The Girl From Plainville on Hulu is the latest series amidst the boom of true crime dramas to wrap up its retelling of a real-life tragedy. The Girl From Plainville tells the true story of Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning), a teenage girl who encouraged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III AKA Coco (Colton Ryan, ) to commit suicide. In 2017, Carter was sentenced to prison for involuntary manslaughter in what is now referred to as the "texting suicide case." Because of the way Carter and Roy communicated, this is a story all about text messages. The Girl From Plainville’s portrayal of these infamous text messages is fresh, smart, and important to making this series work.
For people who have grown up communicating via text message, it’s amazing how much emotion, tone, and nuance can come across in just a small spurt of written words. When it comes to conveying this on screen, however, this mode of communication isn't so usable. So many vital bits of info and emotion can be easily lost. It is especially difficult to convey deep, personal conversations or character development through text conversations.
Plenty of shows and movies have been faced with this dilemma: how do you convey the same caliber of emotional scenes when they’re happening in written words – sometimes even shorthand? So much power and detail is lost this way. Yet, removing important dialogue that happens in text message conversations makes it impossible to tell so many important stories. The Girl From Plainville is a perfect example of this. The series’ main characters, Coco and Michelle, communicate almost entirely via text message. This means that this is how many of the important moments, conflict, and relationship-building between the two characters happens.
From texts scrawled across the screen to closeups of characters' phones or message bubbles popping up in the middle of scenes to voiceovers, viewers have seen many attempts at conveying text conversations in an engaging way to television audiences. The Girl From Plainville had its work cut out for it in this way, but in the end, the decision was both risky and smart. Rather than trying to convey layers of emotion through the text messages, the text messages were brought to life. There are moments when Michelle and Coco’s phones are on-screen while they're texting. The messages are often displayed while they’re being typed, and the perspective switches back and forth between the two characters. But, when conversations get more intense, Coco will often appear in the room with Michelle, or Michelle will suddenly be sitting next to Coco. The scene then plays out as if the two are having a conversation face to face, rather than through their phones.
Sometimes it’s a quick switch from showing texts on phones to showing these text conversations like real, in-person dialogue. Yet, there are also moments when the reality of whether Michelle and Coco are actually in the same room together is unclear. There are moments when the viewer may be left to ask themselves whether this is a text conversation manifested as an in-person scene for the drama or whether it's literal. This sometimes blurs the line between reality and imagination, which is a concept that weaves well into this story and is very much in line with the rest of the series’ tone. The Girl From Plainville doesn’t fear disorienting viewers. It freely blurs the lines between reality and things going on within Michelle’s mind just as it confuses the difference between long-distance conversations and text message exchanges.
The most obvious benefit of bringing these two-dimensional conversations into fully fleshed-out scenes is that it allows for much more depth and connection in the exchanges the two characters have. It gives the viewers so much more insight into the emotions behind their words, and in turn, this helps the mysterious and sometimes baffling motivations involved with the story to become clearer. It is also important to note how much easier it is to follow a scene that takes place between two characters communicating face-to-face than reading their text messages.
But, the depth and ease of understanding isn't the only reason that this method of showing text conversations serves The Girl From Plainville so well. The text messages, which made up the bulk of this couple’s relationship, also act as a symbol. So much about this story, itself, is confusing and disorienting. It’s hard not to wonder why Michelle would act in this way, the real reason Coco does what he does, whether Michelle’s actions kill Coco, and whether the law offers any way to hold her accountable for her role in the tragedy. All of these questions and confusion come down to text messages. Disorienting the viewer about what is reality and what isn’t, what is going on in Michelle’s imagination, and whether Michelle is really with Coco urging him to commit suicide, only furthers the confusing, eerie feeling the story creates.
The text messages in question, of course, become vital to the court case at the series’ center. During the court scenes, the important text messages are shown on screen and recited in the courtroom just as they surely were in the real courtroom. As the confusion of what went on between Michelle and Coco gets picked apart, the words are stripped of the emotional life they’re given when the actors express them. Instead, they’re recited in a way that is much more sterile and matter of fact. This mimics the clarity that comes along with the court case and the closure that comes from justice being served. Viewers are no longer at the mercy of sometimes being stuck in Michelle's mind or wedged in the middle of their relationship. Just like those in the courtroom, the viewers are now experiencing the text messages as evidence. This puts a perfect punctuation on a fictional retelling of a true-crime story.
The need to convey text messages on screen well is sure to get greater over time. And, while this method worked well for this series, in particular, taking a page from The Girl From Plainville’s book is a tool to set up future series for success.