It is easy to get swept into the world of this 8-part series, but it isn’t that easy to like the characters. They lie, cheat, they are cruel to those weaker than them, and worst of all, there is serious child abuse, a child is isolated and kept away from her basic rights, all in the guise of what is good for her.
The stunning series opens with the arrest for grave child abuse of Kristine Barnett (Ellen Pompeo) while she is lecturing an august gathering on child welfare. For the first two episodes the series, written in a labyrinth of lies and half-truths, feels like a loud pitch against adoption, as the adopted girl seems to terrorize her adoptive family . It feels almost like a warning against taking in orphans, if not against unprotected sex (we are better without such monsterous procreation).
But then the tables turn, the cookie crumbles and the portrayal of the adopted girl as a living hell lies, in a pool of lies, in a shambles.
There is this moment where the adoptive mother asks her best friend (Sarayu Blue, who is a beautiful American actress of Telugu origin) to testify in court against Natalie Grace, and the friend says, “Of course I will support you in anything, but this… I haven’t seen the girl do anything, I’ve only heard you tell me about her.”
Precisely. Episode 3 onwards the series turns the entire anti-adoption theme on its head. And we see the child alone, desperate, terrified, trying hard to make sense of an adult world which has declared her to be an adult dwarf pretending to be a child.
Doctors’ doctored reports are presented to discredit Natalia Grace’s case. Lies are blatantly told in the courtroom. And we thought the judiciary is so brazenly subverted only in our cinema.
In one of the episodes we see Natalia Grace trying to make her way through an adult world on her own, locked away in a dingy apartment with just enough food to survive, avoiding contact with the outside terrified that her adoptive mother Kristine (Ellen Pompeo) would punish her, living without hope of survival…. until a kindly generous mother figure Cynthia (Christina Hendricks) steps in.
It all seems too real to be unreal and yet too real to be real. A sense of outrage courses through the veins of this dysfunctional series: how could anything so mean and evil happen to an adopted child? From the moment when Natalia Grace’s parents especially the mother, is demonized, the series makes it very clear that the lines of morality are drawn: we can’t say Kristine acted on an impulse against Natalia Grace to protect her own family. There are no escape routes in this tunnel of infamy.
The series kept me watching unblinking till the end, not for the want of clarity as to what would happen to Natalie Grace, but for the opposite reason: we know she would get justice but how long before the powerful purveyors of the Great American Dream step back and let her breathe.
Good American Family rips apart the façade of a healthy fair American society to reveal the rot within. The actors especially Imogene Faith Reid as Natalia Grace, heighten the sense of urgency and tragedy. Mark Duplass as her adoptive father struggling to fob off his wife’s evil designs is remarkable in one sequence where he tells the investigative officer how his wife beat up Natalia Grace. The brutality of the act is fully conveyed without showing it.
Less is not more in Good American Family. But it sure as hell is a steady standby in a series that spares none.
