#yellowjackets s1 e5

[frootlooppoptarts]

[docholligay]

Ep 5: The Power of Belief

So this episode centered around belief, and what it means to truly believe something, which is something we’ve certainly come into contact with in the show, but this time it was a major component. 

From the beginning, where they hear something in the attic and everyone has their reaction to it: Lottie is a true believer, just as much as Laura Lee (Who I’ll get to later) though in another direction. For her, it has to be something supernatural and no amount of logic is going to convince her otherwise. To Taissa, it’s all bullshit, and a ghost could walk right up to her and she would have some other explanation. But note that both Tai and Laura Lee, believer and disbeliever, do not partake in the game of it. Belief is not a game, not a joke. 

And it’s Jackie, Jackie who has failed the girls in so many ways, who asks them to open the door to this question, and then walk through. She cannot possibly realize what she’s doing, she literally says this is just a game, but even if what happens is not factual, it is true and it is real, and the ways in which it is real and true are different for every single person in the room. What happened there, can only be answered by each individual. 

I love that we the audience are asked to experience things in a very similar way as the girls. When Lottie is possessed (or, ‘possessed’) we’re told she takes French. Her being able to speak French is not out of the question here. But, we’re then immediately told she sucks at it. Is that true? Or is that just Jackie not having paid enough attention to understand that Lottie is certainly good enough to construct, “He wants more blood?” Something I, a person who speaks very very bad French, understood no problem. The idea that French would even be spoken is a construction, Shauna calling him JAcques, and if they’re in the Canadian Rockies they are likely in Alberta, where French is present but not super common, honestly. Some random woodland Albertan does not speak fluent French. (Source: I dated a girl in Alberta) 

We, the audience, are given two equal scenarios here. It could be that she was possessed. It could be that it’s entirely in her head, and there is no ghost. The one I have a lot of trouble swallowing would be that Lottie is very intentionally pretending here. Lottie being a true believer makes her reliable in this even if she is out of her gourd. She is not a liar. If there is no spirit, then it’s something Lottie is doing unintentionally. I would die by that belief. 

Laura Lee, also true believer, from the very beginning says this is not something she wants to mess with, that she knowsthis is real, and she knows it’s dangerous, and she believes. Similar to Lottie, but where Lottie wants to believe and confront, Laura Lee wants to believe and avoid. Let’s just think about how brave Laura Lee--not unbelieving tough girl Taissa who must believe a little more than she thinks-- fully believing in the devil and demons and possession, must be to not only go upstairs and try to rid Lottie of her possession, but to get so close as to hit her with a bible, because she also believes that is the devil is real so must be God, and I am his agent? I am not Christian at all, but I find that very compelling. 

But anyway, so we are being asked about OUR belief too. The ‘will they or won’t they’ about the supernatural element of this show is INTENTIONAL, and I find that very interesting as someone who wants the show to be supernatural in nature. I respect it. I didn’t realize the wavering was part of the point, because ultimately so much of it is going to come down to “what do you believe?” Will lack of beklief protect you? The show takes pains to say it didn’t protect Travis. 

And that sets the stage to ask about right and wrong, about good and evil, about truth and a lie. What do you believe? ‘What happened?’ is given up as a simple question the girls simply enever wanted to answer, but I think it is, in some ways, not decided even between them. What do they believe? What do we?

[exalt1ora]

coach scott i have a bone to pick with you….misty is not in the right with her weird behavior, but leading a clearly traumatized child on and feeding into her near delusions is not the way to go. people who act like he’s a saint get on my nerves things could’ve gone sm differently if he tried to be rational with her he did wayyy too much like, the whole fake spiel he gives her about wanting her but shes too young and calling her my sweet misty….he did not have to do all of that. anyways rant over.

[frootlooppoptarts]

...in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall all die. (Numbers 14:35)

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Ben and Misty

Hello! This is about up to Episode 5 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 5 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the fifth episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Poor Ben here is trapped as an authority figure. Travis could overpower him, fuck, the girls could overpower him, he relies on Misty, and yet he still has the vestiges of authority because we are only now beginning to see that the old world no longer holds sway. 

