Note: This story contains spoilers for “Good American Family” Episode 5.
“Good American Family” put the spotlight on Kristine and Michael Barnett for the first half of its run on Hulu. With Episode 5, viewers get a painful look into their adoptive daughter Natalia Grace’s perspective.
Titled “Too Hurty Without It,” the episode picks up with Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Read) after Kristine (Ellen Pompeo) and Michael (Mark Duplass) dropped her off at the apartment they rented for her after legally changing her age to 22. But rather than staying on the point of view of the parents, the show stays with Natalia — an 8-year-old girl with dwarfism left to her own devices.
The harrowing installment follows Natalia struggling to keep up with her cleanliness — including washing her hair with dish soap in the sink because she can’t work the faucet for the shower — and relying on perishables, all the while blaming herself for her dire circumstances. Reid said she worked with director Liz Garbus to ensure Natalia’s truth was portrayed as authentically as possible.
“I was looking at all the faucets and finding which one was difficult on my hands. I also have dwarfism and I find opening things really tricky for me as well … And they made the apartment hard for me to reach things,” Reid told TheWrap. “We really do see that Natalia was just a child … she couldn’t look after herself.”
“Good American Family” creator Katie Robbins, who also wrote Episode 5, said saving Natalia’s POV until this point in the story was by design. Up until this point, viewers have learned about Natalia through the eyes of two other characters. Now, the episode shows how Natalia obeys her adoptive mother’s order to deny that she’s a child when strangers ask.
It also shows Natalia’s errant decision-making when she sees Kristine on TV and feels the need to seek them out — bringing her neighbor’s grandson along for the ride and getting into big trouble after getting lost on the bus.
“Seeing the world through her eyes makes us re-think everything that we’ve seen in those first four episodes and assumptions that we’ve made,” Robbins said.
And like earlier episodes painted Natalia as a cunning liar, this time, Kristine and Michael got the villain edit. Separate scenes with Natalia featured Michael dismissing her pleas for help when visiting her at the apartment, which Reid called “horrible” to film. Then, after the bus debacle, Kristine showed up to let Natalia know her apartment was evicting her. She took her to a new apartment and told her all kinds of terrible things, and gave her further punishment by spraying her eyes.
“Kristine brainwashed her to think that this is all on her, but in reality, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Reid said. “Natalia was just misunderstood. She was just a child who had a lot of trauma, and if only she was taken in by a family who could have taken their time to learn about reactive attachment disorder and worked with her instead of working against her, it would have done wonders.”
Robbins praised Reid’s performance in the episode, revealing she wasn’t the only one crying on set during filming.
“We had a lot of crew members — tough people who have seen a lot and been on a lot of film sets — tearing up watching her,” Robbins said. “It’s a hard story, but it felt important to tell and Imogen was really committed to doing it.”
“Good American Family” releases new episodes Wednesdays on Hulu.
