Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sorry For Your Loss’ On Facebook Watch, Where Elizabeth Olsen Plays A Young Widow

Facebook Watch has been dipping their toes into the original content waters for about a year now, but with Sorry For Your Loss, they start to become a major player. Not only does it have a major star, Elizabeth Olsen, headlining, but the subject matter — dealing with a sudden loss at a young age — isn’t exactly a light and airy topic. Will people make the effort to see it?

SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a close-up of a young woman’s face as she talks to a support group. She mutters that she brought notes because she didn’t want to ramble. Then she tells the group, as we pull back wide, that she read an infographic that said that losing a spouse feels like losing $308,780 per year.

The Gist: It’s been three months since Leigh Shaw (Elizabeth Olsen) suddenly lost her husband Matt (Mamoudou Athie) and she’s frustrated that she’s still angry with everyone (more than usual) and can’t even go back to the apartment they shared.

In the meantime, she’s been living back home with her mother Amy (Janet McTeer) and sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran). Both sisters work at their mother’s exercise studio, so their proximity to each other is pretty close, virtually all the time. Amy is a person who believes in speaking to her inner child and other metaphysical things, and does lots of affirmations about her business and her daughters. Jules is three months sober, and her relationship with Leigh is loving but passive-aggressive, and she struggles to prove to both Jules and Amy that she can be trusted and dependable.

Leigh isn’t sure why she goes to her grief group, except for maybe the donuts. We keep flashing back to her memories with Matt, whether they’re happy ones or ones where they discuss how much he supports his immature brother Danny (Jovan Adepo). Danny runs into Leigh at the group meeting, and after she has a freak-out, they talk about what it’s been like since Matt’s death. Then Danny sticks his foot in his mouth about Matt (“You can get another husband; I can’t get another brother”) that reminds her why they didn’t get along.

Our Take: Since Facebook Watch had already released the first four episodes of Sorry For Your Loss, we decided to watch all four for this review, and we’re glad we did. The half hour episodes pack a lot of family and interpersonal drama, but it’s a little tough to get a handle on what Kit Steinkellner (Z: The Beginning of Everything) was trying to examine in just the first episode, despite the fine performances from Olsen and the rest of the cast.

Yes, we see a pretty accurate picture of grieving, especially when it’s the sudden death of someone young. But the first episode mainly deals with how Leigh continues to deal with it, how she struggles to cope even while trying to live her life and deal with the everyday mishegas that her micromanaging mom and semi-needy sister bring. We try to see her push through her fear of going back to their apartment, and how much she misses Matt, especially in the flashbacks of the two of them together.

But in the second episode, the onion starts to get peeled, and we see the through-line of the series, or at least its first season. As Leigh interacts with Danny, and he informs her that she didn’t know Matt as well as she thought, she starts to realize that she actually didn’t, and as she thinks about their time together in that new light, it’s fascinating to see these two damaged people stitch together a relationship.

We love the chemistry between Olsen, Tran and McTeer; they all immediately sell the fact that it’s been the three of them together for a long time, and that they’re a solid group, despite the ups and downs.

Sex and Skin: Not much, aside from loving flashbacks.

Parting Shot: At the end of first episode, we see a close-up of Leigh’s face as she contemplates going back to her apartment for the first time since Matt’s death.

Sleeper Star: We’re especially impressed with Athie as the nerdy but complex Matt, and Adepo nicely captures how Danny is managing without the one person on the planet he could depend on.

Most Pilot-y Line: We had to rewind and rewatch the scene where Danny runs into Leigh at the grief group. At first we thought it was just two random people; then we figured out that was the guy Matt mentioned in the flashback. We know that subtlety is better when it comes to introducing characters, but sometimes things are too subtle.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Two episodes come out every week, and hopefully the fact that the show is on Facebook Watch won’t be an impediment to people seeing such a raw and emotional series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Sorry For Your Loss on Facebook Watch