While Anna Pigeon Season 1 Episode 3 had me quite annoyed with Anna herself, “Hell is Other People” saw me hoping that Anna would leave these people in the forest and seek shelter for herself. But obviously I’m not Anna. She’s a better person than me, even though she’s a “hot mess” according to the locals. And I really like how this episode balanced out the two key components of this show: setting up a mystery in this beautiful wilderness and using it to give us some development on Anna.
For this review I kind of want to start on the last point there. Because so far we’ve only seen brief glimpses of Anna’s past when it comes to her husband. But the more that we get into this show, the longer the flashbacks are. These flashbacks paint a picture of a loving marriage that was ruined by a mysterious death. And she carries that weight of not knowing into everything that she does.
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Anna brings the trauma of her husband’s death into her relationship with Jesse, for example. They sleep together, have fun, but never connect on a deeper level even if he wants to. That changes in “Hell is Other People.” We see her actually caring and asking Jesse about his day. This changes their dynamic and makes it a little bit more intimate, opening the door to more. But also, you can see changes in the way that Anna is acknowledging other people’s contributions at work, thanking them for thinking of her, or even contemplating more and more about being part of this team in a more official sense.
This change is terrifying for Anna. Why? Because people are starting to see her.
Allowing yourself to be seen is terrifying. Because not only do they see the good parts of you. They see the mess too. And these people at the park are starting to see Anna. They’re starting to see past the aloofness that Anna builds around herself like a fortress. They see her kindness, her heart, and her pain. All of that is leading to them wanting to get close to her. But all Anna can probably think about is how the last time she let someone get close to her, they were murdered. Basically, trauma. But she’s working through it!
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Then there’s the mystery of it all that Anna was involved in “Hell is Other People.”
Every single mystery Anna finds herself in acts as a lesson that chips away at her past trauma. And it shows us, the viewer, a little bit more about how she got to this place. This mystery just so happened to be very Alpine divorce. And I really like how Anna trusted her gut and let it guide her down a treacherous hill or when facing the husband and the ensuing fire. But back to what I said earlier about Anna being better than me. Kudos to those actors and the writing because I couldn’t stand them, their arguing, or how they weren’t listening to the trained professional.
At this point in “Hell is Other People,” I’m starting to get a clearer understanding of where this show is going. And it’s definitely due to the pacing that the show is going with on top of them trusting me on this journey instead of spoon-feeding me everything, from the romance to the trauma Anna has. What we’re seeing is a woman finally starting to face her past, grow some roots, and decide who she wants to be now that her life has changed so drastically. And I’m super curious, and excited, at what survives or thrives while she’s going through this metamorphosis.
Anna Pigeon airs new episodes Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on USA Network.
