Pieces of Her

Is this series finished? Hard to tell from the last episode but it does wrap up the main story line.

There's a good, slow reveal mystery here based around flashbacks to a time in the United States in the 1980's not covered much these days. It also revolves around abusive and manipulative men psychologically tormenting women much like your average Lifetime movie but it's better than one of those.

The main problem with this series is that the character we follow isn't the tormented personality played by Toni Collette but her daughter as we follow her frantic path of discovery about her mom's mysterious past. Unfortunately the daughter isn't given enough sympathetic characteristics to elevate her above a 30 year old screw-up. She's initially portrayed as helpless but suddenly becomes a pro at evading professional security goons out to get her. Since, unlike all the other main characters, we are given almost nothing about her (except that she's a drawing artist), it's very hard to follow and care. And the other characters are for the most part flawed people.

Alright into the second episode I knew I couldn't handle how freaking annoying the loser daughter is...I can't stand how immature and dumble-ing bumbling fumbling and mentally weak she is, it's too much. Unfortunately my husband wanted to keep watching. So here we sit with me smh every 2 seconds at her ineptitude and having a hard time paying attention to anything else that is happening, even Toni Collette and Gil Birmingham aren't helping me stay interested.

I thought this would be one where I might read the book because maybe it was just Netflix that made this that bad, but then read a few other reviews that said the daughter was just as annoying in the book, sooooo that's that.

....the daughter is annoying as fudge. I mean why don't you go around with a red flashing light on your head and a sign on your back which says 'I am the girl you're looking for' that would be less conspicuous than how she's moving around.

For the most part it isn't bad.... I think. I mean the daughter character annoyed me so much that I think the rest was okay.

Toni Collette plays Laura Oliver, a woman with secrets, which are exposed during a life and death situation beyond her control.

This 90 minute story has been stretched over 8 episodes, requiring long pauses, unnecessary diversions and constant illogical behaviour by the main characters. As others have written, the worst character is the daughter (played by Heathcote) who whines a lot and seems to have a permanent state of confusion etched upon her face. Other characters are thinly written; the dialogue is poor and the pacing is glacial. The whole thing is just disappointing.

As a side note, this is another example of a Netflix production where the shooting location (Sydney, Australia) looks nothing like the setting of the story (Georgia, USA). Everything from the streetscapes, the flora, the lighting - all is wrong and it's distracting. Many shows are shot in different locations than the story's setting, but surely there needs to be a mild resemblance to the actual.

It was really disappointing to see in how many ways the young version does not resemble to the main character. The voice of the girl from the flashbacks is absolutely nothing like Toni Collette's, not to mention their face (the young girl has a super round face structure which just cannot change that much while growing up). This was a big missed opportunity which was irritating the whole way along the series. Sometimes I even forgot who the young girl is. Seemed like a totally different character and was hard to connect to the story in the present.

All in all, I liked the storyline but the only good actor for me was the mother. The first episode convinced me to start watching but it became harder and harder to continue.