The comments make the characters seem stubbornly two-dimensional, and they never lead to any honest insight. They plant the initial seed for what could have become a captivating dissection of privilege, but instead, the characters continue to skirt the issue. When the Warrens first arrive to peruse the Richardsons’ rental, Elena mentions their school: “It was actually one of the first integrated schools in the city!” Many awkward remarks that equate with, “Look at me, being colorblind,” stack up in the two episodes that follow. It’s set in the ‘90s, when “colorblind” politics were all the rage, and Elena takes every chance she can to reference this. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t always handle this conversation artfully. This is an excellent choice for the adaptation, as it adds another layer of nuance to Mia and Elena’s coming conflict. This is what Hulu's adaptation explores, and race changes how Mia’s every action is perceived, from dozing in her car to shopping for groceries in a mostly-white neighborhood. In Ng’s novel, Mia’s race is never explicitly mentioned, though we are to assume she is white the class division between her and the rest of Shaker is stark, sure, but we know her life would look markedly different if she was black. Immediately, the show introduces a crucial change from the source material: Mia is black. This stigma sticks to them throughout the series. When they want to rent from her, she agrees partly out of guilt. The show, instead, introduces them through Elena’s suspicious gaze: as a problem, an unsightly blemish on her otherwise spotless neighborhood. There's little about them that raises Elena's perfectly plucked eyebrows. Though chapter one opens with the Richardsons watching their house burn, chapter two introduces the Warrens merely as recent Shaker transplants. Elena calls the police to investigate.Īnd so we meet Mia and Pearl Warren (Lexi Underwood), but their introduction in the book is much different. A normal day awaits her, until she drives past a car in a parking lot, where she sees a woman sleeping. Bright and enthusiastic, she's the ideal suburban mother. She starts her day checking her weight and preparing her husband’s coffee before work. We watch how the story ends: Elena Richardson stares at the crumbling remains of her home, burning to embers.īut as the show flashes back to four months prior, it continues Elena’s story. ![]() In the harried first moments of the premiere, little seems different from the book. Hulu Episode 1: "The Spark" The Warrens Are Discovered, Not Introduced Below, breaks down how the series diverges from the book, episode by episode, and what those changes mean for Ng’s original story. But, as many critics have already noted, the adaptation never quite rises to the power of its predecessor-in many cases because it scrambles and alters its source material in diminishing ways. The show is compulsively bingeable, a firestorm of star power and mystery sprinkled with insightful performances that propel you into the next episode. Bebe’s predicament as an undocumented immigrant who gave up her child out of desperation sharpens the contrasts between Elena and Mia until their collective secrets set their lives ablaze. The two women might become friends-or at least planets in the same orbit-until Mia meets Bebe Chow. Elena, an overachieving mother of four high schoolers, considers renting to Mia an act of charity. ![]() Mia has raised Pearl mostly from the backseat of her car, but decides to settle in the suburb to work on her next project. It's the summer of 1997, and Mia, with her daughter Pearl in tow, has just arrived in picturesque Shaker Heights, where the duplexes conceal their secondary front doors to avoid damaging curb appeal. ![]() Little Fires follows two polar-opposite mothers, Elena Richardson (Witherspoon, in her element as a wealthy type-A blonde) and Mia Warren (Washington, using her ferocity à la Olivia Pope to breathe complexity into a starving artist).
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