The Girl From Plainville Review: Can’t Fight This Feeling (Season 1 Episode 4)
The Girl from Plainville Season 1 Episode 4, “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” starts to paint a richer portrait of who Conrad “Coco” (Colton Ryan) was leading up to his death. It attempts to remove some of the blame from Michelle (Elle Fanning) and add to the narrative with Coco’s complex family dynamics.
The first three episodes of The Girl from Plainville focus on establishing Michelle and Coco’s mental health issues. Still, this episode explores some of the external problems that factor into the state of their mental well-being.
For Michelle, it’s loneliness, her sexual identity, and her socially awkward behavior. Coco’s story puts a microscope on his family.
“Can’t Fight This Feeling” opens with Coco’s first suicide attempt and then follows his family as they do their best to help him.
The hospital scene in this episode establishes each of his parent’s approaches to helping. Lynn (Chloe Sevigny) wants to ensure that he goes to therapy. Conrad Jr. (Norbert Leo Butz) wants to send him back to work and school — to get him back to normalcy.
The ignoring of feelings is shared among the Conrad Roy men and is something viewers experience throughout this episode of The Girl From Plainville.
We see an example of this in the present day. Even after such a major tragedy, Conrad Sr. (Peter Gerety) tries to bury his son’s emotional needs by dismissing his request to sell Coco’s truck. For Conrad Jr., the truck is a constant source of anguish because it reminds him of Coco’s suicide.
Conrad Sr. would instead tell his son to move on than let him be emotionally devastated. It’s a sad scene to watch because it highlights the sometimes problematic ways men engage with one another.
A scene after Coco’s release from a psychiatric hospital between him and Conrad Jr. further demonstrates the divided stance Lynn and Conrad have about the best course of action to help Coco.
Conrad Jr. fails to pick up Coco’s cues that he wants him to encourage the therapy option.
Viewers later hear Conrad Jr. and Lynn argue, showing that this has become a battle instead of a united front to support their child.
Coco, unfortunately, is used to this kind of behavior and physically tries to ignore it by listening to music. This is a typical teen response and seems like an intentional or unintentional reference to ignoring the problems. He physically tunes it out, just like he tries to shut down his pain emotionally.
All these scenes between the Conrad men highlight generational attitudes that they have been taught about emotions and mental health. It appears that they view exploring one’s emotions as something weak.
The Girl from Plainville paints this as one of the reasons why Coco latches onto his relationship with Michelle. She offers a place where he can find an emotional release.
Towards the end of the episode, we again see the men in the family fail to open up. Instead of offering a supportive word to Coco, Conrad Sr. tries to buy his happiness with the truck. This scene is eerie because viewers know what the vehicle comes to represent.
It’s also a scene that shows Conrad Sr., not as a terrible man, but one who cares about his family but doesn’t know the right way to handle things such as fear, grief, and pain.
“Can’t Fight This Feeling” also reveals that Conrad Jr. was once arrested for badly beating up Coco. The reveal of this detail further highlights the sometimes volatile relationship of the Conrads.
Many families have dysfunctional dynamics, but not being able to communicate about them can sometimes have damaging, dark, and heartbreaking results, as we see with Coco’s story.
“Can’t Fight This Feeling” shows that it simply isn’t just Michelle who leads to Coco’s death — as the police of the series want to argue — but many factors, including his family life, play a part (at least in this Hulu show).
The Girl from Plainville succeeds in digging deeper into the things that led to Coco’s death while also showing that there aren’t any heroes or villains in this story.
There are just complex people who sometimes hurt and have toxic ways of dealing with that pain. However, factors such as mental health, societal norms, and learned behavior help contribute to the tragedy of this story.
Other Thoughts
- Michelle’s storyline for this episode adds to the conversation by explaining her loneliness, which is a major factor in her quest for popularity and attachment to Coco.
- The Glee fantasy between Michelle and Coco is great because it helps highlight the beautiful voices of Fanning and Ryan. Unfortunately, the latter had the misfortune of being in the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, which film critics generally panned. Hopefully, performances like his on The Girl from Plainville will help showcase his immense talents.
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New episodes of The Girl from Plainville stream Tuesdays on Hulu.
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Jerrica Tisdale
Jerrica Tisdale is your favorite neighborhood pop culture junkie. She will annoy you with random TV and film facts, while complaining about whatever is the hottest new book. She has been a TV fan all her life but writing about it for over a decade. You may find her work all over the internet especially reality TV rants. She is a senior writer at Tell-Tale TV.