One Mississippi Redefines Grief and Healing

One Mississippi can easily be mistaken for a dramatic narrative that is deliberately stationed in a relatively monotonous city where nothing interesting happens. But the semi-autobiographical show's endearing warmth and dark comedy do not disappoint.

The protagonist is Tig Bavaro (played by Tig Notaro): a lesbian woman, a cancer survivor, and a Los Angeles radio host. She returns to Bay St. Lucille after her mother's death to start living with her stepfather and her brother.

Tig's grief is uncovered at different levels in the series. She is devastated when her mother passes away due to an unexpected fall, which temporarily makes her suspicious of her stepfather. While the mother remains absent in the 'present' of the show, her relationship with Tig manifests through flashbacks and hallucinations.

Tig soon discovers that her mother had given birth to a male child with the man she loved in her formative years: she was 17, the man 35. They had stayed in touch. Apparently, Tig's stepfather knew about this relationship. It is here that grief gets coupled with confusion and nostalgia transforms into uncertain curiosity about the affair. No easy solutions are offered, possibly because no easy solutions exist.

This constitutes only a fraction of the show's thematic emphasis on grief. We find out that Tig is also uncomfortable with her body following her double mastectomy. She eventually gets over her eerie discomfort after she musters the courage to view her chest in the mirror. This partial frontal nudity makes her intimate moment public without positioning the viewers as voyeurs, which is a massive achievement in a world where, by and large, cinema continues to reproduce its problematic gaze on its subject.

Furthermore, Tig's ever-present consciousness of being molested by her step-grandfather further contributes to the narrative of grief and recovery in the show. Glimpses of the past get juxtaposed with dramatic narrations of personal memories. The outcome is a nuanced engagement with the topic of domestic violence and the silence that surrounds it. Tig's private experience of prolonged molestation also becomes the subject of one of her radio shows. A book club of senior citizens finds the show disgraceful and some sponsors of the local radio station back out. Later, when Tig's friend and the radio station's former sound engineer, Kate, gets molested at her new workspace, Tig gets angry at the networks of power that tolerate and sustain such behaviour.

Despite its affinity with the autobiographical genre, the show doesn't glamorise its protagonist, partly because it's structured as a journey rather than the retelling of a turning point in Notaro's life. The death of Tig's mother may constitute a significant event, but it doesn't become the centre around which Tig's story is oriented. Rather, her mother's death is the trigger that precipitates new encounters and locates important conversations in the everyday.

One Mississippi is almost interventionist in the OTT space: it successfully contravenes social protocols and prejudices along with depicting a personal story of grieving and healing.