Dear Lucia,
I hope you’re in for a wild ride. I wasn’t ready when I started this show, but now that I’ve finished it, I feel the need to mull over it with you.
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (WIHAFGIW) is a “Murder Mystery” staring Kristen Bell, who many people know from her leading roll in the Good Place (I just looked her up and apparently she’s also Anna in Frozen?? News to me but go off Queen). It is also advertised as a Dark Comedy, of which I am generally a fan, so I decided to go for it while I was at work the other day cause I don’t have Disney+ on my phone but I do have Netflix. Seriously, this is the only reason I wasn’t watching House MD. So, let’s get started with my rambling analysis, shall we?
Plot – Spoilers!
I’m just gonna bullet point this so you get the idea:
- 8 years ago, Anna’s (Kristen Bell) daughter died at a Bring your Kid to Work day event, where her Father, Douglas, brought her to work even though he is a therapist and profiler in a prison. The daughter, Elizabeth, was murdered and eaten by a serial cannibal, Massacre Mike.
- The death of Elizabeth leads to Anna’s alcoholism and the separation of her and Douglas.
- Present day, Neil and his daughter, Emma, move in across the street from Anna. Anna watches them through her window, and can see into their house, hence the title.
- Anna develops a crush/obsession with Neil and Emma, especially upon learning that Neil’s wife died. This is exacerbated when Anna brings them dinner (casserole) and passes out in the rain (she has a phobia of the rain, connected to the death of her daughter) and Neil helps her home. She later hallucinates having sex with Neil.
- Lisa, Neil’s girlfriend, arrives to the house, and Anna is distraught to know that he has a partner. She confronts Lisa about trivial things, and really hates her.
- Anna witnesses Lisa being murdered in Neil’s house, which she can see from her living room. She calls the cops, and tries to go help Lisa, but it is raining so she passes out in the rain. The cops call her crazy (in nicer terms) and say there’s no evidence of a murder.
- Anna breaks into Neil and Emma’s house, determined to prove that she actually did see Lisa get murdered. Neil finds her, makes her leave, and says that Lisa is in Seattle for work.
- Anna learns that Neil was also a suspect in his wife’s death, though he was cleared. With more probing and asking others, Neil was also present at the death of Emma’s teacher’s death, where she fell off a lighthouse.
- It is revealed through another not-really-important character that Lisa has been living a double life, and is actually called Chastity. Lisa/Chastity runs a scam to inherit rich mens money by getting close to them/ marrying them/ and killing them. She would be the prime suspect, but her body is found, along with one of Anna’s pallet knives.
- Anna is arrested because of the pallet knife, which has her fingerprints on it, and because the police find a painting of her, Neil, and Emma which has “The Perfect Family” written on it. Anna does not remember painting this.
- Her friend posts Anna’s bail (don’t worry we are almost done this synopsis) and Anna goes home to get rid of all her wine and pills. She also finds a painting of Lisa/Chastity that has been cut up, explaining flashbacks she had in jail of stabbing Lisa/Chastity with her pallet knife. It was the painting she was stabbing, not really the woman.
- Anna also discovers Buell, the handyman, has been living in her attic, and thus would have had access to her pallet knives, and could have framed her. Douglas, the ex-husband, reveals that Buell was an old patient of his who killed his family with a hammer.
- Buell is seen going across the street to Neil and Emma’s house, with a hammer, and Anna is sure he is going to finish the family off. She goes to stop him, but finds him already shot and bleeding out.
- Anna also finds NEIL DEAD! The true mastermind was Emma, the daughter, who killed everyone else. Anna now becomes Emma’s target as Emma reveals that she stabbed her father because she disliked his ventriloquism. She stabbed Lisa/Chastity for not buying chocolates from her, and framed Anna. She also killed her pregnant mother because she did not want a sibling, and her teacher, whom she disliked.
- Anna and Emma fight, which ends up with Anna fatally stabbing Emma, but Douglas arrives right in time to testify in Anna’s favor, proving her innocence all along. All the side characters apologize to Anna for not believing her along the way.
Sorry, that ended up being way longer than I thought, but tbh I cut out a lot of side-characters.
