Season 1 |
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Episode 1 – | Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 2 – | Review Score – 3/5
Episode 3 – | Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 4 – | Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 5 – | Review Score – 2/5
Episode 6 – | Review Score – 1.5/5
Episode 7 – | Review Score – 1.5/5
Who is Erin Carter is an original Netflix production and has all the characteristic hallmarks. Lazy writing, dubious casting, an uninspired plot, and above all, a raging girl-boss who is as emotional as she is strong. It is becoming a fatigued pattern across productions on all streaming platforms. And every time I see one of these, the experience is incredibly frustrating.
Evin Ahmad, Sean Teale, and Indica Watson star in the central roles, although it is really Ahmad who is given the majority of the screen time. She plays Erin Carter, a seemingly clueless substitute teacher at a school in Barcelona.
Erin is originally from Folkestone but ran away with her daughter, Harper, five years ago. She now leads a settled life with her husband Jordi, who is a nurse at General Hospital. Erin likes to keep a low profile so as to not awaken the sleeping demons from her past. But she inadvertently ends up lighting the fuse when she stops a supermarket robbery and kills one of the robbers in the process.
Things get only worse for her as the person she shoots, Gaspar, belongs to the group she is running away from. After Gaspar’s death, the domino effect kicks in and Erin finds herself in all sorts of trouble. All of this is linked to Jordi’s best friend Emilio (who is a cop) and his ambitious efforts to bring down a local drug cartel.
Erin is understandably pivotal to everything that happens in the plot but the writers definitely seem blindsided by her importance. There was so much happening around her and yet, the focus remained on proving how good she is at physically beating up men twice her size. While such showcases have become the darling of Hollywood these past few years, the consumers have outrightly rejected them. Ahmad’s timid physicality is part of the suspension of disbelief that the viewers are asked to embrace. She performs the stunts really well but her stature makes some fight scenes unconvincing.
A lot of effort is also put into establishing Erin as a misunderstood female protagonist – by literally everyone around her. This simultaneous victimization and glorification indicate how poorly conceived Ahmad’s character is. All the other supporting characters – Jordi, Harper, Emilio, and Penelope – lap up to Erin even when she is egregiously in the wrong. Everything that Erin does is whitewashed and pitched to us as part of her self-discovery. Or rather the discovery of her “self” by others. The convoluted tone is ignorant and neglects promising character lines that could have provided some variety to the storytelling.
Instead, it is Erin dealing with a personal problem and then beating a few people up. This rinse and repeat happens multiple times, so much so that you wonder if these things are happening in the same universe or not. Is it even possible for them to co-exist? The writers take a giant leap of faith to presume it is.
Erin’s character progression falls flat even when there is a concerted attempt to establish it within the narrative. She starts out as a mysterious figure running from a dark past but gradually becomes the very assimilation of cliches and unoriginal stereotypes. The genre overhang is evident in her characterization and how she navigates the problems thrown at her.
Who is Erin Carter has one leg in the aspirations of becoming a novelty in the spy genre but the other in steadfast drama and ends up not doing justice to either. The show’s periscopic vision is limited by an unwavering loyalty to feminist ideals or some semblance of them. That is the only intention behind everything our protagonist does in her superhuman capacity. It is difficult to appraise Ahmad’s portrayal because I feel she is hard done by the creators. The show’s shortcomings are so glaring that even decent acting becomes unwittingly inadequate. Ahmad is good in some places, however, especially in her scenes with Indica Watson (Harper).
Watson herself is arguably the best performer on the show, constantly inviting us in to experience her character’s disconnect with her identity. I am sure we would have gotten more inspiring performances from the likes of Sean Teale and Charlotte Vega had the creatives been more economical with their screen time bias towards Ahmad. Unfortunately, she does not turn out to be the glue that holds us to the screen.
Douglas Henshall is rendered completely ineffective as Daniel Lang due to mostly the same reasons. His dialogues, which were supposed to be show stoppers, are toothless and anti-climactic, especially in the final scene of the show. Ahmad and Teale have no plausible chemistry and one really wonders if the casting was right on this occasion.
‘Who is Erin Carter,’ ironically, cannot find the answer to its eponymous question. The show only scratches the surface of an interesting premise that could still have passed as watchable television if not for the below-par execution.
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Verdict - 5/10
5/10
Absolutely unwatchable towards the last episode … so stupid and silly and unbelievable. I wouldn’t even start to try and defend the ending….
I agree totally with the author of this article! Too many unrealistic scenes & situations. The writers/directors and subsequently, the actors, failed due to implausible plot line & superhuman survival skills that are not to be believed!
I definitely got an anorexic male vibe from the lead. I clocked the lead as a biological male within seconds. As a woman who was looking for a female hero lead or at least a female antihero lead, that ruined it for me from the start.
But I wanted to be fair to the story and watched a couple of episodes to give the story itself a fair shake.
Of course, everyone knows that there are no women who can consistently and repeatedly disarm, let alone destroy, men physically with hand-to-hand combat, even with a tactical hit-and-run approach. But i was willing to suspend belief in order to go on an interesting journey that could be realistic under the right circumstances (like we did in other improbable stories like The Walking Dead).
Belief can only be suspended for so long. There needs to be reciprocity with the audience for suspending their belief to join you. That means giving them some bit of realism or credibility along the way.
All of the men are portrayed as weak and stupid. Some are evil and weak and stupid. Ok, we get it – men are mostly stupid and ineffective in this world. Only “women” can save us now.
The supporting characters, especially the women, seem to be completely incurious about all of the unexplainable events that occur around them. They are unable to make sense of their observations, nor do they try too hard to do that. They do nothing to demand strength and competence from their male counterparts. They don’t discuss their observations with each other and they formulate no hypotheses about what is going on. No one I know would behave like this.
I give up.
Episode 1: Seriously? She’s gonna dig change out of her purse for her daughter with her BLOODY HANDS? Snuggle in bed with her daughter wearing the BLOODY DRESS? (maybe washed her hands at this point) And, wearing the same BLOODY DRESS, straddle her partner for some lovemaking. PLEASE!!! I’m out.
Erin’s daughter, Harper, reminded me too much of Harry Potter. So annoying. 👎
I got halfway thru episode 4 and I couldn’t take it anymore. This Movie became too stupid for me to watch for one more second. 110 pound woman beating huge dudes and never gets a scratch. All the males in this movie were portrayed as wimpy idiots. I found this review to be quite accurate. – Don’t bother with this drivel.
This show was AMAZING. It grabs you from beginning to finish. If watching women kicking ass AND handling issues her way – isn’t your thing then I guess you wouldn’t like it…this review is mind boggling to me and so off base.
What I sound incredulous, and what boggles my mind more than anything was the fact that she was in all of these major ‘fights,’ and never had a drop of blood on her~nor a sign of an injury, i.e. broken nose, bloody lip, blackeye, etc. after all these major altercations. This show is unwatchable, unbearable, insulting… and this review is absolutely point on