It will only take you about two episodes to figure out if Dear Edward, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, will be your type of show. For me, it definitely wasn’t. But I suspect it’s a series that will find an audience – largely because shows with a similar look, feel, and deep swell of emotional layering that can either hook you in or make you check out have found a place in the zeitgeist over the last decade or so. And, with Jason Katims at the helm (the showrunner behind Friday Night Lights and Parenthood – with which the series shares some narrative DNA in terms of structure), there’s some strong work going on here. It’s just a bit too heavy-handed and too busy to really hit it out of the park.
Dear Edward tells the story of the aftermath of a plane crash (why we’re getting so many plane crash stories these days on TV would be an interesting think piece for someone to tackle – just putting it out there) that saw everyone on board die save for a tween boy named Edward (Colin O’Brien, who does great work with a tricky character). Edward – not Eddie, which was what his family would call him – loses his parents (Robin Tunney and Brian D’Arcy James, who is making a name for himself as the beloved father who dies in the pilot episode these days) and his older brother, Jordan (Maxwell Jenkins, who gets more to do than you would think), in the crash and is sent to live with his aunt (Taylor Schilling, who I wish was given a more nuance to play in the early episodes to help sell the complexities of her character a bit more) and uncle in upstate New York – and, of course, they have their own marriage issues to contend with.
Outside of Edward and his story, the series follows various surviving family members of the crash victims. There’s a woman, who just found out she’s pregnant, who lost her boyfriend (who never got around to telling his parents that he met the love of his life since their relationship was still pretty new). There’s a young political operative who had just decided to step away from politics when she loses the Congresswoman she worked for – who just happened to also be her grandmother who had told her that it was her dream for her to take over her Congressional seat upon her retirement. There’s the man who is called to come to the US from Ghana to retrieve his sister’s young orphaned daughter. And there’s a middle aged society woman who discovers that her husband had an entire other life that he was leading on the West Coast that she knew nothing about until his death. All of this is to say that there are a lot of additional storylines – some of which cross over and interconnect, some that don’t – making this a heck of a crowded story being told.
Now, the positive to having so many stories competing for screen time is that there’s bound to be one or two that connect with you (for me, it was Edward’s story as well as the society woman’s discovery – largely because she’s played by Connie Britton and she’s operating on an entirely different level than some of this cast, as one might expect from an actress who has proven time and again just how great she can be when given the tools – and Katims absolutely knows how to give his former Friday Night Lights leading lady all the tools she needs to succeed). You can easily slip down that particular rabbit hole, dig in and get lost in the story being told. The downside is, of course, you only get so much of that story before the focus shifts to another plot that doesn’t quite work as well for you. And, if there are more that don’t work than do, you can be in for a long slog until you get another glimpse at one of your favorite characters.
Which is from where my major issue with the series stems – there are so many characters fighting for screen time that we never get enough time to sit with any set of characters and get the development we need to fully invest in them so that when the story starts trying to pull at our heartstrings (and come on, you know this is a show that will weaponize emotional connections to ensure people are a crying mess by the time the credits roll), we don’t care enough about the characters in question to fully accept the emotional stakes. Now, I mentioned I found the Edward story and the Dee Dee (Britton’s character) story to be the most compelling of the lot and much of that has to do with the work Katims and the writers take to craft three-dimensional characters out of the pair. Edward, naturally, is our entry into the entire story – we see his life in New York City on the eve of the fateful plane flight (we do see the other characters in and around the story during that same time, but Edward is our focus as he should be). We learn he’s a child genius but worried about this upcoming change for his family (a move to Los Angeles is a huge thing for a kid, after all). And we understand how he fits into his nuclear family. Similarly, we learn with only a few lines who Dee Dee is in the pilot (vapid, image conscious, unconcerned when her husband sends her and her adult daughter a strange text moments before the crash). And Britton sells the hell out of her confusion, pain, and anger upon realizing that her husband wasn’t who she assumed he was – she, after all, was all too happy to check out of their marriage and continue living her flashy lifestyle without recognizing that something was amiss, so there’s plenty of deeply hidden guilt rolling around, too. It’s a complex performance that deserves its own show, frankly. But here, it’s one piece of a large, often unwieldy, puzzle that doesn’t get as much time to breathe as it should.
And that’s the baked in booby trap of a large ensemble series: If you can’t make most – if not all – of the storylines worth sitting through, the show will flounder under the dead weight. Now as I said at the top of the review, this might not be an insurmountable issue for some viewers. There’s absolutely an audience out there for this type of ensemble drama – one that is heavy on the emotional beats and lighter on the grounding character development (I hesitate to call it emotionally manipulative, although the writing absolutely veers into that lane at times). And that’s perfectly fine! There’s plenty of television for everyone! However, for me, this series didn’t pass muster. Fewer characters, more time spent developing them before driving hard into the emotional destruction that befalls them, and a story that allows us and the characters the chance to breathe from time to time would have made for a more enjoyable experience. But, if you’re into this type of story, there’s certainly something worth watching here.
Dear Edward premieres on AppleTV+ on Friday, February 3. All ten episodes were provided for review.
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