‘Echoes,’ Starring Michelle Monaghan as Warring Twins, Is a Soap Tailor-Made for Netflix Binging: TV Review
18.08.2022 - 18:23
/ variety.com
Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticIt’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 Quentin 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
.