Hahn great as ‘Mrs. Fletcher’; White excels as her son
Within the past few years, it seems every peer on my Facebook feed sent their first child off to college and, good lord, the grief. Such buildup, such rivers of tears. All because of what is supposed to be a good thing, a successful departure from the nest. I thought we were made of tougher stuff, but apparently not.
Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to Eve Fletcher, the fed-up single mother so enticingly, relatably portrayed by Kathryn Hahn in HBO’S scrumptious new dramedy “Mrs. Fletcher,” premiering Sunday.
Eve’s popular but brutish 18-year-old son, Brendan (Jackson White), is a selfabsorbed jerk on the day she drives him to his freshman dorm at a campus several hours
At a glance
• “Mrs. Fletcher” premieres at 10:30 tonight on HBO.
away. He deprives her of even a hint of gratitude or fond farewell, choosing to spend the last minutes before they depart upstairs in his bedroom, receiving oral sex from his ex-girlfriend while Eve packs the Grand Caravan.
With Brendan gone (and never answering her texts), Eve realizes that she spent too many years forgetting to have a life outside of raising him and working at her job as the director of a community center for senior citizens. That she comes home, pours a glass of wine and opens her laptop to explore the wide world of streaming hardcore porn is not as shocking at it might have once seemed. It’s 2019 — better late than never to the party of one.
“Mrs. Fletcher” is faithfully adapted from Tom Perrotta’s 2017 novel, as it ought to be. After decades of seeing and sometimes helping other people adapt his books to film and TV (including “Election,” “Little Children” and a greatly transmogrified, far more morose version of “The Leftovers”), Perrotta is finally in charge here as creator and producer of this seven-episode limited series.
In addition to exploring her dirtier thoughts, Eve enrolls in a personal essaywriting class at the local community college, taught by Margo (Jen Richards), a trans woman. There are only a few other students in the class — one of them is Julian (Owen Teague), a quiet, 18-year-old freshman who happens to have been on the receiving end of Brendan’s bullying in high school. Julian instantly develops a crush on Eve, who is not altogether opposed to his interest; it fuels the older-woman/ younger-lover fantasies she has been exploring online.
Although the show is obviously and correctly centered on Hahn as Eve, the real surprise is White’s memorable and terrifically nuanced performance as Brendan.
The best parts of the show follow Brendan into his disastrous first semester. He is cocky and confident in a socially woke, liberal studies environment that no longer puts a primacy on conferring Big Man On Campus status on each and every dude-bro who swaggers across the quad. He is shunned by young women, abandoned by his roommate and written off by his academic adviser — and, to a great degree, he deserves it. Beneath his toughness, he feels rejected by his father, Ted (Josh Hamilton), Eve’s ex-husband, who has remarried a younger woman and now has a young autistic son.
“The thing is, you’re good. I don’t have to worry about you,” Ted assures Brendan, before cutting short a parents’ weekend visit. “You’re so smart, you’re good at sports — people love you. You’re good, yeah?”
It couldn’t be further from the truth, and it has always been Perrotta’s great gift to give dimension and depth to characters who, on the surface, haven’t earned our sympathies. “Mrs. Fletcher” is filled with funny and awkward scenes in which the lead character has her world greatly opened, but it is perhaps more memorable (and more unique) as a show about a young man who finds the world is shutting him out.