Everyone’s falling in love this week on grief-riddled Apple TV+ series Dear Edward — but nobody’s happy about it.
Shay and Edward have their 90th falling out, this one over Mahira and Shay’s deadbeat dad. Lacey and John keep having a bad time, while Dee Dee and Zoe need to have a chat about priorities and the future. Kojo and Adrianna are at a stalemate (where they’ve been for the last three episodes), and Steve and Amanda have a lot left to talk about (and not much time left to do it).
The episode, entitled “Folklore,” is a predictably predictable outing for this dreary affair.
Dear Edward recap: ‘Folkore’
Season 1, episode 7: Edward (played by Colin O’Brien) is texting Mahira (Jenna Qureshi) all the time after finding out she was his dead brother Jordan’s secret girlfriend. He hated her like poison when he thought Jordan was keeping her out of his life, but now that they know each other and she’s become a lifeline to his dead family, he’s obsessed with her.
Shay (Eva Ariel Binder), Edward’s only other friend, has noticed. And she’s jealous and angry about his obsession with Mahira, and that he’s lying about it whenever Shay asks about it. Shay demands that Edward leave her bedroom, where he’s been sleeping every night since his parents (Brian d’Arcy James and Robin Tunney) died along with a hundred other people in a fiery plane crash about a month ago. Though Shay was being sort of playfully angry when she kicked him out at first, her father (Adrian Matilla) comes home, and she gives Edward the real bum’s rush at the sight of him. Guess that guy’s bad news.
Later, Edward asks his aunt Lacey and uncle John about Xavier, for that is the name of Shay’s deadbeat dad. And John learns that Lacey has hired mutually bereaved Linda (Amy Forsyth), who unlike Edward is sleeping at their house, to work at her machine shop.
So many people, so many problems
Widowed socialite Dee Dee (Connie Britton) has welcomed troubled Steve (Ivan Shaw) into her home. He lost his brother, Brent (James Chen), in the crash, and she lost her husband, Charlie (Ted Koch), so they’ve got that in common. Plus, they’re both human car wrecks.
Steve came to Dee Dee’s house after sleeping with Brent’s fiance, Amanda (Brittany S. Hall), and blowing it with his own fiance, Daphne (Clara Wong). So now he’s paying Dee Dee back by becoming her accountant. She’s still mad at Charlie for lying about being a nice person (when to her he was publicly an asshole). And when an already-paid-for anniversary gift arrives, it makes her so mad she takes a hammer to her kitchen wall (which has become a habit at this point). Dee Dee’s daughter Zoe (Audrey Corsa) further complicates things by saying she’s going to Barcelona.
This therapy isn’t going to help
Everyone decides that maybe the best thing for them to get over their grief is to have a garage sale. So Amanda, Steve, Lacey, John, Dee Dee and Ben (Jacob Gutierrez) — the one grieving his brother, and sleeping with his brother’s boyfriend (Trent Williams) despite having a girlfriend (Ashley De La Rosa) — all get together and sell all their dead relatives’ things.
John blows it by telling the Colorado story too many times. And then Steve remembers the last time he saw Brent, when Brent tried to reconnect and Steve (pretty hilariously) shoved his peace offering of soup dumplings in the trash with the force of Magic Johnson dunking from the free-throw line.
Dear Edward tries to make it seem like everyone in group therapy is getting along and becoming a big family, but a little visual proof of that would be nice. It’s not like the individual stories are any more interesting than the group scenes, so why half-ass only one of those things?
Roller derby just doesn’t cut it
Edward makes it to Shay’s roller derby tryouts (her one character trait) and meets her dad in the flesh. Xavier wants Shay to get into golf, and is worried she won’t get into college if she doesn’t. Sure, fine. They had to find a thing to make him a deadbeat, so they chose this.
Then, Edward and Shay have a falling out, like they do every week, when she tells him she’s quitting roller derby because it’s not a good long-term goal, exactly like her dad said. Shay complains that Edward’s too close to Mahira. And, when Mahira asks to talk later, she is proven right. She clearly understands the little creep has a crush on her. (He went into the city by himself to pass her a love note earlier, after all.). Now Mahira needs to disabuse him of that, pronto.
Adriana has some good ideas … and some bad ones
Congressional hopeful Adriana (Anna Uzele), who lost her grandmother and predecessor in the plane crash, and Kojo (Idris Debrand), who lost his sister, are finally sleeping together after weeks of flirting. The trouble is, Kojo’s trying to get his bereaved niece, Becks (Khloe Bruno), and himself out of New York and back to Ghana.
Adriana thought he’d rearrange his and Becks’ life because they were sleeping together. (Everyone on this show is selfish as the day is long.) So she’s caught off guard by his looking out for himself and his niece.
Adriana’s putting out fires elsewhere as well. Turns out her valedictorian speech at her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania contained some crazy, radical ideas about affordable housing. And now her campaign staffers are worried she’s going to alienate the elites of Manhattan (as if AOC isn’t in congress … this show). Adriana blows off her responsibilities and goes on a day trip with Kojo and Becks to flirt some more and forget that they’re going to be separated soon.
Speaking of separated: John moves out after he and Lacey finally have a nice night together, because no one on this show ever does the easy thing when they can torture themselves for our amusement.
Earth to Dear Edward …
This show, man … I just … is anyone watching Dear Edward? Are these dramatic beats and character types and decisions people can relate to? Because to me, this show feels like it’s set on Mars in the year 7 billion.
★☆☆☆☆
Watch Dear Edward on Apple TV+
New episodes of Dear Edward arrive every Friday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
