The Pitch: Collection co-creators Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus maintain the true-crime story wave going with The Woman From Plainville, an eight-part restricted collection primarily based on the “texting suicide case.” In 2014, Conrad Roy III died by suicide in Mattapoisett, Massachussets — this tragedy ultimately garnered nationwide consideration as investigators realized of the position that the teenager’s girlfriend, Michelle Carter, performed in his loss of life.
Roy’s and Carter’s motivations have been beforehand explored in Erin Lee Carr’s 2019 documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter – and, in fact, in all of the previous media protection of the groundbreaking case. However The Woman From Plainville makes use of inventive license to enterprise deeper into the minds of those adolescents, and observe how an opportunity assembly in Florida might result in such devastation.
The Star-Crossed Lovers (or, the Sufferer and the Defendant): Elle Fanning stars as Michelle Carter, the eponymous teen lady whose actions within the days main as much as Conrad’s loss of life stay as appalling as they’re obscure. Hannah and Macmanus lead their very own investigation into Michelle’s background, which incorporates hospitalization for an consuming dysfunction and what we would now describe as an over-reliance on parasocial relationships.
Michelle has already begun to weave her story of an incredible, in the end doomed like to anybody who will pay attention, however the collection shortly factors out the cracks in her story. “Conrad’s lifeless,” she tearfully declares to her dad and mom David (Kai Lennox) and Gail (Carla Buono) one morning as they sit on the breakfast desk. Gail, nonplussed, responds: “Who’s Conrad?”
On this method, The Woman From Plainville usually challenges the assertions we may be forming: about Michelle, about Conrad, about the place the culpability lies. Which isn’t to say that the Hulu drama is a few sort of head journey or style train (although it does supply a number of heightened moments, together with what may be the best on-screen use of Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag” thus far).
