What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her (Series Finale)

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 8 (B+)

I’m not sure what I expected here since things could really have ended any way since this is the finale of the show and the characters won’t be back for more after this. But there were still a few surprises saved for the finale, with a continuing sense of moral ambiguity about whether the people who committed crimes actually got punished. The biggest revelation was the one that Andy uncovered about her mother, realizing that Jane switched her purse with the woman posing as Grace, and brought the gun with her, telling her that she was afraid of what her father might do to her baby. That adds plenty of context to everything, including Martin putting something in her drink a few episodes earlier. It was fascinating to watch both Jane and Nick react as he got shot, the only two people in the audience not to duck for cover as soon as it happened, as Nick was about to activate what the real plan was. Nick has definitely done things worthy of imprisonment, like killing the real Grace when she got free, and so the idea is that he would pay for what he’s done even if the particular evidence convicting him was fabricated. Jasper also isn’t as guilty since he didn’t plan to have his father killed, but these are powerful people who don’t always get the consequences of their actions. Ending with Andy and Jane together felt as fitting as anything else, since this show was most about their relationship. I’m still curious about some of the pieces in between this show’s flashbacks and the present, but this show has definitely been intriguing and involving.

Series grade: B+
Series MVP: Bella Heathcote as Andy

What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her (Penultimate Episode)

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 7 (B+)

We didn’t get to see much more of Jane’s time with Nick aside from one very important moment where she found the audio evidence that Jasper conspired with him so that he could be put in charge of the company. Whether or not Jasper knew that Nick planned to kill his father isn’t as relevant since he was still willing to break the law and cover his tracks, which explains the leverage that Jane has over him and why she went straight into witness protection after her prison sentence without staying to mourn the loss of her dead brother with her only living relative. It was disorienting to see Andy waking up without knowing where she was and to get to know her surroundings through her experiences as a child when she was living there. Nick coming to visit her in the forest and pretending to be her imaginary friend didn’t feel all that predatory, but the fact that he kept in touch and wanted to be a part of her life explains his sudden interest in being reunited with her. We saw Jane go see Eli in the present but don’t have much context for what happened next, and Charlie is presumably dead or being held prisoner after that car crash that brought Andy to where she currently is. I’m not sure how much time the season finale will spend in the past or whether it will be solely set in the present, but I can’t imagine that all these characters survive and have a happy ending.

What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 6 (B+)

After that intense ending to the previous episode where it looked like a young Jane was going to be directly involved in the murder of her father, we only got to see the aftermath, where both Jane and Andrew seemed unaware of just how deadly Nick and Grace’s plan had been from the start. Jane’s relationship with Jasper has obviously become more strained than just her disappearing for years, as he wanted to know the terms of her deal and she threatened to ruin his political career with one phone call. Jane is quickly losing allies, most notably Charlie, who was unwilling to help her now that she’s left the program. Getting a call about Mike being in critical condition changed that, but now Jane is still going it alone so that she can try to end this once and for all. Andy took the biggest risk of all in this episode, making it so that the people who took the suitcase would need to stop to change a flat tire and then climbing into the trunk with it when they were stopped and approached by a police officer. She managed to get out just in time before the henchmen killed them both, and she made it to the reunion with her mother, which was less than warm given all the lies she had to process. Back in the past, seeing how Nick reacted to the real Grace stabbing him in the hand when she got free did make him seem larger-than-life, and I have a feeling he’ll be seeing both Jane and the woman who now knows that she’s his daughter very soon.

What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 5 (B+)

Well, it turns out that there’s a lot we don’t know, and this show is delivering even more intrigue with every episode. Jasper claimed that he didn’t know much about Jane’s life since she went into witness protection, which is very likely true, but his security crew recorded and then listened into Andy’s phone call with Mike, who when he came to meet with her ended up needing to go to the hospital. I thought that the jogger who bumped into him was simply lifting his motel key, but now he seems to be out of commission, forcing Andy to go it alone without an ally. The flashbacks we’re seeing of a young Jane, played by the typically terrific Jessica Barden, are very informative, explaining the division between Jane’s dead brother Andrew and their father on politics and corporate greed, with Nick as a similarly-minded individual who couched his sentiments more politely. Forcing Jane to choose between him and her father was harsh, but she made a clear decision when she injured her own hand to prove her loyalty to him. Meeting Grace, whose grudge against Martin is now explicitly clear, and being asked to help hold Martin responsible, suggests that she knew exactly what was going to happen to him. Jane, now Laura, waited too long to try reaching Andy at Jasper’s compound, and so we’ll have to wait until Andy learns those answers for herself, provided she doesn’t end up too much in harm’s way trying to protect that suitcase.

