Little Birds Review: Season 1 Episode 6

Little Birds goes out with a beautiful bang on Season 1 Episode 6. All the noise and extraneous subplots and characters are filtered away leaving us with a stripped-down and satisfying finale. 

Early on in the episode, Lucy (Juno Temple) frees Hugo (Hugh Skinner) from the cage of their marriage as well as her father’s degrading tirade. It is an act of mercy for both Hugo and the story. I appreciate this narrative uncluttering as the season comes to an end. 

I have been saying (probably ad nauseam at this point) that the focus needs to center on Lucy and Cherifa (Yumna Marwan). They have had far too little screen time together, but this finale makes up for it exceedingly well. The building of anticipation seems to have paid off even if it was sometimes frustrating along the way. 

This intimate dinner party scene is to die for—quite literally for the two horrible men in attendance—and it’s a big part of why the finale is so satisfying. The interactions between Lucy and Cherifa are everything I was hoping for and then some. 

There is the feisty banter that adds tension because we are not yet sure these two women are on the same page about the night’s proceedings. 

Cherifa: My mother taught me how to make it [pastilla].
Lucy: My mother taught me not to eat sweet things. 
Cherifa: You only think it’s sweet because of the sugar, but it’s not sweet.
Lucy: It looks really sweet.
Cherifa: Yes, but it’s not. 

Marwan excels at line delivery. I really do hang onto every word.

Temple exhibits a bit of Lucy’s brattiness here and it works. She’s in the presence of her tyrannical “daddy,” so it’s as if she has reverted back to the malleable girl she was before coming to Tangier. But, it appears to be an act which is shown through the crafty subtlety of Temple’s performance. 

And the cover is deliciously blown when she shoots dear daddy in the head. He has her by the shoulders and is screaming in her face, which is extremely anxiety-inducing. Finally, he is silenced with a bullet to the brain and a cheeky “Shh” from Lucy.

Like I said before, it is so utterly satisfying. 

There is even more blissful relief and poetic justice after this. Lucy and Cherifa don’t let the dinner go to waste—they eat, drink, and talk about guns while “Some Enchanted Evening” plays. They leave the remote farmhouse together and Cherifa uses one of Lucy’s father’s warheads he had come to Morocco to sell to blow it to smithereens.

Again, very satisfying.

If you look at the six episodes as a whole, Little Birds is compelling story with some slow parts, including a few that could be called borderline indulgent. Those lulls are but a blip among the cinematic beauty that saturates the show. 

There is a uniqueness in valuing aesthetic over all else, and Little Birds is a rare success in this area. There’s something Lynchian about it and eerily magical. It is scintillating and titillating in a way some art films try to be. Incidentally, La La Land comes to mind. 

The use of color is phenomenal. I would probably watch this show just for that. The blue and red lighting achieves unbelievable harmony. The sun-baked exteriors with flawless skies and the boldly lush interiors work in concert with each other. 

I mean, I would have multiple love affairs with some of these palates. And along with the framing and use of angles and foreground, some moments truly take my breath away. 

A story with sexy Shakespearean notes, erotic symbolism, and stunning imagery make Little Birds a piece of art, and one that bewitches and enraptures, even if I doubted it at times.

Little Thoughts:

• I love the opening titles—it really sets up the whole vibe of the show. 
• The bit where Lucy and Cherifa hold eye contact while the men have a (figurative) pissing contest across the table above them is a brilliant illustration of how Little Birds plays with allegorical suggestiveness and finespun creativity.
• Hugh Skinner really does teary devastation well.
• The red roses that the Secretary picks from the garden is what really gave me the Lynchian vibes—it is very Blue Velvet-y. 
• In my review of Little Birds Season 1 Episode 5, I wrote, “I hope that Cherifa finds a way to live as freely as she is in her soul and for Lucy to free herself from the cages that hold her.” How cool that I got exactly that and that it went further, exceeding my expectations. I love this finale, and it makes me like and appreciate the series even more.  

What did you think of the Season 1 finale of Little Birds? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Little Birds Season 1 is now streaming on Starz.

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