Kristen Bell puts her Veronica Mars hat back on in ‘The woman in the house across the street from the girl in the window’ in 2022. This short series was just released to Netflix starring Kristen Bell as a depressed, almost stalker with a drinking problem. While this show was a take on dark humor and satire, the satire was not blatant enough for me to forgive some of the more farfetched issues. But as usual, spoilers are evident.
The daughter:
We hear early on how Anna’s daughter has died and can see that she has not moved on from the trauma. As the story goes on we understand more about what happened to the daughter. Anna was happily married to her now ex-husband who worked for the FBI as a criminal psychologist or forensic psychologist, whatever term you prefer. Now as this is the classic case of a untrustworthy narrator we as the viewers have to battle between what she is actually seeing and what is happening in her head or because of the drinking. I personally thought when I heard the story that she was lying as she is an untrustworthy narrator. Even to the fact she admits to lying to her therapist (in general) before anyone corroborates her story of what happened.
Essentially, it’s bring your daughter to work day, but Douglas is a forensic psychologist for the FBI who interviews offenders, particularly serial killers it would seem. So, for some reason he agrees to take his daughter with him. To work. At a prison. In an interview room. With a cannibal murderer.
From the start we can likely all agree, this doesn’t happen in the FBI. The politics surrounding it are too much, liability, insurance, child development, endangering a child. So. what!
Then we get to the nitty gritty, he takes her in to the room with him and the cannibal murderer. I think not! You would be hard press to convince me the prison warden would allow this, let alone that the daughter was allowed in on the pretense of FBI interviewing. But alas, we continue.
Old mate leaves the room for a second to speak to a guard, while his, did I mention 6 year old, 6 YEAR OLD daughter is in fact, still in the room. Naturally, the door locks. Somehow the door locks. Which couldn’t possibly have been unlocked again a moment later?
So, a 6 year old and a cannibal sit in a room, with apparently no guards? None at all. There is a 6 year old in the room and no guard is present. That is a liability and insurance nightmare.
Finally, we hear, the little girl is killed and eaten by the cannibal. Graphic, yes. But I have to wonder how. It has plagued me ever since watching, how the door could be locked for so long that the guards and her father couldn’t get her out of the room. Granted he was a pretty big guy and she would have been easy to kill, but, to eat as well? There was enough time for him to kill and eat a little girl before they could get the door open.
Side note, how does her dad every move on from that and go back to work?
“The mailbox isn’t fixed yet”
They show that Buell started working for them, and Anna says he was hired to fix their mailbox, before she even had Elizabeth. Elizabeth was 6 when she died, so he worked for them at least 6 years and Douglas didn’t know he hadn’t fixed the mailbox? I mean clearly Anna didn’t really mind that much but still, he had worked there over 6 years minimum before Douglas moved out.
Kid killer
My final real plot issue is just Emma even being able to pull off being a murderer. Emma is also like 6 years old and supposedly murders her dad’s girlfriend, for not buying a chocolate bar (but I’m not here to dig into psychopathy). After killing Lisa, in a quite bloody way might I add, she is able to dismember her, get her out of the house, dump her body , clean all the blood then get back home. Her dad meanwhile is in the house, practicing ventriloquism in the bathroom and before the Police arrive. Now firstly, how long is his act because my god that would take a lot of time. Secondly, we all have seen blood isn’t that easy to clean. Thirdly, I have heard that it is actually incredibly difficult for a adult person to dismember someone, the actual cutting through the muscle and bone is pretty difficult. She is a tiny child. But say somehow she did do it, the amount of blood would ruin the floor. She got Lisa’s dismembered body into a little trolley then rolled her around the neighbourhood to steal a murder weapon.
A weapon which was not in fact used? But apparently that didn’t matter to anyone. Let alone the palette knife shown doesn’t appear to be able to break skin from my perspective, even in this image of a set of palette knives, only one has a sharp point. But, the force you would need seems uncharacteristic of a 6 year old and seems like it would make a far different wound. But hey, I’m not a medical examiner.
Again, how can we possibly believe Neil didn’t know anything, didn’t hear anything or find any blood. The show also seems to borderline ignore actual physical evidence or forensic practices. At least they have the tech side down I guess.
The casserole dish
How many of the exact same casserole dish can one person, who lives alone and doesn’t have guests over have lying around? Why are they all the same? Where does she keep them? She smashes at least 3 of them then has at least 1 more. They are heavy dishes, probably relatively expensive and take up a lot of space. While this is more of a joke issue, it still haunts me.
So, setting aside all of these issues, it was a really fun show. I really enjoyed watching it as I always do with Kristen Bell. I would 100% recommend it to people, I just personally can’t get over these few things. I feel like if there was more random farfetched stuff going on it would be fine, you could just accept its a weird wacky show. For instance, Teenage Bounty Hunters is a different Netflix series which was also great, but, it leans far more into the satire and humour of it all with little serious plot lines. Therefore we can just accept that the world we are watching doesn’t make total sense, it happens outside of our understanding of the world. The Woman in the House just didn’t go far enough for me to pretend they don’t fit or make sense.
Let me know what you thought of the show and whether these issues bothered you?
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