Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Pieces Of Her’ On Netflix, Where A Woman Finds Out About Her Mother’s Dark Past After A Violent Incident

In Pieces Of Her, Toni Collette plays a seemingly “normal” mom in a small Georgia town who ends up having a lot of dark secrets. But instead of the secrets being revealed by her, her 30-year-old daughter tries to put the pieces together after a violent incident reveals more than her mother wanted to show.

PIECES OF HER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A girl looking through the slats of what looks like a makeshift cell. Then we see a 911 dispatcher in Belle Isle, Georgia, taking a call from someone complaining about the “trash pandas” dumping her garbage cans.

The Gist: Andrea “Andy” Oliver (Bella Heathcote) moved back to Belle Isle, a sleepy seaside community, from New York to take care of her mother Laura (Toni Collette) when she was sick with breast cancer. Laura is back to 100%, but Andy isn’t really interested in going back. She has the job as the 911 dispatcher and seems to enjoy living in the guest house of her mom’s home. It’s her 30th birthday and it’s the most settled she’s been in her adult life, even if she still has no idea where her life will be going. “Why? At least here I can fail rent free,” she texts to a friend who asks if she’s coming back.

After her night shift, Andy meets Laura for lunch on her birthday; she’s still wearing her uniform. As Laura encourages her to try to figure out what to do with her life, Andy pushes back on her mother, telling her that she always knew what she wanted to do, and that her late dad might have been the “fuckup” of the family.

As they’re talking to a former classmate of Andy’s a guy whom Laura spotted earlier gets up and starts shooting people. Laura instinctively covers Andy, but the gunman wants Andy to “do your job”, i.e. have him commit suicide by cop. Problem is, she’s not a cop and has no weapon. Laura stands up to defend her daughter, somehow disarms the gunman, and than, after the gunman stabs her through the hand, uses that knife to slit his throat.

The efficiency Laura uses to dispatch this shooter is shocking to Andy. Half-conscious from loss of blood, Laura says she’s cold and tells Andy not to talk to the police, a thought that doesn’t sit well with Andy. After Laura is patched up, she decides to leave the hospital; right there and then, she demands that Andy move out of her house.

Andy is shocked once again, especially with the timing. She gets some sympathy from her stepdad Gordon Oliver (Omari Hardwick), who is a father figure to her, but he also knows his ex-wife well; when something gets in Laura’s head, she’s determined to see it through. What Andy isn’t aware of is that the news coverage of Laura’s heroics have alerted people to her whereabouts, people that Laura has long wanted to forget about.

In the middle of the night, Andy wakes up and gets her bike to go to Gordon’s house for the night, when she spies an intruder. When she goes into the main house, she sees Laura being attacked. After somehow subduing the attacker, Laura is more upset that Andy called the police; she orders Andy to take a burner phone, drive to Maine, and not come back until Laura calls her on that phone.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pieces Of Her, based on a novel by Karin Slaughter, reminds us a bit of In From The Cold, where a seemingly “normal” woman has a dark past. But the way this series approaches the idea is done in a much more satisfying way.

Our Take: Showrunner Charlotte Stoudt and the writing staff really do a nice job of setting up the complex story of Pieces Of Her in a very straightforward way. They don’t introduce a lot of extraneous characters right off the bat; the main three are Andy, Laura and Gordon. We’ll meet other people later as Andy literally pieces together Laura’s past. But presenting the story in this way provides the biggest dramatic impact without muddling things with other storylines.

We get just enough about Andy and Laura to be shocked when Laura is so good at disarming and killing the restaurant shooter. As far as we know, Laura is an occupational therapist working at a VA hospital; how does she know exactly where to slash a man’s throat to kill him? We do get that Andy has no idea where her life is going, and we do also get that Laura has been through a lot, given that she’s a cancer survivor.

But the intrigue with the series is how Andy tries to figure out not just how her mom has the skills she has, but discourages her to call the cops or even use a GPS when she drives to Maine. By giving viewers the clear introduction to this family dynamic, the destination is pretty clear, even if the road to get there is full with twists and turns.

Collette and Heathcote play off each other well, and Hardwick brings a soothing presence to the high-tension mother-son pairing. It’ll be fascinating to examine Andy’s relationship to her stepdad and figure out why Gordon and Laura didn’t work, despite what looks like a lot of love remaining between the two of them.

Sex and Skin: As Gordon helps Laura get dressed, we see the missing breast and scar from her mastectomy.

Parting Shot: Andy drives away from town as “The Pretender” by Foo Fighters plays. A little on the nose, right?

Sleeper Star: As we mentioned, Omari Hardwick has a soothing, steadying presence as Gordon. We hope we see him a lot during this season.

Most Pilot-y Line: Would news broadcasts really show a video of Laura actually killing the gunman? Most of the time, they usually stop before any of the grisly stuff is shown.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The relatively sparse storytelling in the first episode of Pieces Of Her nicely sets up a twisty story that will be served well by the presence of Collette, Heathcote and Hardwick.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Pieces Of Her On Netflix