Mark Duplass' Netflix Drama Is Like a Teen's 'Wild'

Hulu adaptation of Little fires everywhere debuted right at the start of the 2020 COVID lockdown, and despite being nominated for several major Emmys that fall, the miniseries has become very hazy in my memory. One thing I do remember, however, is that in casting Reese Witherspoon’s character’s daughters, the casting team found a pair of young actresses, Jade Pettyjohn and Megan Stott, who absolutely bore an uncanny resemblance to Reese Witherspoon.

Actually, I had even forgotten this detail before sitting down to watch the new Netflix drama. Penelope and immediately recognizing Stott, largely because, if you're going to make what is essentially an eight-part YA version of Wildcasting a real Reese Witherspoon lookalike as the protagonist makes a lot of sense.

It's probably not entirely a coincidence. Penelope was created by Mark Duplass, who stars alongside Witherspoon in The morning showand Mel Eslyn, who began as a longtime collaborator with the late, great Lynn Shelton, principal conductor of Little fires everywhere.

But even if Duplass and Eslyn didn’t purposely cast a youthful Witherspoon, that was a coincidence. Stott’s expressive lines and ability to swing between broad humor and grounded pathos underpin this mostly cute, mostly wholesome tale of wilderness survival. I’m not sure who the target audience is, but perhaps the show’s launch at Sundance and SXSW reveals the answer: It’s a drama for the indie teen in your life, or maybe the indie teen in you.

Penelope begins with the sixteen-year-old protagonist dancing as part of a silent rave (all attendees wear fancy headphones and dance in their own personal spaces) in a rural camping valley. The next morning, Penelope wanders around. Ignoring her mother's friendly “Time to go home!” texts, she heads to a warehouse in a nearby town, where she gravitates toward the outdoor section. As if carried by a spiritual force higher than herself, Penelope packs a bag with basic camping supplies and hops into an unsecured train car bound for elsewhere, leaving only an apologetic note for her parents. She's not angry or unhappy, she's just searching for something she can't express.

Soon Penelope travels to a national park in the Pacific Northwest and, despite not having a camping permit, sneaks into the park and begins living off the land.

What motivates Penelope is only gradually revealed and doesn't necessarily make sense, but the series alternates between matter-of-fact realism and poetic whimsy along the lines of “please don't look for realism.” All you need to know is that Penelope has lost touch with her life in the modern world and, in her unescorted retreat, is searching for an authentic version of herself. Her survival skills are close to zero, but she's lucky enough to find an appropriate title. Wilderness Survival Guide in a bookstore/cafe on her way to the forest, and is full of helpful tips to keep Penelope alive until her natural resilience kicks in. And she is very resilient.

Just as Eslyn and Duplass presumably didn't choose their main character at random, she wasn't named at random either. Penelope is on a personal odyssey, one that leads her to encounter a series of people and animals at a rate of exactly one every 30-minute episode. She meets a somewhat pretentious but generally harmless young coroner (Austin Abrams); an intense but generally harmless older environmental activist (Krisha Fairchild); and a trio of strange but generally harmless Catholic teenagers (including one played by The penguin (discovered by Rhenzy Feliz).

These people help Penelope learn general spiritual lessons: You get the message that “modern, tech-addicted teenagers have lost touch with Mother Earth and therefore themselves” without anyone needing to express it precisely, but they also give Penelope someone to talk to. In truth, Stott doesn’t really need co-stars. Sometimes the scripts encourage her to mutter to herself, and rest assured she’s chatting away to random trees and wildlife almost immediately. But Stott is so emotionally available that her every frustration or joy comes out without words. If there’s any ambiguity, Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ soundtrack with Julia Piker echoes her feelings pretty directly.

Two years ago, Netflix aired the six-part survival drama Keep breathingwith a strong central performance from Melissa Barrera. It worked well when it focused on its heroine building fires and finding food and all that fun stuff, but it was overly plotted, refusing to simply trust its My side of the mountain/Ax presumption.

Penelope he usually has more faith than In the wild nature (which is a direct reference) with a teenage girl is a sufficient story. The episodes where things actually “happen” were easily my least favorite, because the more plot you impose, the more realism the storytelling requires, and the more realism the storytelling requires, the less it works. Yes, Penelope’s experience is supposed to be literal, but if you force me to think too concretely, my thoughts will go in the direction of “Maybe Penelope shouldn’t accept the somewhat suspicious hospitality of that strange young man, no matter how harmless he seems,” or “Maybe Penelope shouldn’t try to befriend that bear cub,” or “If she spent less than $500 on her supplies, most of what she got was probably pretty low quality, and also why does she suddenly have so many changes of clothes?” Penelope It's not so completely risk-free as to encourage most viewers to follow in its footsteps, but it treats the tangible risks of its experience in a watered-down way that doesn't benefit from drawing attention to them.

On the other hand, give me a 28-minute episode where Penelope silently tries to start a fire, or one where she's engaged in a lengthy construction project, and I can thoroughly enjoy myself. After all, I'm the type who wants Lost It was just a group of survivors trying to survive on a perfectly normal island, free from smoke monsters.

Eslyn, who directed all eight installments, has no qualms about leading viewers through several extended training montages, in which we follow Penelope through a series of failures before enjoying her eventual triumphs. She and cinematographer Nathan M. Miller place Penelope within a verdant, gorgeous canopy, and mix nature porn with girl-power pop elevation in a way that hastily generates an emotional connection. The series feels like a slightly too-serious poem, hastily scribbled with a wildflower scribble in the margin. But in a good way!

The investment Eslyn and Stott earn in Penelope probably peaks a little sooner than it should. The last episode or episodes are rushed and raise more of those questions best left unasked than the rest of the series was designed to support. I don't need another season of Penelopebut one episode more or less would have been ideal.