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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Seventy Cents

Reese Witherspoon as Elena Richardson

Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu has already set the groundwork for showing the relationships between three mothers—all of different races—and how their circumstances in 1990s suburbia will impact their lives forever.

The show stars Reese Witherspoon as Elena Richardson, a white housewife/journalist raising four teen kids—Lexie, Tripp, Moody and Izzy; and Kerry Washington, a black single mother raising her teen daughter Pearl. The third mother who was just brought into the mix is Bebe Chow, played by Lu Huang, a recent Chinese immigrant who works with Mia as a waitress and is looking for the daughter she gave up. They all live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a real community outside Cleveland that historically created its own rules for a utopian suburbia vibe.

While the kids are preparing for the homecoming dance, the same night the adults are preparing for a one-year-old birthday party hosted by Elena. These two events will define the storyline with both ending in disaster.

The Mixed Question

After the kids decide to go to homecoming, Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood, jumps at a chance to go shopping with Lexie, the eldest Richardson daughter played by Jade Pettyjohn. Lexie just plagiarized Pearl’s essay to get placement in a math class for her Yale college application. Pearl comes out of a dressing room in a dress she loves. That’s when Lexie tells her about seeing the essay, but she conveniently leaves out the plagiarism part and calls the essay more of an inspiration when for her essay.

Lexie further distracts Pearl from the truth after asking about her lineage: “Are you mixed?” Going on about how pretty Pearl is, Lexie continues with asking who Pearl’s father is because he must have some non-black blood. This loaded question can be seen as offensive with emphasizing Pearl’s racial identity and asking her paternity, but mostly it’s about race and what society calls beauty. Lexie purports herself as an expert in race with having a black boyfriend, Brian, played by Stevonte Hart. How black her boyfriend is already came up in the first episode.

The biggest distraction of all: Lexie buys Pearl her homecoming dress.

“You’re letting some rich spoiled white girl turn you into her dress-up doll!” Mia screams at Pearl after discovering the new dress. “She doesn’t own you. You don’t belong to Lexie Richardson.”

Pearl then verbally hits her mother back by asking about her father and his whereabouts. Mia can’t give a clear answer. Again, Pearl is frustrated by her vagabond life, now realizing other kids didn’t live like her.

In the book, Lexie is talking to her best friend Serena Wong, who hasn’t been introduced formally on the show yet, and calling the new friend of her brother Moody, played by Gavin Lewis, “Little Orphan Pearl.”

You’re letting some rich spoiled white girl turn you into her dress-up doll! She doesn’t own you. You don’t belong to Lexie Richardson.

“She’s so quiet,” Lexie tells Serena at the top of chapter five. “Like she’s afraid to speak. And when you look at her, she turns bright red—red-red, like a tomato. A literal tomato.”

The book goes on about Lexie’s new fascination on Pearl, who is showing her desire to hang out with the older Richardson siblings, Lexie and Tripp, played by Jordan Elsass, who have ascended into high school popularity. The quote also emphasizes how Mia and Pearl are not black in the book with Lexie’s reddening description of Pearl.

The Black Boyfriend

Brian, Lexie’s boyfriend, comes to dinner at the Richardson house where he’s pushed to meet Pearl. Elena bluntly talks about what Pearl and Brian have in common, which is code for both being black. Pearl doesn’t seem interested in getting to know Brian due to that remark, but Brian tries to be friendly.

When Brian discovers Lexie adapted most of Pearl’s essay to her own for college, he doesn’t know how to feel about his longtime girlfriend even when they’re crowned homecoming king and queen. Brian dislikes how Lexie took a story from a black girl’s perspective and badly adapted it to her own perspective, which raises ethical questions for him.

At the dance, Brian tells Pearl about the essay. In the distance, Lexie knows they’re talking about her.

COMMON GROUND

After much despise that Izzy, played by Megan Stott, is not her clone, Elena softens in episode two. The turning point is finding out from Tripp that kids at school have been calling Izzy “Ellen” as in Ellen DeGeneres assuming she’s gay.

The next morning Elena tells Izzy of an embarrassing high school moment. This inspires Izzy to ask her siblings and friends to go to homecoming. Scenes later, while modeling in her emerald dress in the driveway, Mia exclaims that Izzy’s leg is bleeding. A shaving mishap. Elena takes Izzy and shaves Izzy’s legs with care over the bathtub.

The pendulum swings back to normal when Elena discovers from the mother of Izzy’s ex-friend that Izzy allegedly violated the friend. Though Elena runs to her husband Bill, played by Joshua Jackson, the truth will come out in the next episode as the party rapidly goes downward.

whose baby is it?

