is faithfully adapted from Tom Perrotta's 2017 novel, as it ought to be. After decades of seeing and sometimes helping other people adapt his books to film and TV (including Election, Little Children and a greatly transmogrified, far more morose version of The Leftovers), Perrotta is finally in charge here as creator and producer of this seven-episode limited series. Because he's a master of writing about a certain cynical strain of suburban ennui, Perrotta knows exactly what to do, which is mainly just get out of the way of a terrific cast and a skilled raft of episode directors, including Nicole Holofcener (Friends With Money), Gillian Robespierre (Obvious Child) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia).
Eve enrolls in a personal essay-writing class at the local community college, taught by Margo (Jen Richards), a trans woman. There are only a few other students in the class — one of them is Julian (Owen Teague), a quiet, 18-year-old freshman who happens to have been on the receiving end of Brendan's bullying in high school. Julian instantly develops a crush on Eve, who is not altogether opposed to his interest.
The running theme through Mrs. Fletcher is how quickly we tend to shut off the avenues that may lead us to our greater satisfactions — even the private ones. The show excels at weaving a diverse bundle of stories together into a story about personal awareness. The teacher wonders whether her attraction to a male in the class (Rashad Edwards) is mutual; a free-spirited co-worker (Katie Kershaw) helps Eve loosen up; Eve's neighbor (Casey Wilson) suffers the effects of a long-stewing marital crisis.
Although the show is obviously and correctly centered on Hahn as Eve, the real surprise is White's memorable and terrifically nuanced performance as Brendan.
The best parts of the show follow Brendan into his disastrous first semester. He's cocky and confident in a socially woke, liberal studies environment that no longer puts a primacy on conferring BMOC status on each and every dude-bro who swaggers across the quad. He's shunned by young women, abandoned by his roommate and written off by his academic adviser — and, to a great degree, he deserves it. Beneath his toughness, he feels rejected by his father, Ted (Josh Hamilton), Eve's ex-husband, who has remarried a younger woman and now has a young autistic son.
"The thing is, you're good. I don't have to worry about you," Ted assures Brendan, before cutting short a parents' weekend visit. "You're so smart, you're good at sports — people love you. You're good, yeah?"
It couldn't be farther from the truth, and it has always been Perrotta's great gift to give dimension and depth to characters who, on the surface, haven't earned our sympathies. Mrs. Fletcher is filled with funny and awkward scenes in which the lead character has her world greatly opened, but it is perhaps more memorable (and more unique) as a show about a young man who finds the world is shutting him out.
Mrs. Fletcher
8:30 p.m. Sundays
HBO
Style on 11/12/2019