Good American Family Review: Emotional Manipulation At Its Most Blatant

Hulu's new eight-episode limited drama series, "Good American Family," based on the bizarre and scandalous real-life story of Natalia Grace, is a tough case to crack. Whether or not you're familiar with the news coverage and documentary about her troubled adoption(s), you'll find yourself conflicted about what to believe repeatedly while watching the dramatized show. While "Good American Family" aims to tell the truth, it also sensationalizes and amplifies many aspects of it by using storytelling tools that will have you questioning how accurate the series wants to be versus how manipulative it can be to draw in viewers hungry for a scandal. There's a fine line between those two approaches, and "Good American Family" struggles to balance it throughout its eight hours.

The story begins in 2019 as bestselling author and "supermom" Kristine Barnett (Ellen Pompeo) gives a speech in a mall about the hardships of parenting (she's a mother of three), particularly referring to her autistic son. Before she can get really into it, she's caught off-guard by the police and is arrested for child neglect. The charge comes from her "forgotten" adopted daughter Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid in her first lead role), who she claims has tried to kill her. Then we jump back to 2010, before it all began, and learn that Kristine and her sensitive man-child of a husband, Michael's (Mark Duplass channeling a dumber version of his psycho character from "Creep" minus the murders), attempt to adopt a little girl with autism fell through. As a result, their marriage is in shambles, and none of them seem to be able to fill the void.

That's when a call from a suspicious adoption agency comes to offer a potential Hail Mary to the couple's wounds in the form of a seven-year-old girl with a rare case of dwarfism. Natalia is from Ukraine, and in a desperate need to find a new home since the adoption with her previous adoptive parents didn't work out for reasons unbeknownst to us. Kristine and Michael are ecstatic and see this opportunity as a cure for their heartbreak. They meet Natalia and agree to adopt her despite an alarming $7,000 fee they need to pay for previous "medical bills" the former family couldn't cover. The whole thing smells fishy, but the Barnetts go through with it anyway. The true nightmare, however, begins when Natalia settles in her new family's home, and weird things start happening around her.

The plot resembling the hit horror movie "Orphan" isn't a coincidence; the series mentions the 2008 film early on to draw a parallel with its events. Natalia is strange, unsettling — immediately villainized by creator Katie Robbins and her writers — and Imogen Faith Reid's (who's 27 and also has dwarfism) chillingly icky performance radiates a creepiness that constantly surrounds her. She steals a kitchen knife, mutilates her stepbrother's stuffed animals, and vehemently tries to be the center of attention all the time. She uses words that seem odd to be in a 7-year-old's vocabulary and twists them in ways that are ambiguous, manipulative, and borderline devious.

For several episodes, it feels like we're in on the joke. Surely, the writers are messing with us since everything (from the obnoxious acting to the saccharine plot to the pseudo-uplifting soundtrack) is so exaggerated and soapy that it seems like a deliberate choice of hiding something much more bizarre. We can sense a twist coming because otherwise this is just too on-the-nose and kind of mediocre TV. But as we get further into the story — and once the cat's out of the bag midway through — the lines between quasi-thriller and melodrama begin to blur.

"Good American Family" is no horror, but a redemption (and sob) story filled with dysfunctional, selfish, and mean people — some would say sociopaths — preying on the weak to seize control over them. And as the personal perspectives continuously change from episode to episode, it becomes harder to determine what the real intention is here.

From the get-go, everything that happens over the course of 10 years in the series is presented as fact and truth (which raises questions) that makes it challenging to genuinely feel for the victims. We're encouraged to loathe certain characters from the moment we meet them, and since we only see them act horribly and devilishly for a long time, we'd rather get infuriated instead of empathizing with them. The writers intentionally withhold information so our view of the characters has to remain one-sided until the truth is revealed. We're outright told who the "bad" and the "good" guys are simply because the narrative frames them as such — not because they necessarily are. The writing purposefully manipulates us into believing one thing depending on what suits the plot's agenda at different intervals, and does it mostly in a blatantly obvious way to create a potentially tantalizing, if mawkish, melodrama.

Yet there's clearly a complex, intriguing, and touching story under the surface here, about a mistreated and traumatized disabled girl that got warped and scandalized by the media to serve up as mass entertainment. By the end, that actual story manages to find its way to the surface (mainly in the last two episodes), but by then, we've been put through such a bewildering, frustrating, and often convoluted wringer of a ride that our emotional investment may not be as intact and potent as we'd prefer.

It'd be wrong of me to dismiss the show entirely for that reason alone — since the real-life story is nothing short of enthralling — but the shortcomings of how it's told and what tools the writers use are undeniably there to weaken the viewing experience. I wish that instead of employing a sensationalist approach that often opts for exploitative, misleading, and anger-inducing portrayals, there could've been a more straightforward and unembellished way to tell Natalia's maddening yet ultimately affecting life story — because it's one that's worth being heard.

"Good American Family" premieres on March 19 on Hulu.