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Mare Of Easttown " isHBO 's latest prestige drama. Kate Winslet and Evan Peters star as detectives investigating a mysterious murder.- The show shines a critical eye on the failings of health care, policing, and religion in the US.
Ambiguity is the name of the game in HBO's moreish limited series "Mare of Easttown." We've moved beyond the show's halfway point with just the finale left. And even as the perpetrators of Easttown's violent crimes begin to reveal themselves, we are still waiting for motives.
This is partly a result of the show's pedestrian approach to plot and signals that the creators aren't very interested in these crimes. Indeed, since the first episode, "Mare" has shown a unique ambivalence to its crimes. We see violent abductions and brutalized corpses in flashes but the show is far more invested in the sociology of its titular town.
As the series has pushed on, these two dynamics have increasingly overlapped, which has eloquently highlighted the main source of the town's problems: at each turn, the citizens of Easttown have been failed by the institutions set up to support them.
The failings of America's healthcare system are at the heart of the show's central murder
The first episode of "Mare" ends with the gruesome image of Erin McMenamin - a 17-year-old girl - dead in a quarry. She's partially naked with a bullet hole just above her eye. The reveal is shocking. The camera opens on the quarry and creeps towards Erin's body before lingering over its lesions for an extended beat.
The visceral response is a result of the time and care given to displaying Erin's life earlier in the episode. We discover that she is a young mother. We learn that the child's father is unwilling and unable to pay for an expensive surgical procedure that the child must receive. Nor is Erin's father.
Later it is discovered that to acquire the cash, Erin signed up to an escorting business. And just before Erin's murder, she received a message to meet a potential client. In a later episode, the same online escorting business becomes tied to the disappearance of another young woman named Missy who signed up to support a drug addiction that was borne out of a hip injury.
The point here is not to vilify those who engage in sex work. The point is to witness the desperation caused when citizens are deprived of adequate and affordable healthcare and the dangerous void that is created when sex work is demonized by legislation thus pushing it underground, taking the power away from young women and into the hands of abusers.
Erin turned to the church but was failed by one of the head priests who we discover is accused of abusing young women
"Mare of Easttown" is dedicated to highlighting the quotidian parts of Pennsylvania life. But the church, and specifically the catholic church, is never included on screen just for decoration. The dog collars instantly evoke images of Tom McCarthy's "Spotlight" and John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt." And soon we discover that before her death, Erin had been frequenting the local parish, visiting Deacon Mark Burton, Easttown's new, shifty-looking priest.
Later, it is revealed that Deacon Mark was accused of abusing young women at his previous parish before the diocese quietly transferred him to Easttown. Late one night, we see him suspiciously dispose of Erin's bike. And in episode five, he admits to a fellow priest that he was "with" Erin the night she died. In fact, he drove her to the woods where her body was found.
By episode six, it's implied that Deacon Mark didn't kill Erin. And James McArdle's expert performance in episode five telegraphs this conclusion. During his confession, his face wears something slightly different from guilt. He emits shame. But it is here that "Mare" makes its strongest institutional indictment. In the mystery of Erin's murder, not even the church can be absolved.
And for many years, the police department has failed to solve these crimes
Like in all murder mysteries, the police department in "Mare" sits at the center of the community. And right at the start of the show, we are shown its failings. Katie Bailey, another young woman, is missing and the police department has been investigating her disappearance for over a year with no success.
As a result, Colin Zabel (Evan Peters), a young and buzzy county detective who just solved a similar case in the city, is drafted in to assist Mare (Kate Winslet) with the investigation. Through Zabel, we witness the limitations of policing and general life in a small town. As he follows Mare through the community, he makes quips about how everyone is related. Even his physical appearance - a smart dark suit, juxtaposed with Mare's casual flannel and jeans - highlights the differences between globalized, metropolitan life and Easttown.
But a few episodes later, we learn that Zabel didn't actually solve the big case that kick-started his career. He's a fraud. Soon after, he's brutally killed. At this point, it's hard to sit through an episode of "Mare" without feeling a deep almost apocalyptic sense of anxiety for the citizens of Easttown and, by extension, those who inhabit similar working-class communities around the United States.
The citizens of Easttown are in free-fall: whatever institutions that might have supported them in the past have crumbled. And the idea of a big city savior is a farce. So when this particular story has been resolved and all the main protagonists eventually find happy endings, what happens next?