The first episode is *wild*
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When Connie Britton acts, we watch. Those are the rules (sorry, we don’t make them). Whether we’re talking Friday Night Lights or The White Lotus, the woman is an incredible onscreen force—and now, she’s bringing her talents to the small screen once again in Hulu’s bonkers new thriller, Phony.
Britton stars in the mysterious new series opposite another White Lotus alum, Sam Nivola. The duo play mother and son who are absolutely inseparable…almost to a creepy degree. But when Nivola’s high-schooler character Sonny gets into a car accident, he wakes up in the hospital and makes a shocking discovery: His mother has been replaced by an imposter. Has she really been swapped out? Is it all in his head? Is the entire town in on some bizarre conspiracy? Needless to say, I’ll be watching the full season to find out.
First of all, the concept is super interesting. Nothing about the show screams “supernatural” (at least not yet), meaning that if Sonny’s mom really has been replaced and the rest of the town doesn’t notice, maybe there is a deeper conspiracy going on. The pace is fast, getting right to the heart of the mystery from the jump. There are a number of twists in the first episode alone (including mounting evidence that fuels Sonny’s suspicions), and it ends with a big surprise.
Sonny entrusts several classmates as confidants and hires a private investigator, setting up what is sure to be a fun, season-long investigation into the truth.
Britton and Nivola are fabulous together. Their onscreen chemistry is extremely natural, and they make it so easy to buy that they are a mother and son who would do anything for one another (even if it does start to feel a little icky).
And even though we’re not supposed to know whether Sonny is right or if he’s in a post-coma paranoid state, Britton’s face does look different after the accident. I’m not sure exactly what the creatives behind Phony did to make her look slightly off, but it works beautifully, and it adds to the unease every time the post-accident mom and son interact.
Perhaps most exciting is that the show seems to have a lot of different directions it can go. I love being drawn into a mystery without immediately figuring it out—this one is impossible to untangle (so far, at least). I’ll be tuning in to see if that holds true further into the season…and of course to learn whether or not Sonny’s mom is a phony, after all.
The first two episodes of Phony are streaming now on Hulu with new episodes dropping each Tuesday.
