Hulu Hit

I will warn you about there being spoilers ahead and I will be slighlty reviewing before I post them so to summarize, this is a series about nine people going to a luxury spa retreat. In this article I really want to focus on the family that goes. A mother, father and their twenty year old daughter get a discount to go and for one specific reason. This show was very emotional and intriguing for me and I watched the whole series in three days.

TW: Talk of suicide is in this and it's mentioned kind of often.

The beginning gives you the basic rundown of the people involved. There's a writer, an ex-athlete addict, an undercover reporter, a school teacher and his family, a young rich high school sweetheart couple, and a generally crazy woman. If you haven't noticed, Melissa McCarthy is in this as well as Nicole Kidman, Samara Weaving and Bobby Cannavale. If Samara doesn't ring any bells for you, she is from The Babysitter on Netflix as well as Ready Or Not.

I have to be honest, when I started watching this series I had no clue what it was even about and me as a person, my thoughts are always everywhere. Some people are headed to this retreat to find themselves, others are ready to be relaxed, and there is one little devil trying to uncover secrets. This retreat is almost completely underground meaning they have no social media, they don't advertise through the internet and word only spreads by mouth about the whole thing.

Nicole plays the Russian leader of this luxury retreat who talks about being near death and she sees herself as a little girl riding her bike. Spoilers ahead of us, we come to find the little girl was actually her own daughter and she was struck by a vehicle and killed years prior. When introduced she seems very whimsical, very all-knowing, and overall just magical. I think they actually refer to her as a unicorn as well. I found her accent wavering at times, I'm not sure why she had to be playing a Russian woman unless I missed something in the series that pointed to a reason she needed to be.

My favorite little group in this is Melissa McCarthy and Bobby. I could tell from the beginning that they were going to have a unique friendship that blossoms into something else in some sort of way. I genuinely loved their banter even if I found myself frustrated with the two of them at times.

The trigger of suicide comes with the family of three who comes along on a 'discount' the dad says. He is a high school teacher and their family lost their son, the daughters twin brother, to suicide three years prior. From the start you can see something is heavily wrong with the mother and that she is struggling mentally with something. At first I thought that she was unhappy in her marriage and maybe that was why they were there but there is in fact a lot of love in their marriage even though Masha (Nicole) makes them face the loss of their son and it gets rocky.

Not only is there mention and talk of suicide in this but he died from hanging himself and there are discussions and even shots where they are in the woods and it shows someone hanging and you can see their shoes. It was heart wrenching for me to watch and to some it may be very triggering so do beware if you've read this far.

I found myself very drawn to the "social media" couple who you find out are actually high school sweethearts and how they came into their money. The woman specifically reminded me a lot of myself the way she critiques herself and her body. It did make me quite sad because she is very gorgeous and she doesn't seem to think so and I know exactly how that feels.

If you were thinking about watching this show and get the chance to I highly recommend it. I could not get enough once I started watching.