Yellowjackets: Season Finale
January 16, 2022 9:36 AM - Season 1, Episode 10 - Subscribe

On the night of their 25-year class reunion, the Yellowjackets navigate damning evidence, false alibis and a dubious attempt to “heal.” In the wilderness, the Doomcoming fallout finds everything firmly off the rails as simmering resentments come to a head.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, is Latin for Thus passes the glory of the world.

Versez le sang, mes beaux amis, is French for Shed blood, my beautiful friends.

Who the fuck is Lottie Matthews?
posted by Stanczyk (53 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I liked it, I'm still kind of processing it, I'll have more to say later, but: my overall feeling is that the climax of the season was last week, and this was a coda. A bit disappointed; I would've liked more.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:02 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Coming up on S2 of Yellowjackets:

Jack, Kate, and Locke investigate the hatch and find Desmond, a man living inside.
posted by bitterkitten at 10:50 AM on January 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


I thought the reveal that Jackie died from exposure -- and indirectly from her first experience being in the outgroup -- was brilliantly understated. I'd been bracing myself for something mysterious and violent, but instead it was a very teenage squabble that could've unfolded in a similar way if they were back home.

When Misty took such obvious enjoyment of the attention at the reunion, I knew she wouldn't go public. Misty is smart and manipulative to have run that risk/reward calculation 20 years ago. If she didn't want to do it before, then she doesn't want to do it now. (Also, she might be my favorite character. Watching her take care of that fixer made me think of all the hours of my life I wasted watching Dexter and you know what? I wish I'd been watching Christina Ricci's Misty instead.)

The sudden arrival of a Lottie's cult in the present day was an absolute jump-scare cliffhanger for me. It took me almost two hours to fall asleep after that, yikes. It makes me wonder what first disciple Van has been up to. It makes me wonder if Adam was part of the cult. It makes me wonder if Shauna's baby died, or if they've been raised by a violent, insular group to get revenge on her birth parents (as Shauna threatened in the first episode).
posted by grandiloquiet at 12:17 PM on January 16, 2022 [12 favorites]


Jackie's death wasn't anything I expected. It seems a bit far-fetched to me that she would really sit out there until she died of hypothermia (what is she, the little match girl?), but I guess it works as a symbol of her isolation from the group and, more to the point, her inability to adapt to their new environment. I'll have to watch it again to see how fair it plays with that dream sequence (was it Jackie's dream, or Shauna's?), but either way, I found it all very disturbing. I presume the man who welcomes Jackie at the end is the person who died in the cabin. Is he also speaking through Lottie in the final scene?

I'm intrigued by our sight of this ghost (?), because I expect the homesteader's story to become important as the show goes on. I presume he was working some kind of magic (or at the very least was someone really fucked up), and was murdered (or sacrificed?) for his sins. We don't really know what caused the Yellowjackets' plane to go down (the sky looked clear to me), and I imagine there will be a suggestion that the dark forces of the woods pulled them in. Is he the locus of that evil, or was he simply someone else swallowed up by it?

There's a lot to talk about here, but what really moved me over the course of the finale was the hopeless sense I developed that none of our ostensible heroines (except, possibly, Natalie) are very heroic at all, and may be kind of...not...cool. I think Shauna is pretty much at Walter White piece-of-shit levels, Tai freaks me out, and Misty is a psychopath. Misty in particular: I'm less disturbed that Misty killed Jessica than I am that Misty made a game of killing Jessica. If Jessica hadn't asked for her cigarettes back, would she be alive? I'm quite certain that the answer is yes, and -- barring some flashback that explains why Misty has an extreme aversion to smokers -- I feel like Misty didn't care one way or the other way which way the dice landed. She was just having fun.

One last thing: Are we supposed to have enough clues to know what the fuck is happening with Tai? On reflection, I think what Simone found may be the components of a sacrifice spell Tai cast to win the election (a la Hereditary), but it could just as easily be something their son did, something Lottie did, something Adam or Javi did for all anybody knows. Is this just the writers throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, or do we have all the info we need to understand what we're looking at?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:22 PM on January 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


A hearty What The Fuck from that episode. I don't think Misty would have let Jessica survive, but I don't know what she would have done had Jessica not wanted the cigarettes. That said, Jessica falling for her was intensely dumb. Of course, so was Simone -- you don't crawl into a bloodstained secret room! Even if you don't know you're living in some weird horror story, you don't do that.

I really love how Lynskey plays Shauna (Walter White is a good comparison), as the suburban trophy wife Jackie wanted to be, but with hidden steel that flashes out occasionally. I wonder if Natalie and Taissa believe her obviously bullshit story -- Misty I doubt believes it, nor does she care, Natalie underestimates Shauna, Taissa I am not sure about.

I wish we'd had a bit more actual answers to things, though. Not fully, just a bit.
posted by jeather at 8:02 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


My interpretation of the creepy hidden altar was that it was something Taissa did perhaps in a fugue state, to ensure winning the election. Like the dog was a sacrifice.
posted by supermedusa at 8:21 PM on January 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


And there better be a second season. I need some answers.
posted by supermedusa at 8:22 PM on January 16, 2022




Vulture also has an interview with the showrunners that answers a lot of questions, for those fearing a JJ Abrams situation. For the moment, they're saying that Adam isn't involved in the cult and that if Taissa's election benefitted from a supernatural boost, it's not something she did consciously.
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:11 PM on January 16, 2022


Stanczyk: Versez le sang, mes beaux amis, is French for Shed blood, my beautiful friends.

