The Clearing Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Suffer the Little Children
The past can come back to haunt you, and The Clearing Season 1 Episode 3, “Suffer the Little Children,” finds Freya being backed into a corner by hers. Unfortunately, these new developments cause the pacing of the series to drag.
The mystery around the cult is what hooked viewers with the premiere, but Freya’s tragic history as an adult also follows her. Learning that she’s been separated from her daughter Max for eight years after leaving her in a car where she almost died is heartwrenching but also distracting.
Just as things start heating up with Adrienne in the present-day timeline, the show decides to switch its focus to Freya for a seemingly unrelated plot. If this kind of attention had been paid earlier in the series it may have worked better.
The letdown that the white van following them and Billy’s friend at the fence are just her estranged daughter seems to come from nowhere. It also makes Freya seem even more unreliable in her paranoia about the cult. The sale of her house by Guy Pearce’s creepy Dr. Lathan is a big red flag or a big red herring.
Palmer does a convincing job playing a paranoid, traumatized woman but there’s not a whole lot getting the viewer to invest in her. Even the flashback to when she leaves her daughter in the car doesn’t engender much sympathy.
It doesn’t explain whether she is just tired or suffering the effects of post-partum depression or what caused her to just walk away in a daze. She regrets it but her decision to never go back and never introduce Billy to his father seems erratic.
I want to care about Freya, but The Clearing leaves her motivation and actions too one-dimensional, flattened down to “damaged woman.” Hopefully, there is more to the Max story, or any part of her story aside from being Adrienne’s puppet, to make her worth investing in.
In the past timeline, Amy’s storyline is plenty engaging. Watching her rebel after Asha is allegedly returned to her family creates some necessary tension for the past timeline even if we do already know she gets out.
Her running away raises real stakes and is a far cry from the more timid version of her we see in the future. The Clearing is still not a procedural, but having Joe’s investigation comes to a head also adds some needed tension. (I half expected him to find out his partner is a part of the cult).
Once again Otto also steals the flashback scenes with her chilling portrayal of Adrienne. The opera singing during the picnic is unhinged and somehow terrifying while also being banal.
It makes you all the more excited to find out what she has planned in the present day since it’s clear she’s still just as sharp. Freya may be the POV character but it’s Adrienne who is at the heart of the plot.
Freya/Amy is more just a key to understanding who Adrienne is and what she wants, often to the detriment of keeping the audience engaged.
Between her secretive phone calls and the arrival of cult member Anton, hopefully, the next episode improves upon the show’s pacing problems and gives us the juicy present-day drama its been working towards.
What did you think of this episode of The Clearing? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Clearing airs Wednesdays on Hulu.
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Breeze Riley
Breeze Riley is a pop culture enthusiast who decided to turn her love of watching too much TV into a hobby writing about it. Although she's a convention-going sci-fi and fantasy nerd, she's just as likely to be watching an off-beat comedy or period drama. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic.