How Good American Family Masters A Shocking Twist

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Good American Family 

Hulu’s Good American Family has an irresistible premise: What if the person who was supposed to bring your family together is actually the one who tears it apart? Based on the real-life story of Kristine and Michael Barnett (Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass) adopting Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid), a child with dwarfism, the show traces how their dream of building a loving family starts to fall apart, as Natalia appears to be more than they bargained for. It’s a story, despite its actual origins, that’s truly stranger than fiction. And the show saves its most extraordinary surprise for the fifth episode, written by series creator Katie Robbins, which turns everything we’ve understood so far about the characters on its head.

Good American Family commits so well to its melodramatic tone in the first four episodes that you’re convinced the Barnett family is under terror from Natalia. Melodrama gets a bad rap for being too exaggerated, and over-the-top but outrageous circumstances beget heightened emotions. And believing you’ve adopted a con artist hellbent on destroying your family is a definitively outrageous circumstance.

In the heightened world Good American Family crafts in its first half, it is understandable that Kristine would question everything about her daughter. Her pain is tangible as she tries to rescue her family from Natalia, who almost got Kristine killed in a car accident, threw her sibling's toys out onto a busy street, and poisoned Kristine’s coffee—not to mention wielding a knife in Kristine’s bedroom, threatening that her time is coming. Natalia has made it clear that she prefers Michael—whether as a father figure or something more is uncertain. Kristine is convinced that Natalia is an adult pretending to be a child, and grows desperate trying to prove that she is out to scam the family, bringing her to various doctors for answers and even screaming at her: “How old are you?” 

Eventually, Kristine and Michael successfully petition doctors and lawyers to change Natalia’s legal age from 8 to 22. While they are still her legal guardians (“To make sure she doesn’t target anyone else,” says a police officer), they move her out of their house. Everything we’ve seen so far in Good American Family suggests that removing Natalia from the family is the best thing for everyone involved.

For four episodes, Good American Family is a tragic story of a woman fighting for her life against an unassailable evil, and nobody believes her.

Until it gets completely flipped around.

The truth about Natalia Grace

Episode 5 of Good American Family finds the Barnetts without Natalia now that she lives in an apartment of her own. For the first time, the show shifts from Kristine’s perspective to Natalia’s.

Based on what we’ve seen, it’s expected that once Natalia is on her own and unable to con the Barnetts out of money, she’ll quickly get to planning her next target. But that’s not what happens. Kristine and Michael, who are convinced Natalia is faking her age, deliberately leave Natalia without her walker, severely decreasing her mobility. Terrified, she runs after the van as best as she can, crying out for her walker, as it’s “too hurty without it.” Through Kristine’s perspective, Natalia’s previous cries for help were manipulative, derived to turn Michael against his wife.

They drive off with the walker, leaving Natalia to fend for herself. Suddenly, Natalia’s fear feels painfully real. 

Her fridge is full, but she cannot cook. The cupboards are stocked with snacks, but she can’t reach them. Cinematographer Carmen Cabana makes a simple kitchen feel like an insurmountable tower, as the camera careens above Natalia trying to figure out how to make sense of the world she’s been dropped into. Natalia tenderly drags along a chair to prop herself up on the kitchen counter, crawling across the stove to get to the cupboard. She finds a can of peaches and playfully speaks to the cartoon sunglasses-clad fruit on the label. She has no idea how to open it. 

The most terrifying moment of Good American Family isn’t a single shocking scene. It’s the gradual feeling of dread that grows as you realize everything you thought about Natalia, that every judgment you made, was wrong. Natalia Grace isn’t some maniacal scammer hellbent on tearing a family apart; Natalia is a child, desperate to be part of a family after a lifetime of longing to be loved. What Kristine and Michael interpreted as threatening behavior was actually a child who’s been hurt so much, both physically and emotionally, that she’s struggling to accept the love given to her.

The heartbreaking meaning behind episode 5 

Alone in her apartment, Natalia watches television, and Kristine appears on a talk show. Natalia brings herself close to the screen, watching excitedly, eyes glowing with hope. Kristine says “Natalia, I would never give up on you.” It’s a lie, yet to Natalia, they are the words she’s always wanted to hear. In a close-up, her weary face begins to light up with happiness, a hope that this is only temporary, and she’ll be reunited with her mother soon. We saw glimpses of this Natalia—the real Natalia—through Kristine’s perspective, but here, it’s on full display. It’s powerful, and it's devastating.

That aforementioned hope dwindles when Natalia finds Kristine’s book at the library, only to find her existence has been erased from the Barnett family. Pictures with her in it have been cropped out, and there’s no mention of her in the pages. At home, she furiously scratches the photos out. Seconds later, she’s taken over by sadness and regret: she’s hurt, longing for the family that rejected her. Days later, Michael comes to visit. This is no longer the snappy, methodical, and quick-witted Natalia we’ve come to know. The real Natalia is much softer, slower, and desperate to understand what’s happening to her. She cannot understand why she’s been left to fend for herself. Imogen Faith Reid, who also has a form of dwarfism, brings a crushing sense of vulnerability, as Natalia physically struggles more and more, barely able to turn the tap on the bathtub, let alone live independently as an adult. 

But Reid’s performance goes far beyond representation. As the second half of the Good American Family unfolds, Reid gives us an entirely new side of Natalia that feels grounded and believable, and her subtle shifts in character completely reshape our understanding of everything we’ve seen so far. It challenges us to rethink how we see everything. When we watch television, whose narrative are we really watching unfold, and how does that impact what we see?