Tiny Beautiful Things Review

I had incredibly high hopes for Tiny Beautiful Things. Kathryn Hahn, who is having a hell of a moment, leading a dramedy about a woman falling apart while trying to provide advice to others? That sounds like the recipe for a truly great series. Throw in Merritt Weaver – who always makes everything better, which is absolutely the case here – and you have a one-two punch that should paper over any number of ills to at least make for an interesting watch. Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts of the show’s cast, the complete convoluted nature of the show’s narrative arc overtakes even the best performances, leading to a series that runs in circles and rarely gets anywhere of interest.

While the series’ title is drawn from Cheryl Strayed’s book of the same name (which was a series of essays from Strayed’s “Dear Sugar” advice column), the story told here is wholly original and created by showrunner Liz Tigelaar and her writers’ room. The story centers on Clare (Hahn), a failed writer with a tragic past who makes a decision that has disastrous consequences for her husband, Danny (Quentin Plair), and daughter Rae (Tanzyn Crawford, who is excellent), leading to her being kicked out of the house and the complete loss of trust with her family. It’s during this time that a friend offers Clare a chance to write advice for the local “Dear Sugar” column, which is, unfortunately, an unpaid and anonymous position. As Clare and Danny attempt to figure out their next steps, we are treated to flashbacks of their early life together as well as even earlier flashbacks that explore the tragic death of Clare’s mother, Frankie (Weaver), and the massive impact that loss had on Clare’s life.

So, it’s a lot. And it’s a lot of trauma-based storytelling, which can be incredibly interesting when you have the right focus and the right narrative to follow. Unfortunately, Tiny Beautiful Things lacks anything approaching balance in its storytelling, making it nearly impossible to find the nuance among the repetitious narrative circles the series takes the audience through. Now, part of the issue is just how utterly messed up Clare is throughout most of the series. If she were in my orbit, I would have cut her out years ago. I’m wary of using the term “unlikeable,” since that often gets bandied about when complicated female characters appear in a drama, and rarely when it’s a man instead, but really, it’s the perfect word to sum up Clare. There’s nothing wrong with having an unlikeable lead – so long as there are other characters surrounding them to allow the audience to empathize with. The real trouble here isn’t that Clare is unlikeable. It’s that there aren’t any other characters you would want to spend more than 15 minutes with – outside of Frankie.

The series also fails to adequately lay the groundwork to explain and explore Clare’s traumas. We know her mother got sick and died while Clare was in college. We know that it set Clare and her brother on self-destructive paths, with varying degrees of destruction in their wake. But the way the narrative is structured means that we only learn bits and pieces of Clare’s past when it suits her present storyline. So, we see snippets of what made her into who she is, lacking any sense of the full picture when that would be incredibly helpful. Perhaps the series could front-load Clare’s current issues – Rae and Danny’s distrust, Clare’s sense of failure for not becoming a successful writer, Clare’s innate need to form co-dependent relationships with others in her life outside of her family, Clare’s lack of sexual boundaries and self-destructive nature – and then provide us with the big reveal: Clare’s life began its downward spiral the day her mom got sick. This way, we understand the effect and just need the cause. But that’s not what we get. Instead, we get pieces of her past – moments where Clare made major errors in judgement – and those pieces are stitched to her present in ways that only sometimes work. The writing, the character development, and the story itself turn out to be just as messy and convoluted as Clare’s own psyche. It’s not a great look.

As I said at the beginning, I went into Tiny Beautiful Things really hoping for a successful, complex drama, so seeing just how much of a mess the series ended up being – despite some strong performances – was a total disappointment. Hahn is one of the most interesting, fearless actresses working today, and I’m eager to see just what she will come up with next. However, this wasn’t the right vehicle for her or anyone else to drive. With a sharper focus and a more nuanced character study at its heart, Tiny Beautiful Things could have been something. Instead, it’s lost in the weeds and would need its own Dear Sugar column to find its way out.

Tiny Beautiful Things premieres on April 7 on Hulu. All eight episodes were provided for review.