Who Is Erin Carter?: Season One

September 7, 2023 6:28 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

[TRAILER] Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad), a British teacher in Spain, finds herself caught up in a supermarket robbery. When one of the robbers claims to recognize her, her life threatens to unravel.

A Netflix original.

posted by DirtyOldTown (13 comments total)

We watched the pilot of this and it wasn't bad, but through that first episode at least it falls much more squarely in the A mom is caught up in a mystery! camp than the Dangerous badass activated at last! camp. I tuned in hoping for the latter. My spouse was tuning in for the former. She was very pleased. I wasn't mad.

The fight scenes were... fine? I could not help but compare them unfavorably to A History of Violence in which seemingly mild-mannered diner owner Viggo Mortensen dispatches with a couple of hoods who attempt to rob the place. The thing is, he does so in a way that is savage, effortless, and practiced to the point where it doesn't feel good, it feels terrifying. A regular person should not be able to do those things and someone who can is emphatically not okay. By comparison, Erin Carter is... sorta tough? Like, okay, maybe she knows more than your typical elementary school teacher, but maybe she just took a class or something.

Anyway, if you're someone who watches the Mom in a mystery! melodrama genre, this is solid. Not so much with the professional ass kicker stuff, but not a waste of time even so. It's the kinda deal where "Will Erin's dangerous past catch up with her?" is backed with a B plot about whether her daughter Harper will get booted from private school for bullying.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:39 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

This looks promising for me. Not to be confused with In From the Cold, another Netflix series about a mother running around Spain when her past catches up with her in a sudden burst of violence and mayhem and complicates her already complicated relationship with her troubled teenage daughter.

I tried to get into that one, but by the end of the first episode it had just gone so far off the rails into bonkers land that I couldn't follow it. Hopefully this one will not.
posted by Naberius at 10:16 AM on September 7, 2023

I didn't care for it. It just had too many balls in the air: Mom has a secret background! What's her relationship with the weird neighbor that sleeps in his car? Why is the daughter singled out at school? (For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the girl started punching the kid out.) And, of course, the Donnie Darko-like figure that manifests for the girl. I'm sure there's a rational explanation for all this (*rolls eyes*), but it feels like the writer just chucking in a mess of plot hooks for Season Two.
posted by SPrintF at 10:25 AM on September 7, 2023

And I guess we saw two episodes.. anywho...

Harper punches the kid because he made a seeing eye cane joke at her, based on her eye condition.

The cliffhanger at the end of episode two is the neighbor cop explaining that he's helping because he got involved with some bad people and figures she can help.

I don't remember a Donnie Darko like figure, though.

It was announced as a limited series, so theoretically, this is it. Though obviously, streamers have gotten unreliable about saying that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:56 AM on September 7, 2023

So this is where Doug Henshall is hanging out. Weather’s probably better.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:07 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I made it through 1.7 episodes. The premise was interesting, but the writing and acting is awful. Feels like it was written by these guys.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:20 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's definitely melodrama cheese. There is a call for a certain amount of that in our house, though, so.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:20 AM on September 8, 2023

So it turns out I'd seen one ep, now two. Because now I've seen EP two and I've seen the weird deer-headed apparition. That's odd. Like something out of another show.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:06 PM on September 8, 2023

So I may be the only one who watched this whole thing, thus I will avoid spoilers.

I didn't mind it. I kind of enjoyed the ridiculousness of Erin dealing with both work/parenting drama and murderous gangsters at the same time. I liked some of the characters although her husband is a bit of a good-looking cipher (nice seeing that happen to a male character though.) The family drama with the kid worked for me and the rest was action drama fun cheese.

I won't talk about the ending except to say I felt like it answered all of the questions and provided some resolution, while dangling the unlikely possibility of a Season 2.

Disclaimer: I watch everything made by Harlan Coben and I enjoy cheesy escapism... Your mileage may vary.
posted by mmoncur at 8:47 PM on September 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed this. Yeah it was dumb and ridiculous, but in a fun way.

I liked that Erin's Murder Gang Extravaganza was given equal footing to her Will I Get the Promotion drama to the Marriage Drama to the My Kid Is Stressing Me Out Drama to the My Frenemy Neighbor Is a Whole THING Drama because c'mon that's just kind of *motherhood*, maybe minus the Murder Gang. It's exhausting and it felt almost like a satire of my regular suburban life.

(But: if any of y'all are actually moms who are being pursued by murder gangs, your secret is safe with me.)
posted by champers at 5:18 AM on September 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I'm like 3-4 episodes in, and IMO it's pretty cheesy, and boilerplate crime show. I was hoping her 'secret' was going to be cooler than it was. I'll probably finish watching out of duty.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2023

The writing was terrible. So many scenes where you were taken out of it because there's just no way people would act/react the way they're doing in the circumstances presented.

I absolutely love the idea of a show like this, but the execution was hot garbage.
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:37 AM on September 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I watched this all the way to the end. I found myself thinking "You would not be rolling your eyes so hard if this was Jason Statham" but then again I don't think he would have been the "ANYTHING FOR MY FAMILY" guy either. No spoilers but every time the show put a little humor into it, I wish it did more of that because those bits were funny and it was occasionally way too bleak for me. And yes, it's like the plot outline was good but then the dialogue and scene-by-scene was not. Evin Ahmad was amazing. Denise Gough was really great too.

based on her eye condition.

That was such an odd thing where they clearly wrote her as a character with keratoconus except for the part where she had trouble seeing anything. Like, I thought it was going to come up at some crucial point. Maybe I missed if it did?

So this is where Doug Henshall is hanging out.

This made me laugh.

This is also probably an American problem but I had to ask a friend of mine from Barcelona "Does everyone really wear their pants like that?" because it didn't look fashionable or comfortable. I enjoyed all the beautiful scenery shots.
posted by jessamyn at 7:20 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]