The episode opens with Bebe months before when she had a hard time taking care of her newborn, May Ling. With the hardship of no power in her bare-bones apartment, Bebe tries to buy formula for May Ling, but she’s seventy cents short, hence the episode’s title. The cashier screams at her to get out of the store. It’s the last straw as Bebe soon leaves May Ling outside a fire station for a safe surrender.

The story obviously touches Mia. With Bebe broken over the baby and also unable to speak fluent English, Mia vows to find out what happened to May Ling.

Elena’s friend, Linda McCullough played by Rosemarie DeWitt, has been introduced in the previous two episodes for a short period of time. It turns out Linda adopted a baby, Mirabelle, and Elena is throwing a birthday party for the one-year-old.

Earlier, Elena tells Mia, the home manager, about the baby shower and Linda’s adoption journey—how Linda and her husband adopted Mirabelle, who is Chinese, after she was abandoned at a fire station.

With this new information, Mia tells Bebe she may have found May Ling,  newly named Mirabelle McCullough. Bebe wants to go to the McCullough house immediately, but Mia calms her and says it’s easier if she goes to see if it’s May Ling first. The identifying factor: a red spot on May Ling’s scalp.

Strapped with more information, Mia offers her photography services for the birthday party at the Richardson home. At the party, Mia is choosy about taking photos until she sneaks upstairs to the sleeping baby. She wakes up Mirabelle and tries to find the red spot. She finds it, but Elena comes in. The baby is handed over as Mia slips away.

The episode, and the party, ends with the earsplitting scream of Bebe, who appears at the party and sees her daughter cradled in the arms of a white family.

Bebe’s baby, May Ling by her supporters and Mirabelle by the McCullough supporters, will be a central point in the story, dividing not only the Richardsons and Warrens in the process but the idyllic community of Shaker Heights.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Seeds and All

Kerry Washington as Mia Warren and Lu Huang as Bebe Chow in Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu.

The second episode of Little Fires Everywhere deepens the shaky acquaintanceship of two matriarchs trying to accept their newfound ties.

Kerry Washington is Mia Warren, a single black mother who moves to rule-abiding Shaker Heights, Ohio with her daughter Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood. Reese Witherspoon is Elena Richardson, a rich white mother with four teenage children distraught over how her youngest daughter, Izzy, played by Megan Stott, is not aspiring to be the American dream she set up for her family.

As Pearl hangs out more with the Richardson children—Izzy; Lexie, played by Jade Pettyjohn; Tripp, played by Jordan Elsass; and Moody, played by Gavin Lewis—Mia and Elena are seeing their lives collide more, whether they like it or not.

DOING THE MATH

Pearl wants to take algebra two, but the white male school counselor placed her back in geometry. The counselor claims Pearl attended too many schools and assumes she’s being bused in from Cleveland. Knowing her race is really the decision, she later tells Mia about the situation at the Chinese restaurant where her mother works. But Mia is watching her coworker, Bebe, deal with the diners, especially a baby.

Pearl picks up on the disinterest and asks Elena the next morning if she could proofread her essay to get into algebra two. Elena gladly accepts and mentions the school doesn’t like to put the students of color in the higher-level classes. In the kitchen, Elena puts the essay down on the counter to fetch Izzy for school. Lexie sees the abandoned papers and takes a peek.

BOOK CLUB

Elena’s book club is reading The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, which of course riles her conservatism as she complains she had voted for Arthur Golden’s classic Memoirs of a Geisha instead. At the book club inside her spacious living room, Elena touches on motherhood not being mentioned as much in the famous feminist play.

The moderator shoots back about the last chapter revolving around childbirth and asks if she’s less of a woman for not having children. Pouring liqueur in the background, Mia wanders into the conversation to defend Elena, who barely read the play distraught over the mention of “vaginas,” and discusses the buried motherhood theme. Elena approves Mia’s defense and introduces Mia to the book club.

After the book club, Mia and Elena are bonding on the sofa with wine. The invisible competition comes up again when Elena absentmindedly tells Mia that she helped Pearl with her letter to advocate for her upgraded math class. Mia abruptly ends the bonding session. At home, she asks Pearl about how she got into the class. Pearl said she stood up for herself without mentioning any help from Elena.

WHO IS BEBE?

Back at the restaurant where Pearl is talking to Mia about her math dilemma, Mia zeros in on Bebe Chow, the quiet Chinese immigrant working at the restaurant played by Lu Huang. Mia senses Bebe needs help after Bebe shows happiness then sadness when handling a baby for a family, so Mia gets up from the dining table on her night off and tells Bebe she will take over her shift.

Later, Bebe makes homemade noodles for Mia that she brings to Mia at home. Mia gives Bebe her tips from the night before. Her kindness touches Bebe, who admits she lost her baby daughter.

