Peacock's All Her Fault gets maternal guilt (and subsequent wins) just right

Peacock’s All Her Fault begins with the scene every working parent has rehearsed but hopes never comes true: you show up to pick up your kid from a playdate, and no one at the house has ever heard of your kid. Or you. It’s the sort of moment that makes your brain begin its endless autopsy.

This eight-episode series has been adapted from Andrea Mara’s 2021 novel. All Her Fault stars Sarah Snook as Marissa Irvine, a finance mom who knows every single thing about her son Milo and yet is still blamed for his disappearance. In this universe, maternal guilt is used as a weapon, you see.

Creator Megan Gallagher said she drew from her own years of trying to do it all. All episodes dropped at once, and it's a binge that’s too familiar for anyone who has been expected to excel at both career and child-rearing while smiling.

Every way All Her Fault captures maternal guilt

The maternal guilt in All Her Fault detonates. The moment Milo goes missing, every question pointed at Marissa is dipped in judgment. Who made the playdate? Why this nanny? Why that meeting? Should she have been at work?

Marissa’s husband, Peter (Jake Lacy), floats through fatherhood and parenting only when it’s convenient. Detective Alacaras' (Michael Peña) constant questions at first imply that if a mother isn’t omnipresent, she has failed.

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Then there’s Jenny (Dakota Fanning), a new friend and fellow mom who confesses about the mental load, the PTA guilt, and the fantasy of disappearing for a weekend without anyone asking where the lunchbox is! But the amount of scrutiny she faces at school, at home, and even with so-called friends is mind-numbing. It is as if she were the one who willfully got little Milo kidnapped.

Weaponized incompetence rears its head in a flashback where Marissa, desperate from no sleep, asks Peter to look up how to get baby Milo to sleep, and he says, "Sure. Just tell me what you want me to do." UGH!

The show maps all the bruises even modern-day mothers carry.

And yet All Her Fault earns its wins

Without spoiling the twists (and there are many, trust us!), All Her Fault doesn’t leave its women drowning in guilt. It lets them claw back agency.

Friendships don’t pit women against each other but instead bring them together. You'll see that with wine sipping at school events to an ultimate victory that cannot be seen coming, unless you've read the book, that is!

The detective work expands into households that look perfect from the outside and hollow on the inside. The series peels open the lives of siblings, in-laws, business partners, and nannies, and you won't want to miss the last two episodes for answers to each of these mysteries. Just know that every sharp edge cuts someone.

While the truth unfurls slowly, it knows viewers are paying attention. The wins are meaningful, as the flickers of power root from where guilt once burrowed.

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All Her Fault is streaming now on Peacock.

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