‘Phony’ Hulu Review: Who’s That Woman Pretending to Be Mom?

Capgras syndrome, by definition, is a neuropsychiatric disorder in which the person affected becomes firmly and unshakably convinced that a family member, partner, close friend, or even a pet has been replaced by an identical double or an impostor. And that is what may —or may not, which is the whole point— be happening in Phony, a series that takes that idea and pushes it to its logical extremes. Amiable and mildly intriguing, if not much more than that, Nick Paley’s series uses its mystery-thriller premise to tell a coming-of-age story about the moment when the symbiotic relationship between a child and his mother begins to break apart and turn into something else.

Sonny (Sam Nivola) is a very likable kid, popular with pretty much everyone at his high school. He has a girlfriend, Chloe (Mahaela Park), and the two are starting to seriously consider having sex for the first time. He also has an unusually close relationship with his mother, Ellen, with whom he has been raised on his own and whom he considers his best friend. Ellen (the terrific Connie Britton) is the principal of Sonny’s school. And she seems to be loved by everyone there as well: friends, colleagues, students and, naturally, her son.

We actually meet Sonny talking to a private investigator and telling her about the accident that, he insists, changed everything. The story goes something like this: On the night Sonny and Ellen were planning to have sex, he is driving distractedly toward her house when he gets into a serious car accident. When he regains consciousness several days later in a hospital bed, he is overcome by a strange and terrifying feeling: his mother doesn’t seem like his mother anymore. She seems like someone else. What is going on?

Sonny anxiously tells his friend Mallory (Grace Brennan) and his friend Weldon (Colter Lee) what he thinks is happening, but they don’t see anything unusual. His mother looks exactly the same to them. Keeping his suspicions from his girlfriend —and, of course, from his mother, or whoever this woman pretending to be his mother might be— Sonny, Mallory and Weldon begin investigating to see whether something really has changed. They hire a detective (Meera Syal) with a terrible reputation, the sort of person who promotes conspiracy theories and whom nobody takes particularly seriously. But she is the only one willing to listen to them, and eventually agrees to help.

Phony digs deeper into the mystery with each episode. Without giving too much away, all we can say is that by the end of the first episode it becomes clear that something strange has happened, that things are not exactly the way they were before the accident. What remains unclear is what happened, how it happened, who is involved and why anyone would want to replace Sonny’s mother with another woman. Not to mention finding a woman so incredibly identical to her that only a handful of tiny details are enough to make her own son question whether she is really the same person.

Using this identity mystery as its excuse —Sonny compares photographs, mannerisms and other clues, becoming increasingly convinced that the woman claiming to be his mother is an impostor, even as people tell him he is losing his mind and make fun of him— Paley’s series gradually expands into the lives of Sonny, his girlfriend and friends: the parties, the school tensions and everything else surrounding a group of mostly teenagers going through a particularly important stage of their lives.

Phony combines those adolescent tensions with the investigation itself, which functions much like a McGuffin: something that keeps you watching, even if it may ultimately not be all that important. You do want to figure out the mystery, that much is true. But what really matters here is the story of a mother-son relationship changing as a child grows up and the bond between them inevitably becomes something different. And that, rather than figuring out exactly what did or did not happen to Sonny’s mother, is what makes this eight-episode series worthwhile.