by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

This is a spoiler-free post – if you haven’t yet watched or finished Mare of Easttown, feel free to safely proceed reading.

Mentions of HBO’s stunning Mare of Easttown hit me all at once, or at least that’s how it felt. Everything was quiet and then all of a sudden, boom, the show was everywhere, tracking me like the cookies tell the internet I’m on the hunt for wide leg jeans. Mare quickly became one of my favorites, thanks to its sinewy, twisty plot but it’s the characters who inhabit Easttown, an area outside Philadelphia, that will never leave me. Having recently moved away from Philly, Mare has reinforced my nostalgia for a city I called home for the past 20 years.

(One piece of housekeeping before I get moving: while I don’t think all the areas lovingly depicted on Mare are necessarily Philadelphia suburbs per se, in this post I refer to them as “Philadelphia, Philly, and the Philadelphia area” interchangeably. My sincerest apologies in advance if this is mislabeling or offensive to anyone in the region.)

It started with a couple innocent mentions from the person who runs the Instagram account Deuxmoi, recommending Mare of Easttown’s true crime shenanigans. Then a Deuxmoi tipster submitted something about its star Kate Winslet that piqued my curiosity, how she would frequent K’Far, a Philly café / bar I wanted to try before moving out of the area that I couldn’t thanks to the pandemic. The person who wrote in said they worked at K’Far and Winslet frequented the establishment during Mare’s filming and was like, totally cool and stuff. Later, Deuxmoi (I think? It’s blurry) posted again with a screenshot of an article proclaiming Winslet’s love for Wawa, a beloved PA/NJ/DE/VA/FL(?) convenience store institution and by this time I was at full attention. The Great Kate (not to be confused with The Great Cate) adores Wawa? I adore Wawa! She loves upscale Michael Solomonov restaurants? I love upscale Michael Solomonov restaurants! Clearly, we have so much in common.

Litrilly a few hours later, my father, a Wawa devotee (though our Wawa family history is a bit complicated – more on that later) sent me the SAME article about Wawa-loving Winslet. By then, I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I must watch Mare of Easttown immediately!” And then, what felt like mere minutes later, I received numerous highly urgent texts from my friend Bethany imploring me to watch Mare post-haste. Bethany put me on high alert because Evan Peters was also in Mare of Easttown (we are Peters fans, to put it mildly). An Evan Peters with a superb Delaware County (Delco) / Philly-esque accent. Which explains why I watched the first three Mare episodes within hours. It was official. Me and Mare were involved.

Here’s my random, unsolicited thoughts on the “Philly” or “Philly adjacent” accent: it’s really hard to do, right? I cannot replicate it to save my soul. My wife can say “home” pretty well. I haven’t found many actors to be all that great at it, when they’ve tried. Tina Fey does a good one, but she grew up in Upper Darby, PA so it tracks. All of the actors on Mare do a pretty damn good job – sure, the accents are sometimes fleeting and focused only on a few words, but it’s pretty convincing and adds even more to the whole ambience of the show’s location. (If your heart warms at the sound of the Philly accent, check out @paradenoia for some fun).

Now, about the show’s subject matter. I love true crime – movies, tv shows, books, podcasts, you name it. A personal favorite is Cold Case Files, a docuseries on A&E that I would watch to death when I lived alone but had to stop because 97% of the cases profiled involved…women being murdered while living alone. I’m also prone to lots of nightmares and creepy dreams so I tend to consume anything mildly scary or horror-y or true crime-y at a minimum. Mare of Easttown, while no picnic in its depictions of murder, kidnapping, and violence against women, appeared to be an easier pill for me to swallow with its small-town hijinks, Lady Hawks nostalgia, Philly-area/Delco accents, Wawa cameos, and the food. Dear god, the food.

