![]() ![]() So is it fate that’s bringing Mary and Gary together? Animal magnetism? Divine mandate? Or just the writerly contrivance of their rhyming names? The answer is meant to be an all-encompassing, “Yes.” Things in Wolf Like Me are constantly breaking or crashing into each other - frequently in uncomfortably visceral ways - as a conduit for intimacy. So love here is irrational, love is hyper-rational and, yes, love is spiritual, as the series makes regular references - including a Groucho Marx quote and the Father John Misty cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” - to the Jewish mystical tradition of Shevirat ha-Kelim, the shattering of vessels to allow for both healing and the passage of light. Mary and Gary are brought together by one bizarre meet-cute after another, and whether it’s Emma’s school project on the solar system or Mary’s fascination with Carl Sagan, Forsythe has almost a unified field theory linking the forces governing the universe and love. Or, put a different way, treat it as a bizarre wrinkle, but don’t grumble if the show about wounded souls doesn’t scare you.Īt the same time, without always connecting the dots, Forsythe is dabbling in the cosmic. ![]() The twist never becomes the primary genre that Wolf Like Me is operating in, so it’s better to be tickled by its inclusion instead of deeply invested. What’s interesting isn’t the secret, but what it represents - as well as the way Forsythe approaches it, which alternates between dark humor and treating it as the almost matter-of-fact embodiment of any personal imperfection that could and maybe should be a dealbreaker when looking for a significant other. ![]() You will be able to guess Mary’s secret either from the show’s title, its trailers or the ominous build-up of the first episode, which I found easily the worst of this initial run. For personal and professional reasons, Mary understands what Gary and Emma are going through, but she has a horrifying secret she can’t bring herself to share. A dramatic car accident leads him to Mary (Fisher), an advice columnist in prolonged mourning herself. The series is set in Adelaide, Australia, where single dad Gary (Gad) is still reeling from the death of his wife years earlier and struggling with the possibility that his residual grief is warping his solemn tween daughter (Ariel Donoghue’s Emma). It’s a show of broad metaphors, perhaps one or two too many, that don’t always feel fully realized in the moment, but come together with pleasantly amusing potency after six episodes.Ĭast: Isla Fisher, Josh Gad, Ariel Donoghue That’s the challenge of both writing about and watching Wolf Like Me there’s the story Forsythe wants to tell and then there’s the subtext he’s using to lure people in. You might be perplexed to know that Wolf Like Me is a show about the strained relationships and the healing properties of love and openness - more like Scenes From a Marriage or State of the Union than the genre-defying, supernatural-adjacent series Peacock wants people to think it is. They’re long conversations on park benches or across dinner tables, framed by writer-director Abe Forsythe to accentuate the gulf between his heroes, the space that they and he are struggling to fill.
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