Mare of Easttown Week 6

Mare of Easttown is, among other things, a show about grief. It seems like everybody in that town is mourning something. More specifically, it’s a show about parents grieving their children.

 

Mare Sheehan never really grieved for her son, her therapist points out. She was the one who cut him down from the rafters in the attic, and I don’t know how the hell you come back from that. Mare buries herself in other people’s grief, and that grief (which has so many sources) hangs like low clouds over that town. Siobhan, who actually found Kevin, is at least doing something more productive with her grief by way of making a video about her brother, but she still has unresolved anger at her mother. “It should have been you,” she yells.

 

Colin Zabel’s mother is grieving her son, working through that by slapping Mare twice. Dawn’s daughter is safe at home with her but she’s still grieving, since it will take some time before Katie processes her kidnapping. Kenny is grieving Erin—he was emotionally abusive to her and ended up in jail but he’s still mourning. Bethie is grieving her brother Freddie, who came to a sad end with a needle in his arm in an unheated house (the visible breath in the air was a subtle touch). Dylan’s parents may be soon be grieving for their son because even if he didn’t kill Erin, he’s still in a heap of trouble for pointing a gun at Jess, not to mention whatever ominous things connects the two of them. Billy’s father may already be starting to mourn his son after he confessed to killing Erin.

 

Carrie almost had to grieve her son Drew. The episode already set up Carrie as sleep-deprived and the way they shot the bathtub scene was full of foreboding and then she falls asleep and oh my God the baby is face down in the water but then he comes up for air because he was just playing a game and JESUS CHRIST, MARE OF EASTTOWN, DON’T DO THAT TO US AGAIN. Seriously, don’t do that.

 

Billy has confessed to John, after many bottles of Yuengling, to both fathering DJ during a family reunion in the Poconos and to later killing Erin. That Billy killed her hit so much harder than it would have if a random character did it (like the writer), and it plays to Mare’s strength at showing the bonds between people in the community. It carries real weight, as did John’s chilling request for Lori never to tell anyone. I was glad Lori didn’t keep it a secret. I like Lori and it would be an unfair burden to hide this information from her friend, not to mention obstruction of justice.

 

But I don’t think it’s cut-and-dry that Billy killed her. There’s one more twist left in this show: What is in the photo Jess showed to the police? What sordid little detail will it add to this sad story? Billy confessed, but is he just a scapegoat?

 

And what happens when Mare gets to the lake house? It was almost funny to see her not only disregard the chief’s instruction not to follow them but speed up, because of course Mare won’t listen. Unless Billy is going to shoot fish with Chekov’s gun, there’s going to be some trouble at the crick. Did John put the gun in the tackle box and is he going to kill his brother to bury the secret? Why else would he tell his wife to keep the secret right before taking Billy to the lake house before turning himself in?

 

Here’s my wild theory: John killed Erin. Billy helped dispose of the body while blackout drunk (hence the bloody shirt) and believes he killed her, subtly convinced by John. John’s going to kill Billy at the lake house. He told Lori not to tell anyone because he was counting on Lori telling Mare Billy killed Erin, but Billy will be dead (maybe of a staged suicide) and nobody will be able to disprove the story. Easttown will remember this as a sad story of a man who killed a young girl after fathering her child and then dying himself by suicide, just another sad thing to happen in that town.

 

One thing on Delco this week: Do we drop our G’s that much? I notice a lot of the characters do, and I heard a “sumpin” this week. I don’t know that Delco-area people do that any more than people in other areas.

 

You know what? The accents are fun but I don’t even care as much as I did. The show is just too good.