What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 4 (B+)

We got some important confirmations on relationships and identities in this episode, though sorting out who’s actually a good guy at the moment is still difficult. It turns out the man who has been following Andy the whole time is a U.S. Marshal since she and her mom are in witness protection, and Charlie is the lead on the case. That means they’re both theoretically good guys, yet Andy was still eager to ditch her tail the first chance she got, even though he saved her from an assailant who nearly killed her, and Laura isn’t telling Charlie about the man who broke into her house and who Gordon went to go bury somewhere. I had seen Jessica Barden’s name in the cast and hadn’t realized until now that she was playing the younger version of Laura, or rather, Jane, and I think that’s a terrific bit of casting. I knew I recognized Jasper, and I think that’s likeliest from David Wenham’s work in “Iron Fist.” He was thrilled to meet his niece for the first time, and being in the limo of someone who’s going to be on the presidential ticket is probably among the safest places she could be, even if that guy is tailing her and she doesn’t know. I’m not sure at what point things are going to become clearer, with the halfway point of the season now being reached, but watching these two women try to stay one step ahead of the people tracking their every moves is quite engaging.

What I’m Watching: Pieces of Her

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 3 (B+)

Laura’s decision to go on national television with a message calling for unity and an end to conflict certainly sounded like advocacy for gun control or against political divisions, but she did accomplish the specific mission she wanted to, which was to ensure that the right people heard her. I’m still trying to connect all the dots of Laura’s past just as her daughter is, and the Wikipedia page that Andy was able to pull up was quite informative. It seems like Terry O’Quinn’s character was murdered during that speech and that Laura, or rather, Paula, was either the perpetrator or the framed suspect, and now his son is about to be the vice-presidential candidate, with potential connections to whatever nefarious operation Paula and her band of domestic terrorists were attempting to take down. Where Charlie fits in to all of this is more of a mystery, but Andy quickly picked up on the fact that he knew she was coming from Carrolton when she hadn’t said that. Though she’s still being tailed by her friend from the bar, she is proving to be just as resourceful as her mother, dressing up to look like the woman whose license she stole so that she can have the chance to speak directly with the lawyer who represented the person her mom used to be. I’m not sure whether that’s going to work and if it’s going to put her in more danger, but it’s definitely an intriguing and nerve-wracking step for her to take rather than just driving to Maine as her mom instructed.

Round Two: Pieces of Her

Pieces of Her: Season 1, Episode 2 (B)

It’s both rewarding and frustrating not to know much of what is really going on, since we have plenty of clues but no definitive answers about who Laura really is. What is worthwhile is that we’re experiencing that confusion along with Andy, who is doing what she was told but doesn’t know why it is that she has to do it and how her mother could have so many different licenses and a parked car in a storage unit just ready to go in case of an emergency like this. Among my greatest fears is being as tired as Andy was on that long drive, and I’m glad that she arrived to Carrollton, which is apparently about four and a half hours away, without incident. It’s not so helpful for keeping her under-the-radar that her name and face are being broadcast on TV, and asking the first guy she met to train her on how to use a gun also probably wasn’t the best idea, especially considering he may have a link to the man who tried to kill her mother. Gordon and Laura have an unusually close relationship for him to be willing to drive a mystery man tied up in the back of his car to an unknown destination, and he was very ready to go ahead and take care of the body when the guy had a seizure and died right there while they were parked on the side of the road. I’m curious about these flashbacks, which show a character played by Terry O’Quinn seemingly getting shot, and also about Laura’s relationship with another man who appears to think quite highly of her, Charlie, played by Gil Birmingham.

Pilot Review: Pieces of Her

Check out my one-minute take on every new pilot, which is embedded below and you can also watch by subscribing to movieswithabe on YouTube.