![]() If you’re lucky enough to have a friendship that spans decades, that relationship almost always comes with. Lifelong besties aren’t always easy to come by. The show’s hair, costume and makeup team discuss how they created Kate’s and Tully’s many style evolutions. The versions of Kate and Tully that we see at different points in their lives don't feel like evolutions of one character but rather three (or four, or five) different women. In ‘Firefly Lane,’ Friendship Spans Decades and So Do the Wigs. Flashbacks are arranged in a bewildering order and don't sync. At one point Kate's husband Johnny (Ben Lawson) is seen training for a stint as a war correspondent in Iraq, and in the same episode there is a scene in which teenage Kate gets her first period while wearing white jeans. At times "Firefly" is all-in heartwarming and comedic at others, it pivots to heartbreaking and deadly serious, without finesse. More: 2021 TV premiere dates, including 'The Voice,' 'American Idol': Your favorite shows, new addictionsĬompounding the poor structure is its inconsistency in tone and emotion. More: Katherine Heigl recalls seeking help for anxiety after being labeled 'difficult' But every development, including the addition of a family dog, is given the thematic import of a monumental discovery.Įarly on, a funeral takes place in 2005, a puzzling plot point that is wholly unsatisfying, even as some answers to that mystery are revealed throughout the 10-episode first season. There are shocks in there: The series manages to shoehorn a host of tragedies into the story, including child neglect, sexual assault, sexual harassment, political insurrection, armed robbery, the AIDS epidemic and more in the decades-spanning plot. The details of Tully and Kate's lives unfold in a random order and with the willful obscurity of a murder mystery. She is single, but battling her fear of commitment. In that most recent timeline, Kate is struggling through a divorce and re-entry into the workforce after raising her daughter, and Tully is a full-blown celebrity talk-show host seemingly on par with Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. Even if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, Firefly Lane’s cosy gentleness would be something to be thankful for."Firefly" jumps between eras, including the girls' teen years in the '70s (where they're played by Ali Skovbye and Roan Curtis) their time as young TV journalists in the 1980s (where Heigl and Chalke are airbrushed and filtered to the point of looking plasticine) and as 43-year-olds in 2003. They don’t often get enough credit for that. That ability to maintain an emotional and aesthetic levity at all times, even amid hefty themes, is something these kinds of shows do incredibly well. In fact, it’s impressively breezy for something that pulls in stories of rape, cancer and suicide. This isn’t to say that Firefly Lane is all doom and gloom. Series creator Maggie Friedman, whose credits include Dawson’s Creek and the short-lived but revered drama series Once and Again, seems intent on exploring the challenges of best friendship, and how sometimes those you need the most are the ones most primed to hurt you. The show’s strongest moments are when it zeroes in on her numerous contradictions, and how Kate is alternately uplifted and challenged by them. Her character is vivacious and funny yet narcissistic and destructive. The show skips between different time periods, beginning with the pair as teenagers (where they’re played by Ali Skovbye and Roan Curtis), then in their early twenties in 1982 (cue Heigl and Chalke with matching Farrah Fawcett hair and de-ageing camera filters), and their forties in 2003.Īs the troubled Tully, who over the years becomes a popular if unhappy talk show host, Heigl gets to embrace the prickly neuroses that have always made her such an absorbing actor. Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke are Tully and Kate, best friends joined at the hip from adolescence to middle age. Firefly Lane, the latest in this pumpkin spice television universe, practically comes with its own set of blankets and wine glasses. These are Sunday afternoon shows, all wrapped in autumnal colours and buoyed by drama never too lightweight yet never too intense. ![]() They are often far-fetched and clunky, but also serve a necessary purpose. They star likeable actors in roles such as “single mother who returns to her hometown with her teenage daughter”, or “lonely widow attracted to hunky farmer”. These new dramas have names that sound like scented candles, among them Sweet Magnolias and Virgin River, and regularly top the streaming service’s most-watched charts – even if they draw a fraction of the press of a Bridgerton or an Emily in Paris. Netflix has invested a lot lately in folksy tales of small-town America.
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