#bc i've very frequently been wrong when speculating w druck in the past

[canonicallyanxious]

it’s funny that i thought i was going to stop making these dumb posts after the first episode but the thing is i just have so many thoughts about druck s5 always and like they have to go somewhere, okay??? so here is where they will go for now

random and unorganized thoughts about druck s5 ep 4 as follows:

1. i don’t know how qualified i am to talk about ~film shit~ but i will say that while i feel like druck’s cinematography has a baseline quality of pretty damn good, the cinematography choices in this episode really stuck out to me for some reason. the editing, the framing of the shots, the coloring all are AMAZING visual storytelling cues for conveying how nora feels. i like a lot of other people really felt immersed in her pov in this episode and i think the cinematography choices really helped! for example - in the clip where she’s sleeping and her mom wakes her up, the shots go from longer with fewer cuts and slower camera movements - sort of simulating how slow waking up in the morning can feel - and then become more rapidly cut with fast and sharp camera movements in a way that really highlights how nora feels waking up and slowly realizing something is wrong with the way she's waking up. as well the spinning of the camera later in that scene right before she gets burned to highlight how disorienting and frightening that scene was for nora. 

and then for me the way that last scene of the episode with josh is colored just puts this lump in my throat. under normal circumstances we should feel excited that the protagonist is going on a date with her love interest, but the cool dullness of the colors - juxtaposed with the sunlight in her room, as well as the bright colors she’s wearing right now - kind of fill me with dread, like it just doesn’t feel right, it goes against what we know we would usually be feeling about a scene like this which is jarring. a really good tone to set for the tension you feel as the scene goes on and things start to fall apart. i think so far this season has been really, really good at setting tone, like again the visual storytelling in the show so far is just. chef’s kiss. there is so much we are able to understand about nora’s headspace and the narrative without it ever having to be spelled out to us in dialogue which is always super satisfying to watch!

2. themes of going after what you want and what you feel is good for you - valuing your own well-being and agency, basically - seem pretty important this season, and it’s interesting to see the various ways they’re underscored in the writing. So for example in the first clip, Kiki asking Nora how SHE feels about moving out [since before, she was mostly focusing on what impact it would have on their mother]. or in the clip with ca$hqueens, fatou essentially has them do an exercise in trusting your gut instincts and trying to envision what you want and nora can only see white noise. and then in the end when josh asks, “may I?” and nora nods yes - he doesn’t approach her or push her to let him in until she lets him. so in this episode we can see that nora has a lot of conflict over these questions and a lot of it is clouded by her complicated relationship with her mom, and we can also see the people who are likely going to help her overcome that conflict - her family, her friends, and josh. we can see the beginnings of those threads, and potentially how they will all help her and i am really looking forward to seeing how they develop later in the story!

3. so interesting to me how readily lies come to nora even in times where she doesn’t need to lie that drastically. like she could have said she accidentally burned herself while cooking, but she said she pinched herself. or she could have said she had to pick up some things for her mom, it’s an emergency, her friends probably would have understood, but instead she made up an excuse about handymen at her apartment. and she says them so casually and easily, like if we the audience didn’t know the truth it would probably be impossible to tell something was off from her facial expressions and how she carries herself. again it reinforces the idea that this lying has become such a habit bc she’s had to do it so much, and juxtaposed with her mother’s obvious lies and zoe’s “you sound just like her” in the intervention clip... that shit hurted

4. i know nora hasn’t fully opened up to josh yet but i do think it’s interesting that she actually came close more than once in this episode. Once while texting him, of course, and also at the end when she says “my mom is...” and there’s a long pause before she says they had a fight. which kind of sticks out to me when again we see that in other times she has been very ready to cover up the truth. like i don’t think it’s a small thing that she’s visibly tried to be careful with her words around him. as he is careful with his words around her!

5. some misc things i found interesting about the ca$hqueens clip - 

a. nora’s worry that things with josh will turn out like they did with constantin, which is kind of a hint to the audience that he definitely will not be. also the girls immediately interpreting that to mean the shitty way he’s treated her which of course i think is an element of it but i’m also wondering if part of it is how she ended up having to distance herself from him [likely bc of her relationship with her mom] - like maybe on some level she thinks it would be better to avoid that risk [juxtaposed with josh hugging her at the end of the episode and physically, literally being there for her even when she still clearly has her walls up - man hold on a second JUST HOLD ON A SECOND]. 

b. when the girls asked her what happened with constantin, and she kind of deflected a little. i could be wrong but it does make me feel like we don’t know the full story there yet. not that i think she did anything to justify the atrocious way he’s behaved toward her, or that i think it’s not possible that we already basically know what we need to know [aka that she eventually had to distance herself from him because of her relationship with her mother], like there’s nothing she could have done to justify how he’s treated her [plus from how she checked up on him after the break up and actually tried to talk it out with him until he became a total ass to her to me it feels like she was probably handling it in a very mature way] and it’s very possible we already know everything there is to know! but idk. i do wonder. at the least i wonder if we’ll find out more about how they actually got together, or her relationship with the instas, like are either of those things significant to her wider arc??

c. how freely fatou feels to express her crush on kieu my! man i tell you as a queer kid who was firmly in the closet in high school it’s just... so so nice to see a lesbian express her attraction to girls to her friends. i can’t express how nice that is.

6. my last thought i have to share is the acting in this episode was fucking bomb. josh and kiki are standouts among the side characters to me, and then of course nora’s actor is CRAZY talented, like holy SHIT. i honestly have no words.