Tell Me A Story Review: Greed (Season 1 Episode 3)
While Tell Me A Story Season 1 Episode 3, “Greed,” expands deeper into its worldbuilding, the show still doesn’t do quite enough work to solidify the allegorical parallels from the fairytale.
The archetypes Tell Me A Story pulls from are evident, but not exactly transparent.
Eddie and Jordan’s story stems from The Three Little Pigs, Kayla is Little Red Riding Hood, while Gabe and Hannah exemplify an incredibly dark version of Hansel and Grettle.
The performances are all-around exceptional, and in some cases, there is an attempt to draw specific lines from the fairytale world into the lives of the characters.
Kayla, for instance, has developed a growing bond with her grandmother, heightening the emotional stakes between them, setting up for future conflict with the still undeclared wolf.
A wolf who most likely will end up being Nick, who although was introduced as a stand-up and sensitive guy, can’t be all that morally sound if he’s sleeping with a student.
Kevin Williamson truly adores the inappropriate student/teacher relationship trope.
Whoever the wolf may be, the parallels from Kayla’s contemporary world to classic Little Red Riding Hood are fairly cemented; especially when acknowledging her progression from the refusal to wear a red raincoat in the pilot, to actively dressing in increasing amounts of red.
The Three Little Pigs storyline is a bit more ambiguous, beyond the obvious display of Eddie and his cronies wearing pig masks. If you’re not consistently analyzing the situation, the correlations may be lost on your completely.
Eddie is clearly the easiest target — the pig who builds his house from hay. His brother Mitch the pig with a house of sticks fairs somewhat better with a decent job and head on his shoulders. Then there’s third pig Sam, the pig with the big brick house, and the brains behind the whole operation.
The strangest alteration to this particular story may be the role of the villainous wolf. Tell Me A Story inverts itself here, casting widow Jordan in the part — a man ready to find justice for his wife’s death, on his own terms.
He’s an extremely empathetic character, certainly much more empathetic than the pigs who oppose him, and while the twist is unexpected, it’s certainly intriguing.
The most problematic storyline lies within Hannah and Gabe. Beyond their brother/sister dynamic, and names that sound similar to their source characters, finding any sort of parallel to Hansel and Grettle feels like a constant struggle.
The money Hannah takes could be used as a substitute for candy and cookies, but the similarities end there. It’s surprising because Hansel and Gretel is arguably the darkest of the fairytales in play, but for Tell Me A Story, the hardest one to turn contemporary.
Hannah and Gabe tend to land as the C-plot of every episode, and the lack of development around the motives of Hannah — and the background of the people hunting her — play a large part in what keeps the story underwhelming.
It’s possible as someone who grew up on princesses and bedtime stories, I’m digging too deep into the allegory of Tell Me A Story; maybe it isn’t meant to be a treasure hunt for comparisons to my favorite tales.
But, when you name your show Tell Me A Story, and market it around the modern-day retelling of classic fairytales, there are certain things I’m going to expect from my viewing experience.
It’s not that Kevin Williamson doesn’t have the chops to bring the stories to life — he’s wildly known for his ability to work meta into his shows flawlessly.
Even in “Greed,” he’s able to poke fun at his own past TV series — Dawson’s Creek and The Vampire Diaries — by joking about teenage love triangles that play out on “network channels nobody watches” (the same network that is now airing Tell Me A Story).
Of course, those broken fourth wall moments are only meant to be noticed by someone who dedicated far too many years going down the rabbit hole of cheesy teen drama. When it comes to the famous and classic stories of Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, the subtext should be far easier to parse through.
What did you think of this episode of Tell Me A Story? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Tell me A Story airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
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Kat Pettibone
Kat Pettibone is an aspiring TV writer, artist, and poet. As a Pacey Witter Fan Club lifer who never missed a TGIF, she has dreams of becoming your generations small screen Nora Ephron. She's also an avid lover of coffee, dogs and all things spooky.