In the first episode, we’re introduced to messy, no bullshit Mare (Saint Winslet), a bit of a big fish in a very small pond, Ms. Lady Hawk herself, as she rush-drives to work and bless her, flat-out slams a breakfast sandwich while hanging up on her ex-husband who’s innocently trying to inform her that yes, he’s engaged to someone else. I know breakfast sandwiches are pretty common throughout the world, but in the Philly-area they are cherished. Breakfast sandwiches are a GD artform. Everyone has their fave cart or food truck or deli or spot and their preferred style and toppings. For some, it all comes slathered on a long roll, others a bagel, or a Kaiser. Any combination of bread-type lifeform, egg, cheese, and breakfast meat is okay in my book – I do not discriminate (unless your name is spelled S-C-R-A-P-P-L-E). Towards the end of my 20-year Philly career, my favorite place for a breakfast sammy was Artisan Boulanger off East Passyunk (their croissant sandwiches send me, amen). But on any ordinary day at the office, the Old Nelson on 20th and Chestnut was perfectly perfect for a bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. Or the Wawa on 19th and Market would do when I was running superrrr late (I’m into turkey sausage bagel Sizzli things). And so, look, if I had to put money on it, $10 says Winslet is housing a pork roll, egg, and cheese in the first ep. And while some might write off the moment as just a funny bit, I disagree. It’s not just an important scene because it shows Mare’s a busy detective lady, it’s important because it’s iconic.

Mare of Easttown came about at a pretty interesting time for me as I happily moved from Philadelphia to Toronto last fall to be with my wife full-time (finally, after two years, no more long-distance!). I know with 136% accuracy that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be and don’t want to be anywhere else – but I spent 20 years of my life in Philly, the longest I’ve lived anywhere, and I left behind so many beautiful friends and memories. Sure, I can text and Zoom and FaceTime and email and DM them on IG when they post fun stories but it doesn’t necessarily replace the experience of being there, living life day in and day out with them. And it’s a pandemic. So I really just miss my friends, y’all. Watching Mare of Easttown reminded me that it’s not just my friends that I miss – it’s the city itself – lovely and messy and traumatized much like Mare herself.

Further fueling my Mare obsession is my family’s allegiance to local convenience store lore. My father has some kind of job working with convenience store owners (don’t ask me, I can’t explain it) and has done a lot of work over the years with Wawa and Sheetz, another Pennsylvania staple, since I was in high school. My dad’s wife also used to work for Wawa. As a kid, my brother and I participated in Sheetz Family Christmas and were fully educated on the Wawa vs. Sheetz discourse (Sheetz implemented touchscreen ordering well before Wawa and has no-bake cookies but Wawa provides an overall more satisfying customer experience). Wawa to me, is one of the happiest places on Earth. Their Irish Cream coffee cream can’t be beat. The cheese-stuffed pretzel? A literal delight. And if you don’t believe me, check out the whole month where they celebrate Wawa hoagies called Hoagiefest. I grew up on their Shorti hoagie, came of age on the Junior, then graduated to the Classic. Which is the same as saying: Philly still feels like home.

And maybe Philly still feels like home because it always will be in some way for me. I think I needed Mare of Easttown, despite its dark storyline, because it enveloped me in the deepest, warmest Philly hug, with its hoagies and cheesesteaks and Herr’s chips and Tastykakes lovingly strewn on the kitchen table and Giant brand food in the freezer and welcoming cups of steaming hot Wawa coffee. But it’s not just the food - Mare herself is a hero – not just for the area but for towns everywhere going through opioid epidemics or gentrification or racially motivated police departments or social and economic atrophy. Philly and its surrounding areas have their problems – I’m not disputing that. And many know the reputation that Philadelphians in general have out there in the zeitgeist, examples of which I will not repeat here because tired and also because Google is free. But Philly takes care of its own, much like Mare does for Easttown. The minute anyone anywhere says anything remotely negative about the area (ahem, Trump), people in the region will band together, across multiple lines and backgrounds, faster than you can blink and say, “fuck around and find out.” That is the true beauty of both southeastern Pennsylvania and Mare of Easttown – the people truly make it sing.

Listen, I still got a lotta lingering questions about the show – how did Mr. Carroll know his gun went missing? What is Richard even? Why no mentions of Zabel in the last episode? Where is Ryan’s dad now? What I know for sure is this: while I’m now happily an honorary Canadian, you can take the girl out of Philly but never take Philly out the girl. I miss you, Pennsylvania, but I’ll be back to visit. I’ll always heart you and, luckily, can re-watch Mare whenever I need a little taste of home.