WARNING: The following contains  spoilers for Season 1 of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, now streaming on Netflix.

In Netflix's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, Kristen Bell's Anna was struggling with depression, diving into wine and pills to get over a family tragedy. Her husband, Douglas, left her in the wake of their daughter Elizabeth's death, which shattered Anna's world and left her lonely. However, as Anna began investigating a murder mystery in her quiet little suburb, it felt like Elizabeth's death was somewhat of a tasteless joke.

Initially, Elizabeth seemed real, with Anna taking her to school and chatting at home, only for the series to reveal she was all a hallucination due to Anna's fractured psyche. Clearly, Anna held guilt over the death and it wasn't until she called her therapist in a state of panic that fans found the truth out.

woman in the house kristen bell slurping wine

In the past, Anna convinced Douglas, a psychiatrist working with the FBI forensics unit, to take Elizabeth with him as it was take-your-kid-to-work day. Anna painted at home, which wasn't exciting for Elizabeth, thus Douglas reluctantly took the child to a prison. Unfortunately, he got called out of the interrogation room, leaving young Elizabeth with a cannibal known as Massacre Mike.

The door locked and they couldn't get it open, which led to the man murdering and devouring the child off-screen. Now, this shifted the tone of Season 1 from comedy to something more macabre, but the execution felt silly. Firstly, it's hard to see officials in the jail letting a little child into the room as she could hear sordid details and get scarred. Plus, Massacre Mike wasn't properly restrained, so he could have attacked the father and/or daughter at any time.

It's also quite ridiculous to think no one had a key to open the door and save the child. In addition, it's silly that no security guard was in the room at all, keeping watch in case the serial killer got violent. It's also farfetched to see him killing and eating the girl in such a short period of time before someone intervened, so the whole ordeal just felt outlandish. Given that Mike had a goofy grin, it might have been that the series just wanted to poke fun at the genre and push the envelope in terms of how dark the comedy could go.

woman in the house husband douglas

It's still a bad punch line because there's nothing funny about a child's death, not to mention that we never saw why Douglas and Anna didn't work it out over the incident. They're both culpable, but it felt like Anna bore most of the weight, with Douglas going on to have a happy life, socializing with colleagues, while his wife wallowed in self-pity. There were many moments for this brand of humor, but Elizabeth's death wasn't one to trivialize, as it could trigger trauma for parents who lost kids. Caution should have been exercised, which was best summed up by Anna being afraid of the rain.

A downpour started that day as Douglas and Elizabeth left for the prison, with Anna giving Elizabeth an umbrella, so that fatal day held a lot of sentiment. Since then, Anna kept collapsing and passing out in the rain, evoking a sense of gravity, which should have been kept for Elizabeth's ultimate fate to be a bit more tactful and respectful. Seeing as grief and mourning played such a major role in Anna's eventual arc, to the point she sometimes felt suicidal, the whole premise of the death just should not have been played up for laughs.

See how Elizabeth's death is made a joke in Season 1 of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, now streaming on Netflix.

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