Yahoo News ‘Echoes,’ Starring Michelle Monaghan as Warring Twins, Is a Soap Tailor-Made for Netflix Binging: TV Review
It’s all too easy to understand the appeal of a show like “Echoes” to a streaming service like Netflix. From creator Vanessa Gazy and showrunners Quinton Peeples and Brian Yorkey (“13 Reasons Why”), “Echoes” feels like “Firefly Lane” and “Behind Her Eyes” collided to create a melodrama as deeply strange as it is quickly ingestible. Its seven episodes fly by fast enough to distract from the fact that they only barely make sense. It’s twisty, but repetitive, making sure every plot point gets several scenes to marinate. All the while, Michelle Monaghan throws herself into the challenge of portraying twins with the delirious freedom that the show’s hyperbolic framework allows. Once, “Echoes” might have been a made-for-TV movie; now, it’s a limited series built to set up camp in Netflix’s Top 10 until another version of the same (maybe Emily Deschanel’s upcoming “Devil in Ohio”?) knocks it out.
Leaning into uneasy thriller vibes with an eerie score and impressively unreliable narrators, “Echoes” bobs and weaves between the twin perspectives of Leni, the seemingly milder-mannered twin, and Gina, the so-called bad seed. Leni favors a side braid, precision, and a heavy Southern drawl; Gina prefers loose waves, smoky eyeliner, and a life independent of her sister’s. Even for twins, their abnormal closeness as children leads to an astonishing gambit as adults. Every year on their birthday, the two switch lives, not only to walk in each other’s shoes, but to share custody of Gina’s L.A. therapist husband, Charlie (Daniel Sunjata); Leni’s Virginia rancher husband, Jack (Matt Bomer); and daughter, Mattie (Gable Swanlund). “The switch,” as they call it, is unnerving enough as a concept alone, but “Echoes” takes it a step further by having the moment itself unfold in a ritual that comes across as a both religious and psychosexual experience, complete with more candles than should ever be burning outside a lesbian love scene circa 1994. Whether as small kids (played by Hazel and Ginger Mason), teenagers (Madison and Victoria Abbott), or adults, Leni and Gina’s connection is so intense it’s practically supernatural, giving “Echoes” an edge of strangeness that perplexes as much as it intrigues.
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Every so often, the show makes overtures toward saying something capital-i Important about what it means to be a woman, sister, and/or mother. These moments feel largely out of place amidst the wild turns that otherwise make up “Echoes,” but are undeniably necessary for making the twins more understandable outside of their bond. What ends up being more effective, though, is when the show embraces its histrionic tendencies as the TV equivalent of a paperback thriller you might pick up at an airport and blaze through before your flight lands. Actors like Ali Stroker (as the twins’ resentful sister) and Karen Robinson (as their hometown’s suspicious sheriff) have a field day by diving headfirst into the show’s drama, delivering each line to register from a mile away. And while Monaghan does her best to bring a wounded dignity to both twins, she’s at her best when conveying their more unhinged breakdowns as the double act begins to fall apart.
The most interesting aspect of “Echoes” — or at least it’s most unexpected, given how much it otherwise tries and fails to create a wholly original mystery — is the fact that it initially puts the viewer inside the perspective of the ostensibly more trustworthy twin before flipping its own switch. By design, the series makes it impossible to know which twin to believe at any given moment. By the (rather disappointing) end, neither “Echoes” nor Gina and Leni themselves seem to understand who’s even who anymore, anyway. At that point, though, it almost doesn’t matter. “Echoes” was built for an audience that just needs a night’s entertainment that’s intriguing enough to throw back like a shot of whiskey before moving on to the next round.
“Echoes” premieres Friday, August 19 on Netflix.
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