Summary
Good American Family continues to tell only one side of the story in Episode 3, which remains a problem, but I’m getting more concerned by how stupid it’s all making Michael look.
Episode 3 is the episode of Good American Family where they say the title out loud, which is always fun. It brings to mind that meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV. But this is, ultimately, the least of it. The two-part premiere ended with Kristine making an alarming discovery about Natalia Grace’s pubes, and things only get weirder from there.
If you, like me, were hoping for a more balanced account from Natalia’s perspective after that extremely damning opener, you’re out of luck here. “Ghosts Everywhere” is explicitly condemnatory to the extent that it’s impossible to see how the Barnetts aren’t being framed as the “good guys” here. Flawed, maybe, but wouldn’t you be? Natalia’s overtly smug and sinister behaviour would make anyone act out of character.
This makes me think about the 2019 sequences, which open Episode 3. Kristine has been arrested, is being pilloried in the media, and is facing eight counts of neglect for abandoning Natalia. Even Jacob is sceptical of her claims that it’s all baloney. If the police had no evidence, how could she have been arrested and charged?
Michael, meanwhile, is watching the coverage with enormous delight until Brandon calls him to let him know that, despite his help, he’ll still be facing felony charges himself. For some reason he’s surprised by this. Kristine and Michael are adamantly blaming each other for whatever transpired, but the stuff we actually see is so unambiguously demented I find these scenes really odd and out of place. Sure, the marriage might have broken down after the fact, and it’s easy to see why because Michael is impossible, but they’re both seeing all the mad stuff Natalia is doing. Where’s the mystery?
Anyway, back in 2010, Kristine is aggressively pursuing the angle that Natalia is much older than she claims to be, and all of the evidence she uncovers seems to support this. It also supports the idea that First Path was an outright con, and that Natalia might have been complicit in the ruse to get her medical bills paid for, which would make sense since the Barnett’s family doctor, Steve, immediately identifies that she has never had any surgeries, despite the Barnetts having apparently paid for them when they adopted her.
Either way, Natalia apparently has the skull and teeth size of an adult, has been through puberty, and has regular periods. The causes behind her worsening behaviour are harder to diagnose, though. A therapist explains that, depending on her age, it could be RAD (reactive attachment disorder), a condition stemming from early neglect and/or abuse that can cause children to struggle to form healthy emotional bonds with their guardians. Or, if Natalia is over 18, she could be a garden-variety sociopath, which is what Kristine suspects (and I think is privately hoping for to feel vindicated).
To err on the side of caution, Kristine and Michael proceed as if Natalia has RAD, the solution for which is something called “reattachment therapy”, which basically boils down to treating Natalia – who is at best 7, but possibly in her twenties – like an infant, including bottle feeding her.
Imogen Faith Reid and Mark Duplass in Good American Family | Image via Hulu
This becomes Michael’s job, and it makes him look ridiculous, which is obviously deliberate. There’s an emasculating undercurrent to everything Michael does; he still can’t bring himself to tell Kristine he lost his job, he believes everything Natalia says despite oodles of contrary evidence, and now he’s trying to bottle feed her. He’s ludicrous. Kristine has plenty of her own hangups, but I consistently find myself siding with her because I feel like there isn’t enough justification for any other point of view. When she confronts Natalia about having started her period and used all of her socks as sanitary towels – which there’s proof of – we blatantly see Natalia try to kill her by covering her eyes while she’s driving. And Michael still cuddles her!
Kristine rightly retreats to her friend Val’s house, leaving Michael with Natalia. It’s Val who floats the similarities of Kristine’s case to the movie Orphan, which it has been alleged inspired the real-life Bennetts. But I totally get why Kristine fled. Not only is her life in danger and her husband a moron, but she’s trying to manage a burgeoning TV career, since she’s becoming a parenting icon thanks to the wonders she has done with Jacob, who was told by doctors he’d be entirely nonverbal and has grown into a savant.
She adopts a new strategy with Natalia – following a tough love parenting program devised by some ex-military dude which includes daily chores and Guantanamo Bay-style physical punishments for disobedience. Natalia doesn’t take to this especially well and immediately dobs Michael in about having lost his job. Kristine verifies this claim but keeps it to herself, instead spending time accumulating more and more evidence that Natalia is a fraud, including a copy of her birth certificate from Homeland Security depicting a child that clearly isn’t her, and a visit to her former adoptive mother, who strongly implies that Natalia was complicit in the First Path scam and is an adult woman.
Towards the end of Good American Family Episode 3, this finally and rightly begins to take a toll on Kristine and Michael’s marriage, and things blow up between them because Michael still won’t accept the obvious. He’s perfectly happy to just look after Natalia on his own and deny reality. At least Kristine drops the fact that she knows he’s jobless into the mix. You have to get your wins somewhere.
RELATED:
