Yes, HBOs Easttown mare looks like another small town murder mystery – but Sunday’s premiere gets us to know the small town well before the murder even takes place.
When we meet Mare Sheehan, Kate Winslet’s detective, she wakes up to another call from her neighbor, Mrs. Carroll, complaining about a peeping Tom letting go of Tom. Mare dutifully records the old lady’s report (“He looked like a ferret”) and reminds her that next time she can just call the police station. At the station, the chief informs Mare that they are bringing in a district detective to help her search for the local girl Katie Bailey, who has been missing for a year now. Mare loves this, but the chief orders her “to go back to the file. We start here. “
We also meet teenage mom Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), who has a controversial relationship with her baby’s father, Dylan. During a custody transfer, they argue about paying for the child’s ear surgery, and Erin gets into a nasty argument with Dylan’s new girlfriend Brianna, who promises to come back to Erin “when you least expect it”. Plus, we learn that Erin has an angry, short tempered father … and a potential boyfriend named Brendan with whom she has exchanged intimate texts.
While Mare shops for an inexpensive habitat to hold her grandson’s baby turtle (she just had to flush a lizard down the toilet, so she doesn’t want to spend too much), she is called to investigate a burglary on her friend Beth. Hanlon. . Beth knows it was her drug-addicted brother Freddie, and on the way home, Mare sees Freddie on the street. She screeches to a stop and gives chase, twisting her ankle. She follows Freddie to his house and takes him out of hiding, while also helping a rookie cop get through his nausea at the sight of blood. Actually she is a one-man police.
At home, we meet Mare’s mother Helen (Jean Smart) and her teenage daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice) as she soothes her swollen ankle with a bag of frozen chips. There Mare learns that her ex-husband Frank (David Denman) has just been engaged to his new girlfriend; in fact, everyone in the family knew before they did. Tonight is their engagement party and everyone plans to go there instead of an event to mark the anniversary of Mare’s winning shot as a high school basketball star. Mare has a slice of pizza and a beer with her friend and former teammate Lori (Julianne Nicholson), while Siobhan and her band prepare to play a set at the engagement party. (This is a pretty dense carpet!)
Erin hangs out with a friend and gushes over Brendan, whom she wants to meet in the woods that night … and that’s where Brianna and her friends hang out too. During the basketball event, we discover that Dawn, Katie Bailey’s mother – who was just complaining on TV about the police’s careless work on her daughter’s case – was also on Mare’s basketball team. She and Mare exchange a few terse words, with Mare defending her tireless efforts to find Katie, before going outside to loud applause from the crowd. Later, Mare drowns her grief at a local bar and meets a writer named Richard Ryan (Guy Pearce), who has just moved to town. (“Sorry, that’s a pity,” Marc offers.) They exchange sarcastic chatter and eventually she goes home with him, but then tries to call him off: “My life is complicated.” It also gets more complicated.
At the party in the woods, Erin shows up ready to meet Brendan and has an awkward reunion with old friends before heading to the meeting spot. But there she finds Brianna and her friends taunting her. “Brendan” was just a catfish Brianna made up to go back to Erin to text Dylan, and Brianna beat her up while her friends videotaped it all. Siobhan breaks the fight and tries to help Erin, but she just wanders deep into the forest, alone.
Mare fends off Helen’s questions about coming home late, tucking her grandson in before going to bed, and wakes up the next morning to a phone call – but it’s not Mrs. Carroll this time. Back in the forest, we see that Erin’s body is stretched out in a river bed.
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