The Real Twist of <em>Mare of Easttown</em>

This article contains spoilers through the entirety of Mare of Easttown.

is a strange name for a prestige television show: clunky, nondescriptive, homonymic. (“So she’s the mayor?” people might ask if you recommend the series, and in a way, she is.) “Mare” is short for “Marianne,” the latter of which befits Kate Winslet’s scruffy, vape-slurping Delaware County detective about as naturally as the ancient, crumb-encrusted lipstick she digs out of a drawer in the second episode. Mare inhales cheesesteaks without pausing for breath; she runs headlong into cursed attics and bottles up her feelings like home brew. But she also has a mission, the French word for “mother,” and Easttown as it’s portrayed in Brad Ingelsby’s HBO miniseries is a fascinating matriarchy. The men in the show fight, cheat, steal, throw milk bottles impetuously through windows, recoil at the sight of blood. It’s left to the women, the mothers, to do the things that matter.