“Dark Comedy”
As mentioned above, WIHAFGIW is supposed to be a dark comedy. There are some funny parts, for sure, but I feel like labeling this a comedy is misleading. The funniest parts are when Buell, Anna’s handyman, are on-screen. Buell spends literally the entire season (7 episodes) fixing Anna’s mailbox. It is revealed that Buell has been working on this for 8 years. A mailbox. While it is funny that Buell is incompetent at his job, this was probably the funniest part of the series, and it is not a knee-slapping joke. Other recurring jokes include Anna’s love of casseroles (classic suburban mom), and, I think, her alcoholism.
Bear with me, alcoholism is not a joke. I, however, think that this series tried to take such a serious topic and make it into a joke by having Anna pour a whole bottle of wine into a glass at a time. The alcoholism has other roles in the story, making her an unreliable narrator (especially when she mixes that with her sleeping pills, causing hallucinations) and causing other characters to not believe her. I do believe that addictions can be made to be part of a joke, for example in House MD, where the main character Dr. House is addicted to Vicodin. They make light of this by having dark moments and light moments. House can make fun of himself. Anna pretends to not have a problem, even though she literally has a serving bowl filled with wine corks on her kitchen island. If they had made her react in funnier ways, for example, when she was drunk, that would be one way of playing with it in a “more positive” light. She is drinking to cope with the loss of her daughter, which is in no way funny.
Hallucinations
One huge part of this show is Anna being an unreliable narrator. She is near constantly drunk, and frequently takes pills that cause hallucinations with the alcohol. While they did a good job, for the most part, with the hallucinations, I think that for a viewer it needs to be a bit less confusing. There is no indication that we are in a hallucination, until Anna comes out of it. While I admire the dedication, and it really helps us get into Anna’s head, it also feels like we, as viewers, should have that fourth wall to protect us. A big part of a murder mystery is being able to figure things out with or BEFORE the investigator, and the hallucinations make that nearly impossible.
Headstone
Anna visits Elizabeth’s headstone three times in this season. Each time Anna visits, the quip at the bottom has changed.
“If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever”
“In Heaven you can dance like no one’s watching”
“There is no I in Heaven”
These are the three different headstone sayings, none of which seem to have any plot relevance. One can chalk up the changing words to be more proof of Anna’s unreliability, but one thing she always seems certain of is her daughter. Anna remembers what kind of stuffed animal Elizabeth had been wishing for, she remembers her playing upstairs, and even takes her to school one day. Of course this last one is a hallucination, but it shows that Elizabeth is very much alive and constant in her mind, so it is strange that the grave changes.
Overall
I think that they tried to do too much. It was pushing to be funny but really wasn’t. I just read that Will Ferrel was one of the producers on this, which confused me, because it is not really his style at all. WIHAFGIW left a lot of critics confused and disturbed. To be honest, there are some pretty big plot holes too.
Some plot holes include: Neil received texts from Lisa/Chastity’s number after she was dead, but it was never revealed who had the phone and why they would do that. Speaking of the phone, why didn’t anyone track it when they were looking for the killer? There is no way that Emma could have cleaned up Lisa/Chastity’s body so fast, considering her dad was home, just upstairs. Lisa/Chastity is found dismembered, so it’s not even that Emma just dragged her out and cleaned up a lot of blood from an artery, but fucking cut up the body too. What was the actual weapon used? No one seemed to care, and they didn’t check for blood on the pallet knife? She also seems to be super-strong. Like, this 9(?) year old is able to take on and nearly kill Anna (full adult) in the finale. Douglas is in Anna’s phone under two different names (sure, he might have two different phones, but would would Anna have one listed as “Douglas” and the other as “Therapist”?) How was Buell getting in and out of the house unnoticed? Anna hears him in the attic, chalking it up to PTSD anxiety and it being an old house, but still did he piss up there? Also, for the backstory, there is NO WAY Douglas or the rest of the FBI would have let a child into the interview with a fucking serial cannibal.
Anyway, it was a weird watch with some weird plot holes. I didn’t mind, it was fun to try to figure out the murder, and Emma being the killer was certainly a twist. A bit fucked up that Anna had to kill her, but even more fucked that Emma had killed so many people before. Alas. WIHAFGIW, I won’t be watching you again, but you will probably be on my mind for a while.
Best,
Alex