Claire Wilson (Kate Mara) the hotter than Hades teacher actually looks younger than Eric Walker (Nick Robinson) the student who seems afflicted with progeria and possibly priapism. In fact, many of the students, particularly the one called Logan, resemble hard-living, chain-smoking late 40 somethings. Weird casting calls. Mara really shines and carries the show, especially in the later, heavier episodes. She brings gravitas and her best performances since House of Cards. Caught somewhere in that sticky gray mess between victim and perp. Though it seemed the pupil not the teacher was much more the aggressor. The true victim here was the 14 year old girl who looked more like 11 that was groomed by Logan, a dude who looked old enough to be her creepy, trying way too hard to be hip grandfather. Solid spot performances by the actor who channeled his inner Ben Foster as Mara's empathetic cop brother. And the Stacy Keach googleganger that played Mara's pops was damn good too. Deeply dug the moody, broody cinematography and the well lit, poetic close-ups. Hip soundtrack was somewhat incongruous with milquetoast 40 year old b-listers pretending to be high schoolers. Then again, you've got a billion heiress a-lister playing a low income jailbird school teacher...but that's a trenchant testament to Mara's brilliance and commitment to her craft as an actress. In closing, I wish I had a libertine librarian type teacher like Claire Wilson. Instead I was stuck with bad habit nuns and a lilliputian ginger we called Miss D. who loosely resembled a female Clint Howard. Yikes. Anyway, this was light years better than the movie which spawned it. One lingering concern though is why doesn't anybody have a big ol' Texan accent? Another one is, which genius decided Canada would kinda sorta pass for Texas? Duh.
