'The Girl From Plainville': Strong Performances Buoy Shallow Plot

BOSTON — The first episode of "The Girl From Plainville" opens on a familiar beat – a slowed-down cover of a pop hit, in this case The Ronettes' "Be My Baby," juxtaposed over impending dread, like the moments leading up to a 17-year-old boy's suicide.

The marriage of sweet and sickly is meant to haunt the viewer, and it might've worked the first time it appeared in a trailer for a summer blockbuster, or the opening credits of a true-crime docuseries. Here, it's an accidental reminder that we're treading familiar ground.

For viewers who aren't familiar with the Michelle Carter "texting suicide" case – a feat of sequestration from local and national media coverage, an HBO documentary and an exposé in Esquire Magazine – the performances and storyline are compelling enough to keep tuning in.

But the first three episodes of "The Girl From Plainville" struggle to go beyond the surface, taking liberties with the very real and very tragic relationship between Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning) and Conrad Roy (Colton Ryan), while a police investigation putters along in the background.

Ahead of each episode is a disclaimer that certain elements of the story have been dramatized for television. It's hard not to think what transpires on screen between Michelle and Conrad is mostly conjecture, and even tougher to stomach when you consider Michelle is the only one left to tell their story.

We're reminded several times that no one in Conrad's orbit knew who Michelle was: she meets his mother for the first time at his wake, her own parents "never even heard his name" and his best friend tells police the "star-crossed lovers," as she bills them, only met in person once or twice.

But the show's second episode treats viewers to a meet-cute at a retirement village in Naples, Florida, followed by a magical day of riding bikes, buying bunny ears at a gift shop and pouring their hearts out to each other, punctuated by a first kiss on the beach. The next scene is a fight between father and son over Conrad ditching his little sister at a pizza shop, one of several instances where Conrad's mental health struggles boil over.

It all plays out like a teen drama. Conrad's parents just don't understand their son, he feels alienated from his friends, and can only find comfort in his relationship with Michelle, which mostly takes place through texts and phone calls. Michelle, meanwhile, is an outcast at school, and the series hints at a rift among friends that developed at some point between the present and a softball tournament years earlier.

Fanning and Ryan are a believable couple, and turn in sympathetic, nuanced performances as their individual characters. It works in Ryan's case: one of the show's strengths is reminding us that, despite Michelle Carter dominating the headlines, Conrad Roy was real, and this is just as much his story.

Fanning has a taller order: the show has few answers for why Michelle hijacked her boyfriend's death to turn the limelight on herself, beyond "she did it for attention," which lets her off the hook too easily when there are the millions of uncool teenagers who don't encourage their significant others to take their lives.

Running concurrent to the various timelines – which the series jumps liberally, and at times, confusingly, between – is the police investigation into Conrad's suicide. It's unclear why Detective Scott Gordon initially suspects foul play, but he spends the bulk of the first three episodes trying to convince people Michelle has done something.

Once he gets his hands on the couple's texts, and learns that Michelle lied about her boyfriend being missing for three days before his death, it doesn't take much to convince Assistant District Attorney Katie Rayburn to pursue a manslaughter case. Rayburn starts Episode 3 begrudgingly approving a warrant to seize the teen's electronic devices, and one pool game and an incriminating text message later, she's got Michelle dead to rights.

The show ultimately suffers by trying to balance both plot lines. Later episodes will likely focus on the trial and Michelle Carter's involuntary manslaughter conviction, a precedent-setting legal case in Massachusetts that was already depicted in HBO's "I Love You, Now Die," leaving the early episodes feeling like a missed opportunity.

"The Girl From Plainville" is lifted by the performances of its leads, and buoyed by a strong supporting cast, particularly Chloë Sevigny and Norbert Leo Butz as Conrad's grieving parents. But it can't decide whether to be a human drama or a true-crime series, and ultimately comes up short in both.