And after all this, the ending remains ambiguous. We would have preferred “Tiny Beautiful Things” to just be boring instead of serving us characters that irritate us beyond comprehension. Additionally, moving on from the mother, what do writers think teenagers are like? “Angry, emotionally immature, yet woke” seems to be the template. “Life and Beth” from recent times come to mind, but that is it. We need to find better and more grounded representations of grief. Grief is one thing, but Clare acts without any iota of awareness of her surroundings, and it would be tragic if it were not so irritating and a cliche on screen. Additionally, when Rae keeps asking her what is going on, Clare doesn’t say a word and is in a deranged state, just not looking beyond what she wants to do. In the final episode of “Tiny Beautiful Things,” it is painful to watch how Clare dangerously swerves the car off the road without being bothered to wait a second for her daughter to do it. We find it hard to believe that a person can act the way Clare does without an iota of self-preservation. We don’t disagree that grief and depression can manifest this way, but this representation of a “messy life” is becoming borderline meme material by its repetitiveness. For some reason, Hollywood’s idea of a sad woman or man is someone who doesn’t brush their hair, wears faded clothes and doesn’t answer reasonable questions asked of them because they are consumed by grief and anger.

Tiny beautiful things review