Apple TV+ series Dear Edward spins in circles toward destruction and catharsis this week. The titular Edward, sole survivor of a horrific deadly plane crash, finds himself in the middle of all the grieving widows and widowers — and he’s kind of a dope.
Among the living, it’s basically a nonstop, annoying grief-a-thon. Dee Dee contemplates a future without her daughter and her money. Linda reaches out for help and hopes someone reaches back. Lacey and John realize they must come clean. Shay and Edward engage in their first fight. Adriana must make a hard choice. Steve and Amanda act out some more. Plus, we get even more characters — as if you didn’t need to catch your breath after just reading all of that.
This show’s gotta go.
Dear Edward recap: ‘Truth’
Season 1, episode 6: In the episode, entitled simply “Truth,” Dee Dee (played by Connie Britton) has had it. In sorting out her dead husband Charlie’s (Ted Koch) affairs, she’s become so mad that every few minutes she stands up and hits the wall with a hammer, like Linda (Amy Forsyth) taught her to when they visited the smash palace in Los Angeles together.
So clearly, despite telling Linda she didn’t want a bigger part in the pregnant girl’s life, she’s still thinking about her. And her own daughter, Zoe (Audrey Corsa), is disappointing Dee Dee by trying to go on vacation. Zoe even says of her dead dad, “He was my best friend” — just like Dee Dee did last week in group. And yet … neither of them actually knew the first thing about him? Dee Dee likely will be at Linda’s side when she gives birth during the season finale. Call it a hunch.
Linda’s also getting fired, and her roommates hate her. If only her fiance’s parents (Margaret Reed and Brian J. Carter) had offered to put her up. Oh wait. That’s exactly what happened. The show wants us to forget this, but they did — and she had no good reason to reject their offer.
Pick a fiance, any fiance
When Dee Dee shows up at group therapy with the coffee and cupcakes, she finds Steve (Ivan Shaw) sleeping on the floor. He didn’t go home last night to his fiance after sleeping with his dead brother’s fiance, Amanda (Brittany S. Hall). Instead, he got hammered and got into a bar fight. Not wanting to go home, he slept on the church basement floor.
Amanda is still due at their house for dinner, and she and Steve get their wires crossed (oh the humanity). And they hate each other now after sleeping together. Who could have seen that coming? They both feel bad about fooling around behind Steve’s fiance’s back (lotta fiances on this show). So they argue about that and blow up at each other during dinner.
Edward can’t decide
Edward (Colin O’Brien) and Shay (Eva Ariel Binder) decide to meet Mihari (Jenna Qureshi), the spooky girl who has been giving him clues and letters and stuff since the death of his brother, Jordan (Maxwell Jenkins). This show, creepy as ever, films Mihari walking into the meeting spot like she’s off to rescue someone on Baywatch.
So Eddie’s now got to manage his feelings for Shay and Mihari. Sure, fine. Great. She takes Eddie on a tour of her and Jordan’s relationship in a museum they used to frequent. (I still don’t get why Dear Edward hinged its lead character’s emotional crux on the idea that he and his dead brother, at least five years his senior, never keep secrets from each other. I don’t buy this! I don’t believe any of this! There was no other angle here?!?! Gah!)
Shay feels like a third wheel after Edward and Mihari hit it off so well. She asks about the plane crash because she wants closure. He can’t talk about it. Shay calls him out for his selfishness, but our obtuse miracle boy doesn’t know that he ghosted her on their playdate and she’s mad about it.
Adriana and Kojo get cozy, but what about Becks?
Photo: Apple TV+
Elsewhere, Adriana (Anna Uzele), Kojo (Idris Debrand) and his niece, Becks (Khloe Bruno), are acting like quite the little family, even with Adriana’s commitments to her congressional campaign. Kojo feels bad getting close to Adriana, because he’s still trying to get himself and Becks back to Ghana where he lives. And yet he has feelings for her, and she has feelings for him.
In fact, Adriana’s already passing up fundraisers to attend Becks’ school plays. Kojo warns her against growing too close to Becks. She did, after all, just lose her mother. She doesn’t need another mother figure vanishing. At the fundraiser, Adriana runs into the hot priest (Joshua Echebiri) that she used to hook up with. (Doesn’t this guy have some confessions to take or something? Why is he always just available?)
Anyway, he gives Adriana a pep talk and she decides to leave the fundraiser and go to Becks’ play. Kojo and Adriana finally kiss. That works. It’s the one thing on this show that does.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
This week, we meet two new grieving people who knew someone who died in the plane crash, as if Dear Edward didn’t have enough characters. But at least they’re handsome. I have no idea who their mutual friend who’s dead is supposed to be, though. One of them calls Edward’s adoptive mom/aunt Lacey (Taylor Schilling) from the gay bar they meet at later to confess some things, but they decide to hook up anyway.
Lacey tells Linda she can come over and have all the baby clothes she bought for all the babies she never got to birth, and the two have a heart-to-heart talk. Linda feels bad about all of Lacey’s miscarriages, but Lacey assures her it’s OK. Lacey then says, “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
NO, IT ISN’T!!! YOUR BOYFRIEND’S PARENTS OFFERED TO HOUSE YOU AND PAY FOR YOUR KID’S EDUCATION!!! I FEEL LIKE I’M GOING CRAZY!!! Good god, what is happening with this show?
You don’t know grief
When John (Carter Hudson) comes home in the middle of Edward, Lacey and Linda’s dinner together, he immediately makes it weird by describing the epiphany he had in the field with the meth addict park ranger (Joe Tippett). Then, when he finds out Lacey offered Linda a place to stay in the house, he has an absolute freakout.
Linda asks Edward (she calls him “miracle boy” like the bullies at school — sure, man, whatever, I buy it) if he has any memories of her dead partner, and he’s a huge dick about it. Loads and loads of tact on this show.
Just like me after watching another episode of Dear Edward, Lacey and John go to bed angry. I just don’t know, man. I don’t know how you write a show about grief and don’t seem to have any clue how people process it or, indeed, any emotions.
★☆☆☆☆
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.
