Netflix’s Firefly Lane is a people pleaser but lacks good storytelling

Netflix’s latest release Firefly Lane has been been trending at #1 in India. Based on Kristin Hannah’s 2008 novel by the same name, the 10-episode series unfolds in flashbacks the development of a three-decade long friendship between Tully Hart (played by Katherine Heigl) and Kate Mularkey (Sarah Chalke).The series is created by American screenwriter and producer Maggie Friedman. 

The show begins by introducing the characters as they are in the present day. Tully is a popular American host of talk show The Girlfriend Hour. Her best friend Kate is a home-maker, going through a divorce, and trying to get back in the workforce.

It is the perfect portrayal of a friendship between a powerful woman, with a wrecked-past that makes her cold-hearted and ambitious, and a nerd from a stable family, who shies away from the limelight, and sacrifices her own needs to fulfil the whims of her best friend.  

Going back and forth between the 80s and now, the show covers every phase of the friendship. The life of Tully and Kate before they met, the awkward first meeting, becoming best friends in school (to a point where batchmates start shaming them as lesbians), to sharing dreams of becoming journalists, ending up at the same college, and finally to their middle-age — the present. 

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Firefly Lane manages to maintain consistency throughout the portrayal of the three decades.

Friedman does so by keeping some parts of each character intact — Tully’s blue eye-shadow, Kate’s nerd glasses, and her husband Johnny’s (also Tully’s producer) passion to cover war stories.

On the surface, Firefly Lane is about the highs and lows of a female friendship. However, scratch a little and the series covers broader themes of mother-daughter relationships, stigma attached to homosexuality, romantic relationships, and PTSD.

The series highlights the various faces of a mother-daughter relationship and how it affects character development over the course of time. Tully’s relationship with her addict single-mother makes her reassess her decision to embrace motherhood. 

Kate, who grew up seeing her mother sacrifice her interests to keep the family together, wants to set a different example for her daughter Marah. However, Kate refuses to be demeaned by her daughter’s indifference towards the cause of her parents’ separation and her constant subtle reminders of how Kate is responsible for the family falling apart. 

The character development is beautifully portrayed with every episode providing a background history as to why each character behaves a certain way. While the unfolding of each episode seems essential, the narrative gets a bit slow and seems forcefully dragged in certain parts.

Firefly Lane also comes with a certain sense of mystery right from the first episode. The audience sees Kate and her daughter preparing for a funeral. Tully is not present in any of these funeral scenes that unfold in bits and parts through the first seven episodes, hinting that it might be her funeral.

While the thought behind these short scenes was to tease the audience and keep them hooked, it dulls out as one proceeds into the series. 

Heigl fits the role just right. It almost feels like Tully’s role was written keeping her in mind. It is refreshing to see an otherwise doubtful and under-confident morning show host Abby Richter from The Ugly Truth and Izzie from Grey’s Anatomy, play a bold and confident reporter in Firefly Lane.

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Chalke’s potential as an actor is not tapped to the fullest and leaves the audience wanting to know more of her side of the story. 

At various points throughout the show, one is reminded of Netflix’s last year release Sweet Magnolias, which also revolved around subplots of post-divorce romance, menopause, and three-decade-long friendships.

The music provides comical relief as history unfolds, and the overcompensating sex scenes and usage of curse words seem a bit out of place in certain episodes. 

Firefly Lane also reassures us women that while ‘men may come, and men may go’, our girlfriends stick around, irrespective of the situations.

It is definitely a people-pleaser series but it misses a crisp storytelling element and can bore the audience in some parts.