Hulu’s “Good American Family” surprised me. For all of its soapy-ripped-from-the-headlines setup, the eight-part series is a layered show about responsibility, how “good” people can do terrible things, and the intoxicating power of narrative.
That is if you make it that far. The pilot is all Lifetime Original Movie. There’s Ellen Pompeo smiling serenely at the camera and thanking God as Christine Barnett, a buttoned-up Christian mother of three who’s successfully dedicated her life to “saving,” as she puts it, children with Autism. There’s Mark Duplass as her hapless husband, Michael Barnett, who’s hoping to fill the hole in his heart with an adopted daughter. Imogen Faith Reid plays Natalia, their adopted, Ukrainian daughter with dwarfism whose age, identity, and motive are at the center of this tale. Rounding out the cast is Dulé Hill playing the cop who leads the investigation against the Barnetts and Christina Hendricks, waiting in the wings to play a messier sort of savior mom.
The mini-series opens with the Barnetts adopting Natalia from a sketchy agency. Things go wrong to the point where Christine becomes convinced that Natalia is actually a grown-up con artist, committing age fraud to get her medical care paid for. Eventually, Christine and Michael leave Natalia alone in an apartment, which if Natalia is 22 like the Barnetts have succeeded in legally making her, is just them protecting their family. But if she’s actually eight, it’s severe child abuse. In the opening episode, we see Christine getting arrested for the alleged abuse, setting up questions about who’s right, who’s wrong, and if anyone’s legally culpable.
With bright lighting and pat storytelling beats, the pilot had me wondering why all this A-list talent would show up for such pulpy nonsense. Then “Good American Family” pivots in its second episode, dipping more into horror. When Christine’s best friend Valika (Sarayu Blue) mentions the 2009 movie “Orphan,” you can see the wheels turning. We’re in a scary family saga. And “Good American Family” hits that genre’s notes, making Christine’s struggle to get her husband and the world at large to believe her echo into feminist horror. Why can’t anyone (everyone?) just believe women the first time? After all, she was right to reject her son’s autism diagnosis as the end of his emotional and linguistic development.
But then, the show goes somewhere very different, flipping perspectives and revealing a different monster in our midst. Along the way, “Good American Family” completely had me. I’d been vaguely aware of the headlines surrounding the Barnetts but never followed it closely. That distance served me, allowing the show to take me on the proverbial ride, convincing me that one character’s perspective was right, until I saw episodes later, how wrong I was.
A lot of shows try to flip perspectives, but few commit to it as strongly as “Good American Family.” The cast, direction, and writing all pivot subtly, so while this is effectively a Russian Doll of a show, each new iteration clearly echoes its shell, while being something differently entirely.
Reid is particularly effective and given the most difficult task. Assisted with smart changes in costuming and styling, she delivers an evocative performance that brings the whole show with her. Around her, Pompeo, Duplass, Hill, and Hendricks do more than hit their marks, completing complicated dances of their own. In the grown-up ensemble, Duplass is particularly arresting as a love-hungry man-child who needs to confront his own decisions.
Together with showrunners Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland, they create a thoughtful morality play, switching the audience’s allegiances as more facts come to light. But perhaps “Good American Family” works so well because it knows more than one thing can be true at a time. Christine can have created and popularized a powerful approach to working with kids with autism, while also being unable (to put it most charitably) to care for Natalia. People can be both cruel and kind, and that goes for almost everyone in “Good American Family,” making it a much more complicated show than its initial offering hints at.
So watch to the end for a thoughtful mediation on guilt, justice, and redemption. It’s worth it.
On Hulu now. Whole series screened for review.
