This post contains spoilers from Long Bright River episode 1 from this point forward.
Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Amanda Seyfried returns to the small screen in the new Peacock original limited series Long Bright River. The crime drama is based on the novel of the same name by Liz Moore and centers on police officer Mickey Fitzpatrick (Seyfried) as she dives deep into the deaths of women in area of Philadelphia afflicted by the opioid crisis.
But she's not the first character we meet. Instead the series opens on a nameless woman who kisses her partner before leaving their tent in a city alley and going on a walk. She visits a nearby convenience store to clean herself up and get food, but she enters a vehicle (make, model, and color obscured, though an overhead shot suggests a red pickup truck). She's locked in the car and pleads for help.
After that fittingly chilling cold open, we meet Mickey as she drops her young son Thomas (Callum Vinson) off at school. They discuss a classical music number playing on the radio, and it's clear that she's a great mother who's raising her son with intention. She carries her care and intelligence over to her job; she knows the names of all the unhoused women in the neighborhood she's assigned to.
Mickey helps look out for these women as best she can. But when she and her new partner Lafferty (Dash Mihok) arrive at a crime scene where a woman has been found dead, she freezes. As soon as she sees the dead woman, she has a memory of another woman with pink hair lying lifeless. She fidgets her thumb between her fingers before coming to and helping the rest of the officers. She thought she recognized the young girl, but she didn't.
Mickey believes the deaths are murders
When Mickey tells the other officers at the scene that it could be a possible homicide due to the blood in the girl's mouth, everyone else is skeptical. The other officers assume the victim has overdosed, but Mickey knows to look beyond the obvious assumption. She has empathy for "these girls," which is how Lafferty and others frequently refer to them. Mickey later learns she was calling out for "Truman" earlier at the crime scene.
We still have a lot to learn about Mickey, and Thomas wants to learn more about himself, too, as an upcoming family tree project has him asking questions. Mickey isn't thrilled to hear about this assignment. The next day, she's still upset about the reaction to the crime as Lafferty presses about Truman, her former partner. Supposedly, Truman is on medical leave for an injury and Mickey no longer talks to him. Is that the truth?
Mickey has a working relationship with the cashier at the neighborhood's converience store. She gives him money in exchange for information, but he hasn't seen Kacey in a while. Could Kacey be the girl she had a memory of at the crime scene? A flashback to November 2017 finds Mickey and Truman (Nicholas Pinnock) getting to know each other as partners. Just from one small past interaction, we can see how influential he was on her.
When Mickey returns home, her neighbor Mrs. Mahon (Harriet Sansom Harris) informs her that a man stopped by asking for her. Based on her neighbor's description of the man, she and Thomas both assume that it's his father. Later that evening while playing a wind instrument, Mickey looks out her window to see a red pickup truck stopping on her street then driving away. She rushes to make sure the doors are locked.
Mickey and Thomas visit Mickey's grandfather G-Pop (John Doman), who has a talking cockatoo named Carmichael. G-Pop gets mail from Mickey's ex Simon, and he tells her to cut him out. He says Thomas, in spite of his dyslexia, doesn't need to attend a charter school. It's a lot to mull over when it comes to her personal life, but her professional life also gets more complicated.
The red truck and Kacey's connection to Mickey
Sergeant Ahearn (Patch Darragh) announces to the team that there's a bad batch some sort of drug hitting the streets in connection to the overdoses. Mickey's the only one to speak up and ask how they know these have been ODs. Ahearn calls her rebuttal "conspiracy theories," but she's the only one being thorough and asking for autopsies. Mickey drops by the morgue to see the bodies, and another flashback to December 2017 tracks Kacey's (Ashleigh Cummings) arrest in a store.
Kacey stole a birthday card for a 1 year old. That's an interesting piece of information that could lead to theories about a certain young boy. But let's not harp on that just yet. In present day, Mickey talks to the morgue technician Aura Williams (Britne Olford), who seems to be Mickey's friend and on her side. Aura informs her that the victim, who wasn't diabetic, had a deadly amount of insulin in her system.
Mickey and Lafferty return to the encampment under the guise that they're telling everyone to leave before the city makes them, but Mickey's looking for the boyfriend of one of the victims, and Lafferty's onto her. She finally tells him that the receipt he found on one of the girls was from the airport. She just found a napkin from a restaurant in Tinicum. What were they both doing down there?
Paula (Perry Mattfeld) refuses to talk to Mickey, but she's determined to find out what she knows. At home, Mickey follows up with her neighbor about her ex, but it wasn't her ex. Simon drives a blue Mustang and the man who stopped by to see Mickey drove a red pickup truck. A red pickup truck! Danger, Mickey Fitzpatrick, danger!
Mickey requests solo duty, but Ahearn denies her request. Aura confirms that these aren't overdoses after running more autopsies and finding a lethal dose of insulin in all three women. Back to December 2017, Mickey asks Truman to let Kacey go because she's her sister. That's why she's so adamant on finding her now. Later, she gets Paula to share the date Kacey was last seen and finally learns via security footage that she got into a red pickup truck... the red pickup truck.
After seeing the footage, Mickey packs up Thomas' things and takes him to Truman. She asks for his help, which seems like an odd request for someone you no longer speak to, but we'll surely get into where their relationship stands in episode 2. Before the episode ends, the red truck is parked outside of a nondescript house, and in the basement, Kacey lies on the ground seemingly drugged but alive.
Long Bright River episode 1 review
When you start watching Long Bright River, you might find yourself fighting with its pacing. Not that the show moves too slowly or too quickly, but it tends to dole out information in unexpected ways. We learn details about the characters, the case, and even the protagonist in an unconventional manner, which can make you feel like you're putting a puzzle together from the minute the episode begins.
But once the puzzle, or at least the border of the puzzle, connects by the end of "These Girls," it's hard not to be invested. Seyfried expectedly delivers a performance that keeps you rapt even in the rare moments she's not onscreen. The series comes from showrunner and executive producer Nikki Toscano, who knows how to build suspense having worked on shows like Revenge, Hunters, and The Offer. But Seyfried's star power is the driving force of Long Bright River.
While I commend the show for not being overly expository in how it establishes connections, I also believe the writing could be a touch less withholding. That's often used for dramatic effect, which sometimes works. But when you're getting your bearings with a new show, you kind of just want to know what's going on without being pulled in different directions. Overall, after one episode, I'm thoroughly hooked and along for the ride-along with Mickey to solve this mystery.
Watch Long Bright River only on Peacock.