‘Fool Me Once’ is Fine

Yet another mediocre Netflix mystery.

Fool Me Once takes us into the world of Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) as she seeks to unravel the mysteries surrounding the recent deaths of her husband and sister.

This show starts with an interesting premise and a pretty gripping first episode but kind of coasts from there. All in all, I think Fool Me Once is a pretty middling mystery series. Everything is okay, which makes it watchable enough, but it’s not memorable, which seems to be a trend among Harlan Coben's Netflix adaptations.

I’ve watched a bunch of these, but couldn’t tell you which ones or what they were about. Now that I’m writing this, I’m not sure why I keep watching these types of limited series. Maybe I’ll be able to give up middling mysteries at some point, but that day isn’t today.

Let’s get back to Fool Me Once…

While there are some good and interesting twists and turns throughout, I think there are just too many episodes. The story follows many different threads, some rather important to the plot, and others are just red herrings or fluff to fill the runtime.

Since this is based on a novel, I’m quite curious what the novel does with all of these pieces and how it weaves them together maybe more effectively than the show does.

One aspect of Fool Me Once that I did appreciate is that Maya is a former soldier. That experience has obviously affected her, and she’s still dealing with some of the trauma she endured while serving.

The show does a great job of slowly unraveling what that experience was like for her and her refusal to talk to anyone about it. We come to learn that she’s not just dealing with some form of PTSD, but there’s real shame connected to some of the decisions she made while in uniform.

Maya’s friend Shane (Emmett J Scanlan) served with her and constantly encourages her to get help. He sees that she is struggling with many things, including the deaths of her husband and sister, only mere months apart. Instead of sitting idly by, he attempts to connect her with a therapist.

While she shirks off going to therapy, claiming she doesn’t need it, it was nice to see how open these two former soldiers talk about it. And to see a military man encouraging a friend to get help is a breath of fresh air.

It takes a long time for stigmas to change, and it’s nice to see our entertainment maybe helping to normalize seeking help with our mental health when we need it.

Fool Me Once is a mystery with a lot of different threads to try and keep straight. Some are very clearly connected to the central case at the heart of the series, others seem to be filler or misdirection. But the show is still very watchable.

The show does get into important topics and themes around wealth, power, and the lengths people will go to keep those things. It also shows some of the ramifications of the technology we have at our fingertips today and how that can have very real-world effects.

While I don’t think I will remember this show in a couple of months, I do appreciate what this show tries to do.

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