While working my way through the tepid twists and turns of The Last Thing He Told Me—Apple TV+’s latest mystery-thriller limited series, which airs its first two episodes Friday—I couldn’t help but think of a memorable plea from Roger Ebert. In a 1997 interview, the renowned critic spoke about how to cut through the noise when flooded with a sea of sameness. “You can’t see them all, so wait for a really good one,” he said.
Ebert was talking, then, about disaster movies, which had a hold over audiences in the late ’90s. If we’re looking for a modern counterpart with the same ubiquity today, no doubt that it’s the streaming thriller limited series. The Gillian Flynn-ification of television has been present since shortly after the author’s twisty, ferocious Gone Girl shocked theatrical audiences. When the thematically similar first season of Big Little Lies became a roaring success three years later, it brought a new wave of one-season, women-led thrillers to a crest.
In the years since, it’s become easy to identify which shows are mere imitations of prior television triumphs, and which ones boldly forge new ground, propelling the genre forward instead of being content with treading water.
The Last Thing He Told Me falls frustratingly in the middle. The series was adapted from Laura Dave’s 2021 bestselling novel by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, which also produced Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, From Scratch, and Gone Girl (under its previous name, Pacific Standard). By Witherspoon and company’s design, The Last Thing He Told Me seems like it’s meant to be the latest thriller series of the quarter.
Although the genre is growing rote by saturation, its latest entry has one glowing curiosity. The Last Thing He Told Me marks Jennifer Garner’s grand return as the star of a live-action television show, following Alias’ ending in 2006. (No, I do not count 2018’s Camping, nor should anyone else).
Garner is just as game for action and mystery-solving as she was nearly two decades ago, but it’s only thanks to her well-honed expertise that the series remains steady throughout its seven-episode run. Though it spends moments teetering on the highs of our most consistent streaming mysteries, The Last Thing He Told Me’s irritatingly inconsistent pacing and thin, archetypal characters weigh down Garner’s refreshing refinement at almost every turn.
Garner stars as Hannah, a self-sufficient woman only 14 months into her marriage with a widowed surveillance tech guru named Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Owen leads the development team at a high-profile securities company, developing a new encryption technology to protect user’s private data. When he’s not toiling over his job, Owen tends to his family, bringing home orange chicken to try to smooth the stringent, rough edges that remain between Hannah and Owen’s persnickety teenage daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice). Despite her best efforts, Hannah can’t seem to break through Bailey’s robust emotional walls.
On a normal afternoon, Hannah receives a paper note left by Owen that reads two simple words: “Protect her.” But it’s not until Hannah sees the news that Owen’s company has been raided by the FBI for investment fraud that she realizes something is deeply wrong. Owen is absent from FBI custody, and Hannah’s desperate attempts to contact him have gone unanswered. She soon finds out that Bailey’s school locker came stuffed with a couple of surprises, too. In only a few hours, Hannah and Bailey have their lives upended by two cryptic notes, one missing man, and a duffel bag full of cash.
The Last Thing He Told Me does a knockout job of setting up its mystery in its first two episodes. There are plenty of familiar genre tropes: gloomy figures watching from the shadows; the ardently hopeful best friend telling everyone to stay calm; flashbacks to serve as exposition. The stakes remain urgent and pleasantly invigorating.
As its puzzle expands, however, the cracks begin to show. The writers stretch Rice’s defiant teenager to her limit by Episode 3. One wonders why a teenager whose dad has gone missing without a trace would approach her kind, helpful stepmother with so much willful defiance. The show tries to make a case for Bailey’s fear and grief manifesting in her adolescent harshness, but her constant repudiation of Hannah’s affection feels forced and nonsensical.
This is especially the case when Hannah’s best friend, Jules (Aisha Tyler), lends her investigative journalism expertise to the case and is met with amiable vulnerability from Bailey. Why Hannah—who is trying to follow Owen’s request to protect Bailey—would receive such viciousness from her stepdaughter, but Jules wouldn’t, is perhaps this series’ bigger mystery. Bailey spends far too much of the series’ length being a complete and total grouch, hindering the time that should be spent developing her and Hannah’s emotional arc.
To her credit, Rice is committed to her own character’s insolence, much in the way she was while playing the exact same person in Mare of Easttown. Though Bailey is nothing more than a cliché plucked from the outlines of another series, Hannah is a bracingly human mixture of real emotion and flaws. Garner taps into Hannah’s aching maternal instinct, jumping between soft and spiky in the blink of an eye when her family is concerned. She’s so skilled at holding the camera’s gaze, and so effortlessly naturalistic in her demeanor, that I spent so much time wondering why, after Alias, she isn’t revered as one of television’s great players.
Garner—and her buoyant, buyable chemistry with Aisha Tyler in every scene they share—is The Last Thing He Told Me’s selling point. This is firmly and unapologetically a mystery for moms who like to relax with a glass or two of cabernet at the end of the day. Garner is fantastic, and the mystery is twisty enough to come back week after week, but there’s a noticeable lack of creative oomph to elevate the material beyond its anchor actors. The show leans heavily on its gorgeous seaside Sausalito setting instead of bothering to craft a distinct style. Filming on-location leaves something to be desired in this case, and it’s hard to get much sense of any character’s interior life through the conventional direction and slapdash set design.
Of course, there is a lot to be said for competence in this arena. The Last Thing He Told Me might not always understand how to keep its own momentum going—in fact, it often has long stretches of extremely middling excursions. But a decent mystery that continues to unfold through the final episode seems to be a tall order these days. The Last Thing He Told Me doesn’t overstay its welcome like similar offerings, boasting only seven episodes, most of which are under 40 minutes. It gets the job done, and it does it effectively. But is good enough actually good enough anymore?
We’re getting at least two Big Little Lies-adjacent thriller series a year, and the hours will eventually add up. Like Ebert said, you can’t see them all. Wait for a really good one to come around.
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