Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon can't heat up watered-down 'Little Fires Everywhere'

If social distancing is your time to catch up on all things pop culture, Little Fires Everywhere is a fine place to start. Hulu's adaptation of Celeste Ng's 2018 novel starts streaming today, but the ink-and-paper version would be a better use of your time.

Little Fires Everywhere is the story of an affluent Ohio suburb and how the arrival of two new residents sends their perfectly-ordered lives into free fall. At the community forefront is Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon), mother of four, part-time journalist, adored socialite, and compulsive planner. The mere sight of traveling artist Mia (Kerry Washington) is like sand in the microchip of Elena's carefully crafted existence, and it ultimately fries the whole system.

That's not a spoiler, by the way: Hulu's Little Fires opens with the titular fires, set in every room of the Richardson house before consuming it in an almighty blaze. This is the rare story where you already know the ending, and the suspense — which does not suffer in the slightest from that structure — comes from watching events unspool from points A to B.

Portrait of stone and flint (2020). Credit: hulu

Washington and Witherspoon carry the cast with strong performances, sliding easily into what they do best and spreading their talent with the efficacy of — well, of spreadable things, you're familiar by now. The Richardson children's casting in particular is scary-good; they're all-American suburban perfection right down to the the last detail (which happens to be that they aren't all perfect).

Mia's arrival in Shaker Heights sparks immediate tension, because she's a nomad, an artist, a rule-breaker, a single mother — and, though no one has to say it, because she and her daughter are black. It's an excellent casting decision, but one which immediately becomes a crutch for the show's writing. The dynamic between Elena and Mia shifts from the outset; instead of two women with every appearance of being cordial, they have obvious preconceived notions of each other — and a keen awareness for what the other must be expecting as well.

Unfortunately, this is the beginning of the show's pervasive dilution of subtlety on all counts. A novel has the benefit of omniscient viewpoints and backstory that leave no character’s — no woman’s — complexity unplumbed. There you get a clear picture of why Elena, Mia, their friends, and their children behave the way they do, of the feelings and ambitions underlying it all. In television, as in life, we have to chip away at seemingly concrete exteriors to earn all that information. But it's not impossible; flashbacks and spotlight episodes should serve this exact function with the proper execution, but Little Fires strips the tension from its character interactions by leaving it floating on the surface, staring us in the face.

There are clear instances of microaggression or patronization against Mia and the other characters of color, situations that are exaggerated from the novel and more egregious given the show’s racial dynamics. At one point, Elena dispassionately asks Mia “Are we friends?” and receives a dead-eyed “Sure” in response that couldn’t lack more warmth if they were sitting atop a glacier. While it’s fun to watch Witherspoon and Washington spar with passive aggression and looks that could kill, it can get old (especially if you binge), and pales compared to the possibility of watching them actually bond and the resultant relationship crumble.

So starting from the moms and down to the youngest child — well, the second youngest, because we have no choice but to stan Izzy (Megan Stott) — every relationship and interaction is painfully explicit. An otherwise unlikely sexual encounter now has precedent and reasoning, as if teenagers never have sex apropos of nothing and with the least likely partner. The characters, in short, do not act like real people. They act like characters in a TV show.

Little Fires Everywhere is still compulsively watchable and reasonably well-made. It's only frustrating to see the assembled potential and know it could have been better. There is nothing wrong with soapy exchanges, affairs, and backstabbing, but whether or not a show chooses that direction, it must commit either way. Instead of nurturing a few flames, you have to torch the whole house.

Little Fires Everywhere hits Hulu every Wednesday. The first three episodes are now streaming.