The quasi-religious tone when Misty walks into his room to touch him was a really amazing thing, and it’s true, though, that for Misty, this is on the level of a miracle. A man she finds handsome needs her, she spends all her time in his light, she goes toward him with the reverence of a saint. And he rejects her. He tells her not to fucking touch him. We even see a cross on the wall as she leaves the room. 

So if even someone she has done so much for, someone she has devoted herself toward, cannot love her, they have to pay. Now, the question I have for myself is: Do I think Misty actually wants to kill him, or do I think that it’s more a price she is willing to pay in order to get him close to her again, to need her? I think it might be number two, but I also think establishing that she is willing to kill someone to get what she needs is a very important thing we need to know about Misty. 

Him losing his leg works on multiple levels here, of course it’s a device to get him close to Misty for the express purposes of ‘oh my god holy shit fuckin Misty,’ but also, it’s a symbol, a visual reminder of the fact that his power and authority is quite literally crippled here. We are seeing him slowly lose control of the situation, even as the girls are continuing to follow him, even as Travis still listens, there’s this absolute edge of losing control in the air. 

And he senses this, and this is why he reacts to Misty’s stange confession of love by calling himself into her protection with his own, while clinging to this fractured and lost authority as a gate between he and Misty. How long will that gate hold? What can he cling to then, and how far might he go to keep from getting killed by Misty in the pain of her rejection? 

Because make no mistake, all of this is about Misty and her feeling of rejection, and in the way they continue to push in this story that I love, the rejected nerd is not sitting in the corner crying, we are not meant to identify with her, we are meant to see that she instead decides that those who reject her should be punished. 

Which is why it is so terrifying when she sees Nat call her a poodle haired frreak at the end of the episode. She thought the threat of being blackmailed would make them appreciate her, need her. But instead, this.

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Callie and Shauna

Hello! This is about up to Episode 5 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 5 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the fifth episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Callie is the sort of thing that happens when you let your daughter run roughshod over you your entire life because you have no idea how to be a parent, and every time you see her you think of Jackie and all the things that might have been, and that makes your husband too indulgent of her and makes you resent her. 

But, Callie is a fucking asshole. Shauna is not wrong when she says that. And she’s so used to getting everything she wants because Jeff is a powderpuff and Shauna is checked out, 

Seeing Callie in Jackie’s uniform is just more of the ways in which we can see that Callie is Jackie’s ghost but here’s the thing: She’s also Shauna’s ghost, (I absolutely adored the very clever touch of having her show up in Jackie’s uniform, to the lyric “It ain’t me, but it’s wearing my skin”)a girl she could have been but never was. It’s not for nothing that we see them show up at the same Halloween party, Shauna trying to recapture a teenagehood she feels was stolen from her. (Going back to the belief question, I very much think that Shauna believes Jackie is haunting her. Maybe she always has been) 

They are both astonishingly immature, I would go so far as to call them bratty, particularly when dealing with each other. I can say that while still thinking that Callie is horrible and the idea that you would take something out of your mother’s closet, that you know is tied into shit that is so dark, and so painful, astounds me even knowing how teenagers can be. When she tells her mom she had no idea what her mother had been through, everything was so awful, I don’t really believe her. Callie also has the internet. Maybe she’s just being vulnerable because she’s on molly, but it feels like an act to me and I don’t trust it. 

But even as I say that, and I do think Callie is cruel, she is completely correct that Adam knows about her being a Yellowjacket. There’s no way he doesn’t know. Everything about her is about being a Yellowjacket, and for Shauna, that ties so directly into Jackie that it feels like she has to share even Adam, even her daughter, with Jackie. Everything should have been Jackie’s, right? 

But I digress, Callie is horrible, and Shauna is also immature, but I absolutely love the way she rends Callie apart at the end of the episode. She has it coming. Callie will not call her bluff here, because Shauna is not wrong, and Callie may be terrible, but she isn’t stupid. Callie is outplayed on every level here.

