The Unsatisfying End of 'Good American Family' Leaves Out So Much

I had a number of issues with Hulu’s Good American Family, chief among them its decision to follow the same misleading approach as the docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. Rather than discerning the truth and telling that story, the series insists on presenting “both sides,” beginning with the perspective of Grace’s adoptive parents, Kristine and Michael Barnett, who fabricated a narrative that a seven-year-old girl with dwarfism was actually a 22-year-old sociopathic con artist.

It’s undeniably the more sensational version of events, but also a deeply dishonest one. Midway through, the filmmakers finally introduce Grace’s perspective, and by the end, the series concedes something closer to the truth: that Grace was born in 2003, not 1989, as the Barnetts had claimed. Yes, the Barnetts are ultimately revealed as the villains and Grace as the victim of their neglect and abuse, but only after the waters are needlessly muddied with suggestions that Natalia Grace may have been pulling an Orphan-style con all along.

Worse still, the series fails to provide any clear picture of the Barnetts’ motives, particularly Kristine’s. Michael is portrayed as a husband entirely under his wife’s control, while Kristine comes off as a cartoonish villain who masterminded the re-aging scheme simply to abandon Natalia. But the series never gives a satisfying explanation of why she did it, beyond the implication that Kristine is a narcissist so desperate to deny her failures as a parent that she concocted an elaborate plan to absolve herself of responsibility.

Granted, the conclusion of the Barnetts’ trial, just as in real life, was frustratingly unsatisfying: a judge refused to allow Grace to introduce evidence establishing her real age, making it virtually impossible for her lawyers to prove child neglect. Without confirmation that she was legally a child, their case collapsed, despite DNA evidence and possible testimony from her birth mother that could have substantiated her date of birth.

But the series also omits what came next (covered in the sequel docuseries): the Mans family, depicted in the series by Christina Hendricks and Jerod Haynes, also exploited Grace. They ran their own abusive religious cult and took advantage of Grace’s disability benefits while sticking her with the tax liability.

Grace ultimately fled them in the middle of the night, seeking refuge with the DePauls, a family in upstate New York who also had dwarfism and understood her lived reality. The DePauls finally provided the stable, supportive environment Grace needed, or at least that’s how the docuseries (and People magazine) framed it. But given how poorly the earlier chapters were handled, it’s hard to fully trust that version of the story, especially after the original series glossed over the Mans family’s abuse in favor of a more emotionally satisfying conclusion.

At least Good American Family leaves that situation more ambiguous. Still, there was clearly another episode or two’s worth of material that might have allowed the series to end on a less inconclusive, more responsible note.