Tiny Beautiful Things Review: Making Peace with Your Life

Clare Pierce is a mess.

Her marriage is on the rocks, and her relationship with her daughter is in even worse shape.

For most of her life, Clare has reacted. She reacts to everyting around her, and her reactions suck her down far lower than the once promising young writer should ever be.

Kathryn Hahn plays Clare in this Hulu adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's collection of works, "Tiny Beautiful Things."

We've seen Hahn in so many roles, and she continues being cast because she's empathetic and engaging. Clare makes terrible decisions, but you never view her as the bad guy. Thanks to Hahn's performance, Clare comes across as a lost soul aching for forgiveness.

As her life spirals before her eyes, she wonders how she got to this place. It's a question many of us ask as life carries on. Whether you're happy or unsatisfied, your life rarely looks as you'd once imagined it would.

The series uses that sentiment remarkably well, and wave after wave of emotion washes over you as Clare realizes the error of her ways and arrives at a place of peace from making them.

We meet Clare just after she's been kicked out of her home for loaning her brother a portion of her daughter Rae's (Tanzyn Crawford) college fund without telling her husband, Danny (Quentin Plair). He doesn't take it well, considering it a breach of marriage far greater than infidelity.

As with many things in life, Clare's desire to bail out her brother comes from a place of atonement, but it's not something she's ready to admit.

With no place to sleep and nobody to talk to, Clare writes advice columnist Dear Sugar for advice. That is the action that will set her life on a healthier course because, unbeknownst to her, her old college friend is currently playing the role.

He's been playing a part, but it's Clare who is really the "working class, pulled herself up by her bootstraps kind of disheveled" woman he's been portraying. Now, he wants to hand over the reins to her.

The story launches from that perspective as Clare, a gifted writer, saw her life change suddenly with her mother's death when Clare was 11. That was the year that everything changed, and the life that could have been became the life that was.

Clare's a reluctant recruit, and although she finds herself answering Dear Sugar inquiries for advice, the show doesn't focus its time on that. Instead, it revisits Clare's past to offer answers for herself and readers in the present. Surely, the wisdom she'd gleaned from mistakes can keep others from doing the same.

Tiny Beautiful Things finds Clare revisiting the most influential period of her life, which offers her a different perspective on her marriage, motherhood, and how she slammed the door on her own success story.

As a 16-year-old girl, Clare's daughter Rae would test the patience of a saint.

She's struggling with her identity and sexuality and believes her mother is key to her unhappiness, but drinking too much and testing threesomes shows that she's taking a page from her mother's playbook.

Clare is a deeply identifiable character, with behavior you recognize in yourself, even if not to the degree that Claire has experienced it.

She's constantly exasperated with a steady stream of "of course" responses.

You know what I mean. When she does something wrong and learns there's a Tiktok of her behavior, well, of course there is. The name of her daughter's crush is Montana? Of course it is. Her parents are in Barcelona? Of course they are. You hate me? Of course you do.

Actress Sarah Pidgeon plays Young Clare. She was incredible in Prime Video's The Wilds, and she doesn't disappoint here. She matches Hahn step for step in emotionally drawn scenes as the young woman who saw a brilliant life ahead that came to a screeching halt with the death of her mother, Frankie (Merritt Weaver).

Weaver is perfection in her role as a mother without the means to provide for her kids as she'd like, but full of so much love and kindness that it barely matters, certainly not to her kids who adore her and everyone else she meets, on whom she makes lasting impressions.

Frankie's illness was short and fast, claiming her well before Clare and her brother expected. During their last Christmas together, Clare scoffed at the coat her mother scraped money together to buy her, and it has weighed on her ever since. The last gift she received from her mother, and she wanted to return it for something else.

When a life ends, it's easy to focus all of your attention on what went wrong and what you didn't do, forgetting the love and laughter and everything else that made your relationship so special.

To quote The Young and the Restless, "You're supposed to have time to forgive and forget, brush things under the rug." But life doesn't care about what you're supposed to have and tosses you around like a cyclone. You either learn to move along with the changes, or you stumble repeatedly.

There are parallels between Young Clare and her mother, Frankie, and present-day Clare and her daughter, Frankie (middle name, Rae), that Clare only realizes once she begins her journey of self-discovery as Dear Sugar.

As a viewer along for that ride, Tiny Beautiful Things offers you a chance to reconsider your own choices and how well you've weathered the storm of your periods of discontent.

It's filled with inspirational nuggets that aren't shiny and new but are too easy to forget. Tiny Beautiful Things reminds you to forgive yourself and enjoy the path you've taken, even if it's not the one you imagined.

And most of all, "clanging like a bell," it reminds you of the importance of love and that the "best thing you could possibly do with your life is tackle the mother f*%#ing shit out of it."

Tiny Beautiful Things premieres with all episodes on Hulu on Friday, April 7.

Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.