Echoes is a new limited series on Netflix starring Michelle Monaghan. It’s the story of twin sisters who swap lives and get tangled up in all sorts of criminal activities. I have to admit, by the end of it, I still didn’t know who was who! After seven episodes, I had more questions than answers and while I do like a good mystery, all things should be answered by the end. It is an interesting story, that may be the best description I can give it, but what should have been built to a great twist, leaving you on the edge of your seat, it’s a story that fizzles out pretty quickly after two episodes and feels more like a soap opera than anything else. Honestly, I feel like I’ve seen this particular story in an episode of As the World turns when I watched it with my grandmother as a kid. Yes, that’s a whole nother story! Limited series stories should have a great starting point and have a clear ending. There’s a lot of good ones based on Harlan Coben novels. But this particular series left me more bewildered than anything else. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t check it out if you’re looking for something interesting to watch because you’ve watched everything else on Netflix, but its not as good as it should be.
The best thing about Echoes is Michelle Monaghan. Her dual performance playing both sisters is fantastic. She’s a great actress to begin with and she plays this role brilliantly. She plays the character so well that you probably are more confused by the end and that’s not necessarily a bad thing which leads to an interesting twist. But she’s really the only bright spot to this series.
While it does have a great cast with actors like Matt Bomer from White Collar and Karen Robinson from Schitt’s Creek, it’s not enough to keep you vested in the series. For me, I finished it because I wanted to get to the end, but it’s not anything I would ever go back to. However, the performances are good and Victoria Abbott, who plays the younger version of the twins does an amazing job as well. But the thing is you still need a good story to make a show like this worth watching.
Mostly what doesn’t work is the story itself. Yes, it’s interesting to have twins swap lives and give a bit of a backstory to why they started doing it, but if the main plot boils down to a soap opera-ish storyline about twin sisters basically being jealous of one another and the lives they had, that’s not really interesting. That’s boring. I’m trying to give away spoilers, but that’s essentially what the story is, jealous twin sisters. Again, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that in an episode of As the World Turns or was it Guiding Light, who knows they all have the same stories. One thing that really did annoy me is that I literally kept getting confused about who was who between the sisters. Which one really had the breakdown, which one had it all together and fell in love with the boy from high school who was an outsider? Because the characters switch lives so often, it’s hard to keep up even until the end because you don’t really know which sister ends up back home with her therapist husband. I almost expected both sisters to show up and kill the one person who knew what they really did. Now I’m not saying that storylines with twin sisters swapping lives can’t be interesting, but the plot needs to be more believable than what you would see in a soap opera. It’s an interesting 7 episodes. I’m glad it was a limited series because trying to stretch out this storyline for multiple seasons would have been ridiculous and would have moved beyond “jumping the shark.” The story works for seven episodes and while it does keep you guessing until the end, I have to admit, once the story is over, you’ll be more glad that it’s over than feeling excitement over the twist at the end. However, the one bright spot is the brilliant performance by Michelle Monaghan, she gives an award-winning performance even if the story isn’t that good.
