#the way s2 doesn't bother until near the end

[cantsayidont]

Probably unpopular opinions:

YELLOWJACKETS: Engrossing but half-baked Showtime horror-thriller series, obviously inspired by the TV show LOST and the real-life Uruguayan rugby team lost in the Andes in 1972, about a suburban high school girls' soccer team that descends into madness while stranded for two years in the wilderness following a plane crash in the mid-1990s, split between the period leading up to and following the crash, with the characters as teenagers, and the present day, where the rescued survivors are now maladjusted adults struggling to live down what happened to them 25 years earlier.

While the show's dark humor and assorted plot mysteries command attention, it's marred by a growing sense, even in the more tightly written first season, that many of the questions have no actual answers, and the showrunners are basically just winging it — unwise with a series this structurally complicated, and the same mistake that eventually reduced LOST to an extended shaggy-dog joke.

The plot holes really begin to accumulate in the clumsy, badly paced second season, which leaves the capable adult actors struggling to navigate obvious gaps in their characters' histories and interrelationships that the writers haven't yet gotten around to mapping out, and causes what are supposed to be fireworks-laden confrontations to fizzle ineffectually. An initially amusing plotline about the adult Shawna (Melanie Lynskey) trying to cover up a murder with the help of her loyal but useless husband (Warren Kole) and snotty teenage daughter (Sarah Desjardins) eventually reveals itself as a weak imitation knockoff of SANTA CLARITA DIET that doesn't know when to pivot, and the introduction of Elijah Wood as a (ludicrous) hetero love interest for the adult Misty (Christina Ricci) creates an obvious tension between Ricci's decision to play Misty as a closeted lesbian in love with Natalie (Juliette Lewis) and the writers' apparent determination to there-homo the main characters.

However, the biggest problems with YELLOWJACKETS remain the show's ongoing reluctance to make up its mind about whether it's a psychological thriller or a supernatural horror story in the mode of Stephen King's THE SHINING — an ambiguity that's more exasperating than intriguing — and the troubling fact that the characters of color are consistently treated far more brutally (and more dismissively) than any of the white characters.