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Bullet points 

Hello! This is about up to Episode 5 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 5 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the fifth episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Also loving the stage that’s being set of ‘feeling bad for Jeff’ who is making a distinct effort here to try and engage with Shauna we love a complex narrative, we love Shauna looking like a real asshole. 

I adore what a dumbass Shauna is to think she can hide being pregnant from all of these girls, this is never going to happen, no. 

Boy do I wish actual hunting was as easy as hunting in Yellowjackets

“I looked him up,. He doesn’t exist” what an interesting thing to make note of

How much shitty eyeliner does nat have and how long will she continue to wear it?

I find it so fucking deeply suspicious that Misty catches the symbol in the photos. I know she’s a citizen detective, but, that absolutely should not be something one can catch from random photos that are not of the pattern itself. That’s an insane amount of mental mapping. 

Jackie’s parents giving Shauna the uniform feels borderline cruel. 

Hey, captioners, it’s “speak your piece” not “speak your peace” 

I did not like putting this in any of the essays, because it didn’t really fit, but I absolutely love the infinity symbol, as an idea that they will always be dying here, they will always be here, they will never, in a sense, get to leave this room. 

I should have seen Shauna being pregnant with Jeff’s baby.

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Taissa

Hello! This is about up to Episode 5 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 5 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the fifth episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Taissa’s absolute inability to be anything other than herself, anything other than an animal with teeth and violence, is wonderful. 

When the wolf is outside, the wolf is not coming for Taissa, the wolf is Taissa, but even with that still being true, the wolf is something she has to protect her family from. It’s this part of her she’s attempted to keep hidden and secret, that she’s attempted to tame, but like everything else at this point in their lives, it’s returning, it’s ready to feed. 

Important note when she sees the wolf: Her thought isn’t, “Why the fuck would there be a wolf outside in the middle of a major city on the east coast?” her thought is “I need to kill it” On some level, she knows this thing is waiting and that it’s waiting for her and it is her and it threatens everything she loves. SHE threatens everything she loves. 

When she sees the “Spill” paint across her door, my thought was in fact that she had done it in some sort of trance or something. (Or that it was Misty because at this point for me literally everything could be Misty) 

And this wolfishness is, to an extent, passing onto Simone, who all of a sudden is very okay with putting Bathurst’s daughter into the middle of all of this, and even Taissa mentions herself that she thought Simone was above that. Sammy is becoming something completely different, Sammy is talking to “the bad one” and is that the shadow Taissa? I think back to where he specifically says, ‘I know you’re not the bad one.” Now that’s not just saying, “There is a bad one” that’s saying, “there is a bad one that I think could be mistaken for you in some way, but I don’t worry because haven’t” I do think it is absolutely wild that Simone thinks their child is seeing ghosts and painting threats on front doors because Taissa is a less present mom, but okay. 

All that does is show that Simone, though she has a tiny moment, is not made for the life of a wolf. She says “I would never ask you to” about dropping out, but that’s what she wants. She doesn’t want the life of the predator. And Taissa WANTS that for herself, the peace, the walking away, but it isn’t what she’s born to and it isn’t where she thrives and that’s why she can’t drop out. It’s why she has to lie about the painting on the door, because she has to justify to the world why she needs to stay in the race, why she needs to continue the hunt. She sees the word “spill” and we now know that doesn’t mean “spill the story” but “spill blood.” Lottie tells us so. 

This wolf is in the house, this wolf is coming, but this wolf has also, I think, been here the entire time.

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Nat

Hello! This is about up to Episode 3 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 3 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the third episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Speaking of assholes, I absolutely love that Nat, the second she gets what she wants, tells Kevyn to basically get lost. What a terrible human being. 

In the flashback, we’re supposed to be seeing how they are bonding, how the two of them have become entangled together like a vine and a fence, but all I can see is what a fragile dick he is. I would lose my mind if we were hunting and someone didn’t load my gun, to win a stupid cojntest TRAVIS WE NEED TO EAT OUT HERE. But I totally realiize that’s me and myn feelings about the situation and the narrative wants to show us that Nat and Travis are the same, Nat and Travis have a darkness inside them that will always bring them together. I can let out the line a bit however I feel; about it personally. 

