By Lea Pichardo
Staff Writer
“The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,” a limited series on Netflix, centers around Anna (Kristen Bell), a bright-eyed, smiley-faced young woman with a generally chipper personality. It is dampened only slightly by the occasional hallucinations of her dead daughter, periods of hysteria, binge drinking and ombrophobia-induced panic attacks.
Every day, she sits by a window in her home, peeking out through the curtains to look at the world outside. Briefly, she contemplates how far removed she is from normalcy and to ease the intense pain of that realization, she drinks bottle after bottle of red wine, which she then mixes with heavy amounts of medication. Her life is uneventful and depressing, but one day a handsome young man named Neil and his daughter, Emma, move in right across the street. Anna is smitten immediately with the pair, whom she quickly and readily believes to be a charming single dad and a brilliant little girl. Hours melt into days, time goes on, and soon they are not just her new neighbors. They are her friends and a representation of her hope for the future. Perhaps, by becoming Neil’s girlfriend or wife, it might be possible for her to regain everything she has lost, including most notably, a daughter of her own. But, as luck would have it, Anna is eventually introduced to Neil’s charismatic girlfriend, Lisa (Shelley Hennig) and later witnesses what she believes to be Lisa’s murder, through that very same window. Unfortunately, no one is inclined to believe Anna, the “alcoholic who hallucinates,” so she decides to take matters into her own hands and find the killer herself.
Of course doing so requires facing the demons from her past, and while the premise of this show may sound incredibly compelling to some, make no mistake, the show is not nearly as dramatic or as heartbreaking as it sounds.
This is because “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” is largely meant to be satirical. A comedic take of sorts on certain tropes in certain psychological thrillers. For that reason, the story never really takes a darker turn.
Now, personally, I don’t believe that dark and complex material necessarily equates to a great or even meaningful story. However, some of the greatest stories I have ever had the pleasure of watching had dark and complex material, where the main character, much like Anna, had to navigate trauma, dark memories and self-destructive habits in order to regain a sense of normalcy, safety, happiness or even just a general sense of peace. Had the show not been satirical, had it only been dramatic, I believe the story itself would have been greater, more powerful and overall more entertaining to watch. Finding out who the killer was in the end, might have been more satisfying too, if only because the reveal would have not only meant justice for the victim, but also justice for Anna, who is so much more than her addiction, than her fears, than her vices, her vulnerabilities and her weaknesses.
Over the course of eight episodes, I found it extremely hard to laugh because it never felt appropriate. At times, it just felt like a crime to find joy in a scene that was also in some ways meant to be horrific. I did laugh once or twice, hard belly laughs, but just at the simple absurdity of it all.
In the end, it stopped being about Lisa’s killer altogether. When they revealed who killed her, I wasn’t satisfied or overwhelmed with joy. I was empty, tired, vaguely lost and hungry enough to search for chips immediately after the credits on the last episode started rolling. The only thing I really wanted was for the show to live up to its potential in one way or another.
