4/15/2023 0 Comments Tell me your secrets reviewIn practice, the richness is cut through with a whole alphabet of side plots that only ever detract from what Warner’s trying to accomplish by connecting the dots between her leads.Īll “Tell Me Your Secrets” needs is to emphasize their differences, and in so doing highlight what all they have in common. On paper this makes a rich text echoing with character parallels. We all see the body, but we don’t see it disappear, and Emma sets out to vindicate herself – Pete thinks she’s hallucinating due to her meds, but remember that part about him being a creepazoid – by ingratiating herself to strangers. Emma’s search closely follows John’s example – she’s a loner by necessity, except when she saves Jess from Rose’s bullying, then slowly befriends Rose when Jess goes missing. Mary searches by keeping herself public, a known champion for the rights and safety of children all over the country. John searches by keeping to himself and turning to spiritual practice. They’re all searching for the same things, peace, closure, and absolution most of all, and they all go about their individual searches in markedly different ways. For one, Brenneman, Linklater, and especially Rabe, a steady, forceful performer who knows how to smoothly maneuver the gap separating Emma’s innocence from her complicity, serve as a terrific core cast, each of them working beautifully even though they share screen time either rarely (a’la John and Mary) or never (a’la Emma). Frankly, this is a colossal writerly misstep. There’s a palpable lack of audience confidence resting in the pile of hushed cries and whispers that comprise “Tell Me Your Secrets,” as if Warner and her team felt a tad concerned over whether the chief narrative is enough narrative and requires additional narrative to glue all ten episodes together. Secrets beget secrets beget yet more secrets, and then a bunch of other secrets, apparently jealous of all the attention the first batch of secrets get, rear their heads and complicate an already knotty series. James kid and the first friend Emma makes, lives in a group home for unwanted youth that has a seedy background of its very own. James, Louisiana, is abused on the regular by her pillar-of-the-community mom, Diana ( Katherine Willis) Jess ( Emyri Crutchfield), another St. Pete Guillory ( Enrique Murciano), Emma’s psychiatrist and de facto WPP handler, is hitched to a former patient, Lisa ( Ashley Madekwe), and might be a stealth creepazoid, too Rose Lord ( Chiara Aurelia), a local teen living in Emma’s new home of St. But that’s not enough secrets, so of course there must be others. So there you have it: A disparate trio indirectly linked by circumstance alone, each of them burdened by their tales of woe and by interior struggles. READ MORE: The 25 Best TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2020 Like John, Emma wants to move past her crime and punishment, though she’s by far the more sympathetic of the two she doesn’t know about Kit’s crimes throughout their relationship, and having been exposed to the truth, she’s trying to put the pieces of her life back together. Mary believes serial killer Kit Parker ( Xavier Samuel), Emma’s former squeeze, is the one who took her girl, and is so desperate to find her that she strongarms John into serving as her personal private detective, driving all over Texas (and beyond) to locate Emma. The show centers on three people: Kate ( Lily Rabe), rechristened “Emma” as she embarks on a new life in witness protection, Mary ( Amy Brenneman), head of a foundation that tracks down missing children and a grieving mother carrying a torch for her own lost daughter, and John ( Hamish Linklater), a serial predator striving for redemption. ![]() The number of ways Warner stuffs excess meaning into the basic conceit of “Tell Me Your Secrets” ends up dominating the areas where that meaning should carry the most weight. READ MORE: The 65 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2021 ![]() ![]() The protagonists have secrets, but hoo boy, they’re not the only ones! Failure is failure, though, and “Tell Me Your Secrets,” its scattered better merits aside, makes a mess of itself by opting away from grime and leaning hard on a tangle of interwoven plot threads written to emphasize the series’ title. ![]() Remember when movies and TV shows billed as “sleazy” actually lived up to sleaze’s promise? No one else does, either, which at least makes the faux-sordid veneer splashed across Harriet Warner’s “ Tell Me Your Secrets” less disappointing: If nothing that aspires to sleaziness manages to get there, then we can forgive one show for half-assing an attempt at dirtbag storytelling.
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