by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
First, let me say I loved Mare of Easttown. It definitely made me sit up and take notice. I realized I needed to up my game a great deal if I was competing against it in my genre and for the attention of the audience. But here is a general overview of what I thought about it.
Let me be note that I generally walk out out of movies — almost all the time — so for me to finish an entire TV series is a pretty big deal for me. Anyway, here we go.
There is so much to love about this story. In fact, my only quibble from a story telling point of view is how the show begins — Mare wakes up. This is poor storytelling — the protagonist waking up as the beginning scene. Better to have protagonist doing something at a point where their life changes in some way. This is not a hard, fast rule, but, in general, just to have them wake up is lazy, lazy, lazy.
But other than that, I was extremely impressed with the story on a structural level. It was well written and executed. I found the ending organic to the story and not contrived at all.
Though, the last two episodes did get a bit confusing for me. They should have been a bit more clear as to what, exactly the whole plot on the part of the people protecting the killer was. Maybe add a tick-tock of the exact events of that night. We came close to one at one point, but it was I don’t remember there being an accurate tick-tock with flashback included.
In general, however, Mare of Easttown really forced me to sit up and take notice. Like I said, I have to up may game. It startled me so much that I decided to have something of creative re-set for the rest of August. I’m just going to read and develop for a few weeks and then throw myself back into things at the start of September.
Hopefully, I will have four solid outlines by that point.