But maybe also it’s trying ot show me that they have each other, and heir relationship comes before all fucking pratical matters or even survival ones. You know, i can get with that pretty easily. 

She is, even in death, so unbelievably codependent with Travis that she is willing to burn a man, burn her whole life to the ground. “Doc is this you saying you think she would actually have set fire to that man?” Yes actually I do because I think she is completely wrapped up in this, and not really a very good person, and I think that she has tunnel vision. 

Because she needs this to be true. She needs it to be real that Travis didn’t kill himself, because if Travis killed himself--and I know in my heart that they made some stupid promise about it--then he lied to her, and if he lied to her was any of it ever real? Is the one person that she has tied herself to, the only person she trusts, really, the person that is terrible for her and yet she finds herself drawn back to, is that also something she doesn’t understand?

[docholligay]

Ep 5: Jackie

Hello! This is about up to Episode 5 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 5 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the fifth episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

I don’t think we’re supposed to love Jackie in this episode, and boy does that work for me. I am who I am, and I come bundled in with my own assumptions, values, adn experiences, and with all of that as knowledge, I say: Jackie is fucking lazy, and I would be losing my absolute shit if I had to deal with her. 

I live a more communal life than many, and while many people have a very romanticized view of what that means, as a practical matter it means that everyone pulls their weight. Sometimes that involves doing jobs that are not so much fun or are difficult or whatever, but in all cases it means that you gotta work. Jewlet helps set the table, for God’s sake. We all have a piece. 

And I’m not even in a situation where SURVIVAL ITSELF is at issue. We see that all the rest of the team is hard at work doing the things that are necessary for them to survive, and they are getting tired of Jackie’s bullshit, and for good reason. Jackie was a leader for a specific time and place, and that specific time and place was within the social norms and softhanded lifestyle of New Jersey. She has never had to measure out the things she is capable of doing, never had to do something physical and not fun. There’s a lot oif fair criticism of all the hard work you have to do as a kid in the country, but I tell you what, mucking out a stall at a young age, learning how to chop wood,. All of that teaches you that yes in fact you are capable of doing work. She’s even bad at GETTING WATER OUT OF A LAKE. ANd yes, water’s very heavy, and yes they should look for a large branchthey could carved to hold it over your shoulder, but at the very least, Jackie could walk out a little bit into the lake to lessen the chance of sediment. 

In Jersey, she was smart, but here she has no goddamn sense, and the rest of the team is having a crisis of faith with her. Jackie is no longer any kind of a leader. 

Shauna is showing so much love in trying to help her find something that she’s capable of doing, of trying to make her a part of the team when she is very obviously separating herself from the work of staying alive. Shauna has seen the way the girls are looking at her, and she knows Jackie may become a sacrifice, either figurative, or, maybe even at this point, literal, if she doesn’t prove that she has use and value. She could end up as broken from the team as Allie, for the crime of her own weakness. 

On the one hand, Jackie knows that she’s terrible at this, and that she doesn’t like it and that she’s not cut out for it, but on the other hand, she is absolutely incorrect to characterize everyone else as “enjoying this boring back to the land bullshit” liking something is totally fucking irrelevant at this point. It’s what you need to do in order to survive. THe other girls understand that. But Jcakie can’t get with the program. 

Shauna tells her she’s so great at cheering people up and making people feel like things are going to be okay just by showing up, but is she actually good at those things? I think if she were actually great for morale, the girls wouldn’t resent her for being so lazy in the physical department, because frankly if she were providing a necessary service like that, they wouldn’t be thinking it at all. What does she do when Shauna is pulling for something she’s better at? Makes her feel small and useless. Even though Shauna is putting in far more work than she has since day one. 

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this” Think very carefully about your other option, Jackie. 

[frootlooppoptarts]

It was all my design

[exalt1ora]

“hey…you heard it too?”

lottie matthews i want to hold you so tight you cant breathe i love you