Summary
His & Hers begins with a reminder that there are two sides to every story, and this idea colours the entire, highly deceptive premiere.
His & Hers makes a point of reminding everyone that there are two sides to every story, which means someone is always lying. And, fair warning: This is something that you really should keep in mind. Because the first thing you’ll notice about Episode 1 is that everyone in Dahlonega, Georgia, has something to hide. Several of them might be murderers. How else did a woman get stabbed to death on the bonnet of her car in the middle of the woods?
Dahlonega is a small town. People don’t get killed there often, which is surprising since everyone who lives there is awful. But this is important to keep in mind, too. This premiere is as much an introduction to the setting itself as it is to any of the characters, the intimate social tapestry of a no-account town in the middle of nowhere becoming stretched and frayed by sudden tragedy. Every potential motive in a place like that is elongated; every secret stretches back a lifetime.
Presumption Of Guilt
It’s immediately clear that His & Hers wants you to believe that one of its main characters, Anna, is guilty of murder. In the opening scenes, she’s seen frantically returning to her apartment and chugging wine from the bottle, before clearing the place out. Anna is a TV news anchor who has been on sabbatical for a year for an undisclosed personal reason. In the meantime, she has been replaced by a blonde-haired beauty named Lexy Jones.
Anna sees the murder in her hometown of Dahlonega as a leg-up right back to the previous heights of her career. So, she asks her boss, Jim, to let her report on it from the field. Out of spite, she requests to take Lexy’s cameraman husband, Richard Jones, with her. That’s what you call killing two birds with one stone.
Between that opening, her general demeanour, and the fact that Anna immediately seems to know things about the case that haven’t been made public, Anna looks like the prime suspect immediately. This is… unusual for a murder-mystery. But don’t make the mistake of believing you have all the answers just yet.
Husband and Wife
Investigating the crime is Jack Harper, an oddly upbeat detective who lives with his sister, Zoe, and her daughter, Meg. But the murder unsettles him. He clearly recognises the victim, who has been frenziedly stabbed, her nails cut down to the quick with “Two Faced” carved into them. The woman is known, her husband is known, so it’s time to get serious.
When Anna arrives on the scene, she immediately causes problems by asking Jack outright if he knew the victim, which she seems to already know that he did. And she seems to find it pleasurable. The same can be said of her cruel analysis of Richard’s marriage to Lexy. In about five minutes, she seduces Richard and takes him to bed in her hotel room, where Jack is banging on the door to confront her about her line of questioning earlier. See, Jack and Anna are husband and wife.
When Jack follows Anna from the hotel to her mother Alice’s house, we get a bit more clarity on this. They’re legally married, but currently estranged due to Anna’s disappearing act. Jack has maintained a relationship with her mother, who is beginning to show signs of dementia and has taken to walking through town naked in the middle of the night. Jack tells Anna the victim is Rachel Hopkins, whom they both know, but she can’t tell anyone, which seems – and indeed is – a stupid thing to do. Anna stays behind and looks through a box of belongings from her old bedroom, which includes a video camera, taped footage from her younger years, and a handmade friendship bracelet, the kind teenage girls wear.
Cause of Death
When Jack goes to the morgue, he learns that Rachel Hopkins died from blood loss after being stabbed forty times. Her fingernails were cut, probably post-mortem, and her body contains “fresh semen, and plenty of it,” presumably – though distressingly not definitely – acquired while she was still alive. She also had no defensive wounds, implying she knew her killer, and a friendship bracelet exactly like Anna’s wrapped around her tongue.
Needless to say, this is a long day for Jack, who gets home to realise that he didn’t take Meg to soccer practice, as he promised he would, and that Anna has decided to go live and broadcast Rachel’s name and cause of death, despite him asking her not to. It’s a double-whammy of bad news, but there’s more to come, since flashbacks reveal to us that Anna was there on the night of Rachel’s murder.
The guy who was having sex with Rachel that night? Detective Jack Harper. And Anna saw them.
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