What I’m Watching: Little Fires Everywhere

Little Fires Everywhere: Season 1, Episode 4 “The Spider Web” (B+)

This show just got a whole lot more intense. To date, Kerry Washington has been the one giving the most intense performance as Mia, but that scene where Elena showed up at the restaurant and saw Bebe was a formidable showcase for Reese Witherspoon, whose death stare was ferocious and piercing. The fact that Mia went back to the house that day and worked as if nothing was wrong was bold, and they both seemed to agree on only one thing, which was that their work arrangement was done. Mia got the money she needed and a lawyer who can actually make things happen, as evidenced by the news coverage that framed the situation in a way that is very sympathetic to Bebe, highlighting Linda and Mark’s trying to pay her off – at Elena’s suggestion – as highly deplorable. It’s complicated, and Pearl has come to a place where she doesn’t even agree with her mother anymore, prompting extraordinary conflict between them that will also surely manifest when Elena and Bill realize that their daughter has been spending almost all her free time working with Mia, whose latest project is quite unsettling. It was difficult to watch Pearl pursue Trip romantically rather than Moody, and he experienced his crisis of conscience a bit too late to be considered noble. No one in either of these families is going to be talking to each other soon, and that fire that opened the show is just going to be the largest manifestation of all this terrible tension.