FIRST’s Review and Recap of ‘Good American Family’ Episode 1: When Adoption Turns Sinister

‘Good American Family’ Episode 1: Ellen Pompeo Delivers a Haunting Performance in Hulu’s Most Unsettling True-Crime Drama Yet

Hulu’s Good American Family turns that stabilizing effect on its head, pulling away from the familiar scrubs of good ol’ MD Grey and bordering upon psychological discomfort and suspense.

Recently, First for Women got a sneak preview for the show. And what’s their opinion? This is not just a run-off-the-mill true-crime drama but an emotional train wreck. The first episode called “Talk About Creepy” shows Ellen Pompeo isn’t planning to play just by the rules. Instead, she is losing herself into the dark side, and it is bone-chilling to watch.

A New Kind of Family

At its heart, Good American Family narrates a story so extreme that you can hardly believe it’s really happening. From the case of Natalia Gracie, a little girl from Ukraine with some atypical dwarfism, it draws you right into the eerie and disturbing experiences of the Barnetts, an ordinary family from Indiana who adopts a child they believe is seven.

Kristine Barnett (Ellen Pompeo) and husband Michael (the ever-appealing Mark Duplass) struggle to keep it together for their three boys—one being on the autism spectrum. Already complicated, one more failed adoption becomes the possible undoing of their fragile balance: Kristine holding on and hoping for a clean slate with Natalia.

Except there was something…off…from the moment Natalia stepped into their home.

Flashbacks and Foreshadowing

Beginning in 2019, you find Kristine being arrested in front of her sons and dozens of baffled supporters. While the lights of the police car flash in an eerie silence, the children are sobbing, and the entire situation breeds the kind of tension that can only be suffocating. Then a flick of the timeline takes us away—back to 2010-when seeds of chaos are quietly being sown.

The lens opens a view into Kristine’s world: financial strains, trials and tribulations of raising a child with special needs, and a marriage seemingly unsticking. But Kristine is a driven and passionate woman, so much so that she is opening a recreation center for children with disabilities, aptly named Jacob’s Place after her autistic son. Here she stands as not a villain—at least not yet. She is the mom fighting to hold on to a dream.

Enter Natalia.

When the Innocent Isn’t

Put forth as an innocent child, a sweet Ukrainian girl of seven in great need of love and stability is Natalia—everything Kristine thinks she wants. But then…

A beach tantrum, violent.
A marble bathtub with a curious fall.
Furniture demolition.
The walker that went missing.
And a child that seems intent on walking around with a knife.

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Long after Kristine starts doubting the true age of Natalia, we all have begun to question our discernment of judgment—is this child really seven? Or is there something much darker lurking under that frail figure and sweet smile?

A credit to Imogen Faith Reid, who plays Natalia, is that every time you see her on screen, it is in some way ambiguous. One second she is weeping; the next, that gaze is silent, clammy, and causing fright.

Ellen Pompeo: From Empathetic to Enigmatic
Masterstroke was truly the best expression to describe her casting; creator Katie Robbins explained it all. “She is America’s sweetheart,” Robbins told First for Women. “You automatically want to empathize with her character.”

And indeed, we chew through sympathy for her—until things twist.

Pompeo delivers Kristine with an unprecedented rawness: desperation colored her eyes. That kind of frayed intensity was adding throughout each and every scene. As viewers, we are not just watching her unravel; we are feeling her do so. The more her uncertainty regarding Natalia increases, the more we find ourselves questioning everything we have seen thus far.

By the end of Episode 1, when an hallucination comes in, Kristine wakes up to see Natalia standing over her with a knife; at this point, the victim-perpetrator dichotomy has gone completely muddied.

Is It Show or Experience?

That quote from First for Women—”It’s not a show; it’s an experience”—sits right. Episode 1 of Good American Family is more than just a simple pilot; it bashed open the doors of someone’s psychological labyrinth. Each room entered asks even more questions, and just when one’s love seems to find footing in one answer, the creaking of another door calls briskly into doubt.

Each story feels rehearsed and is executed in a way that freezes the scare. It builds a heart-racing atmosphere that simply never quite puts you at rest on the slow burn.

Final Thoughts

Good American Family’s premise is suitably haunting. At its most superficial level, it tells a story of adoption, trust, and family. However, peel back the layers, and you will find a disturbing commentary on perception, manipulation, and the terrifying possibility that perhaps the people closest to us are not who we think they are.

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Episode 1 raises far more questions than it answers-and that is absolutely its intention.

Is Natalia actually a dangerous adult pretending to be a child?
Is Kristine a heroic mother or an unreliable narrator?
And, most importantly… what happens next?

If the first episode is any guide, one thing is for sure: Good American Family is about to be your newest obsession.

So put away the popcorn-and maybe some night-lights. From here, the show only gets darker.

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