Mia tells Bebe she doesn’t have to share her story to explain her behavior; she understands as a mother. This signals another mother being brought into the equation and how her race will play a role in discovering what happened to her daughter.

still, Who is Mia?

The episode opens in a years-old flashback of Mia having sex in a cramped car. She’s only distracted by baby Pearl waking up. She kicks out her sex partner and comforts Pearl.

This accompanies the New York City subway flashbacks that Mia has been having since the first episode. She’s scared sitting on the subway and the main person she’s staring at across from her in the car is Grey’s Anatomy actor/activist Jesse Williams. At one point, his unidentified character flickers into Elena. Mia’s traumas may take a backseat to Bebe’s traumas we have yet to see.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: The Spark

Kerry Washington as Mia Warren in Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, which started streaming this week on Hulu with its first three episodes, is already establishing the racial thread between two families in an upscale Ohio suburb in 1997.

The series introduces us to two different neighbors in Shaker Heights, Ohio: Elena Richardson, played by Reese Witherspoon, the well-to-do white housewife/part-time reporter with a lawyer husband and four teenage children; and Mia Warren, played by Kerry Washington, a black single mother/mixed media artist who moved to the restrictive suburb with her teen daughter Pearl.

Below are the top threads laying out the complexities of the characters and opening the pathway to the plot.

Mia and Pearl are black

In the book, Mia and Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood, aren’t described as black. In fact, their race isn’t really identified with the socioeconomic barrier standing between them and the Richardsons.

Adding their blackness to the storyline, the show emphasized the racial tension between mothers Mia and Elena.

Mia is the black single mother barely making ends meet while Elena is the financially comfortable white homemaker who only offers Mia her rental home after seeing Mia’s car and realizing she had reported it to the police for suspicious activity. Elena eventually offers Mia a “house manager” job, which Mia interprets as a maid job and the racial connotations of domestic service.

Elena will be the white woman character not understanding her racism, like when she calls the police about Mia’s car, while convincing herself she’s not racist, like offering Mia the home to rent after seeing the car. She’s the modern-day Barbecue Becky or Permit Patty but trying to right her wrongs while still making offense, like with the job offer.

Pearl gets in trouble

Once Mia’s daughter Pearl and Elena’s son Moody, played by Gavin Lewis, get acquainted, they’re two peas in a pod. Moody introduces Pearl to a junkyard where he’s decorated a small shed he turned into an artistic sanctuary. Pearl is impressed when she sees words from a poem she had quoted to Moody earlier. But then the two get busted for trespassing.

When neighborhood watch brings the kids back to the Richardson home, Mia goes ballistic. Her black daughter is being brought home by a police officer! In a new (mostly white) neighborhood! Of course, she can’t control her emotions, telling Pearl she’s not like the Richardsons aka not white. Elena is soft on Moody for the offense and tells Mia that it was neighborhood watch, with the man’s uniform appearing like that of a police officer. Mia is visibly upset by Elena’s response and leaves with Pearl.

the mothers

How the series is juxtaposing Mia with Izzy, played by Megan Stott, and Elena with Pearl shows how the grass is greener on the other side, but in this case the teen girls see themselves in these adult women who are the opposite of their mothers.

Pearl admires Elena because she represents stability. Being a daughter of an artist, she’s been forced to believe she has to move constantly. She begs her mother that they make Shaker Heights home, at least stay a year.

After Pearl gets in trouble with the neighborhood watch, Mia feels profound guilt and lets Pearl paint the rest of her walls in her bedroom a cerulean hue, buys Pearl a bicycle, and even paints her fingernails. There’s a desperate guilt that she can’t offer her daughter stability, especially the kind the Richardsons have. With Mia’s recurring New York City subway terrors, we see this mother struggling with her past circumstances and how she’s escaping them to focus on her daughter.

In the Richardson home, Elena chastises Izzy for not playing her violin at a school concert and writing in black marker across her forehead: NOT YOUR PUPPET. A chilly distance still remains between them because Izzy is the unique child. She burns her hair, wears black clothing, and refuses to conform to the suburban life her parents had set up for her and her siblings. But this ruffles perfectionist Elena to the point they can’t connect.

When Izzy is spraying black paint on a trunk in the front yard, Mia takes notice of the art in motion. Izzy smiles at the compliment. The connection is snapped between their artistic hearts. Seeing how Izzy may be misunderstood in her ambitious household compels Mia to take on the house manager role Elena had offered previously. Though she first took offense, her motherly tendencies overruled her.

The episode ends with Elena receiving a call from one of the references Mia put down for her tenant application. It turns out the alleged former landlord never met Mia, raising suspicions about who Mia is, where she came from, and how her secrets could threaten the Richardsons and the greater Shaker Heights community.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.