'Little Fires Everywhere' Episode 5: Elena will face the truth of Mia's success through her prejudice
In the upcoming episode of 'Little Fires Everywhere', what would be fascinating is to see how Elena (Reese Witherspoon) would react to Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) being so resourceful as to fund Bebe's fight for her baby's custody. When Elena had first met Mia, she had assumed that this woman with a young girl driving around in a car was poor, a single mother who needed Elena's help. She had ended up letting Mia and her daughter Pearl stay in one of their rental properties.
In Episode 4, we saw how Mia helps Bebe fund herself. She sold a picture of herself, photographed when she was pregnant and she is nude in the picture. Turns out that the picture is valued at over $30,000 and that is how Bebe was able to hire one of the best lawyers to fight for the custody of her daughter Mai Ling who is currently with Linda and Mark.
When Elena had seen Mia working part-time at a local Chinese restaurant, she had assumed that Mia had done so out of necessity, just as many others would have. That is also the reason why she offered Mia the position of being her house help. Yes. She is racist but is not ready to accept that about herself. After all, she "lets" her daughter continue to be in a relationship with an "African-American" boy. Now, to realize that everything that she had assumed about Mia is wrong, will in a big way affect Elena.
The fact that Izzy has come to respect Mia more than her own mother will also be running in Elena's mind. For someone who claims to be the best mother, without understanding how much her privileges helped her in making the right choices as a parent; she is still unaware of how much she is traumatizing Izzy. Izzy is the youngest in the family and she feels that she might be gay. In fact, she has had a conversation with her father about it but has never spoken about this to her mother.
Mia, with her direct and blunt yet comforting approach, ends up becoming Izzy's mentor and lets Izzy work with her in the studio. It is a place that Mia doesn't allow even her daughter Pearl, and yet she lets Izzy work even while Mia is not present. This bond is something that Mia formed because she understands what living around judgemental people who chase the idea of perfection set by the society can do to one's self-esteem and confidence.
All of this, in combination with the fact that Mia could possibly be a lot more successful than herself, will not let Elena be at peace. She would want to take action and how she would go about doing this is something that we could see in the upcoming episode.
The episode will also continue to portray the struggle that the kids in Shaker Heights face. For instance, Pearl is not allowed to go to Richardson's house anymore and Izzy might also be banned from visiting Mia when Elena learns about her apprenticeship, which is going to be stopped as well. And then there is Moody, who according to Trip has been "friend-zoned" by Pearl.
New episodes of 'Little Fires Everywhere' drop on Wednesdays on Hulu.