Spill the blood, which ties in nicely with SPILL written on Taissa's door in the present.
posted by emelenjr at 6:11 AM on January 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


The more I think about it, a ten-episode season every year is going to tell this story slooooowly. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing -- like I said in one of the earlier threads, the rate of revelation is already a little frustrating. I'd love it if Yellowjackets was a big enough hit for Showtime to warrant, say, a movie between seasons to show what happened with the original owner of the cabin...a story that (a) seems very important, and (b) has no clear organic way to being told within the main show.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:02 AM on January 17, 2022


Oh! And one other thing! I know we've all kinda concluded this isn't a puzzle box show, but...who was the woman with Kevin? To me, it just seemed like Kevin was married, and that he was telling Nat they couldn't be together, but then...I mean, we don't see her, and immediately afterward, Natalie is preparing to commit suicide. She may have been in the grips of despair because she had realized (right of wrong) that Travis hadn't been killed; that seems likeliest. But she also didn't seem completely surprised when the cultists broke in. What I'm wondering: Was that woman Lottie?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:00 AM on January 17, 2022


Apparently there was a theory that Adam was actually a post-transition Jackie, which is a great theory. (Jackie should have actually taken off all her clothes if she died of hypothermia but I understand the many reasons that would not work as part of the show.)
posted by jeather at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


My interpretation of the creepy hidden altar was that it was something Taissa did perhaps in a fugue state, to ensure winning the election. Like the dog was a sacrifice.

That's how I read it also, which brings me to wonder if Travis was a sacrifice too, and if yes, for what?
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:29 AM on January 17, 2022


....also in the Doomcoming episode thread we were speculating about Adam's back tattoo....which....is that how they end up identifying the torso? Though you'd think one of the dismemberers would have noticed it.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:31 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah that whole claim of not being able to identify the person with just a torso might have been true pre-DNA but today?
posted by Stanczyk at 1:17 PM on January 17, 2022


The fixer - she said she worked for the rich and powerful. Tai is a lot of things but she's not that rich and not particularly powerful yet. I have the feeling the fixer is working for someone else (Lottie?) and appeared as a regular PI for Tai's investigation.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:14 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


OMG Misty has such a twisted morality: she won't kill Jessica outright, but will let her ignorantly choose her own demise. Misty poisons the cigarettes (wants to murder her) but trashes them because she knows that Jessica will miss them and will have to ask for them to get them back (thus removing Misty's personal agency in the chain of events); further, when Jessica does ask for her cigarettes back, Misty literally and plainly tells her "those things will kill you" while giving them back to her (providing internal moral absolution).

It's why Misty is smiling so sweetly as Jessica lights up a cigarette and takes a drag as she drives off, Misty is happy both that her plan for Jessica to die is working and that she herself isn't--in her mind--morally responsible (it wasn't murder, she chose it even with a clear warning!). So fucked up!

I don't get the vibe that anything supernatural is happening in the show, despite a few head fakes that way, everything that's actually happened so far has been shown to have a rational explanation. Even Lottie's visions, she suffers from schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or similar, at least according to her medication that she ran out of early on, and it makes sense that if she survived the wilderness, untreated mental illness would result in her continuing to live in a delusional state, which could lead to things like starting cults. (To be clear, I think some characters believe that supernatural things are happening, but that the viewers have been shown material explanations for everything that's happened so far.) Much of the power of this story so far, to me, has been that it's grounded in what's real (and in contrasting that with the various subjective realities perceived and shaped by the characters' minds).

I still think there's more to come with Adam, too many coincidences to all just be coincidences. Or maybe it'll just be the ramifications of Shauna's daughter concluding that her mother is a murderer.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:35 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


One additional thought: I wonder if, when rescue finally comes or a way out is finally discovered, Lottie will choose to remain in the wilderness, because she's become one with nature as the Antler Queen or whatever? That would explain why the present-day characters haven't considered her as possibly behind the postcards and Travis' murder, they think they left her for dead out in the wilderness. But she didn't die, and now she has a whole cult of believers....
posted by LooseFilter at 10:40 AM on January 18, 2022


The two things that have no rational explanation to me are (a) Simone -- not Taissa, Simone -- seeing the eyeless apparition when Taissa went off-script and didn't drop out of her campaign for senate, and (b) the bear. Neither of these is supernatural the way that, like, a person shooting lightning out of their mouth is supernatural, but they don't have any explanation that makes sense, either. And I feel like this is the way we experience strange events in real life; we don't see people turn into bats, but we may run into things that are just unsettling and that we lack the clues to fully process.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:50 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


I read a theory on reddit (I have read many theories on reddit, varying wildly in plausibility, but this one seems possible) that the bear could have eaten the remnants of the drugged soup and was tripping balls when it placidly wandered up (this assumes the bear was more of a Natalie than a Shauna. Another theory suggested that the bear was tripping balls after eating Javi, who had eaten the soup and was tripping balls, but that seems less likely to me as the girls would have probably found the ring in the contents of the bear's stomach, or something).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


One additional thought: I wonder if, when rescue finally comes or a way out is finally discovered, Lottie will choose to remain in the wilderness, because she's become one with nature as the Antler Queen or whatever?

I keep seeing people saying a version of this - what if adult Lottie never left the woods - only, we SEE adult Lottie in (I think) the first episode! Or at least, we see a creepy woman with long dark hair sitting in an incredibly fancy dining room and being brought pills by a maid. How can that not be Lottie? Even the Vulture reviews are like “oh, IF Lottie comes back” - but what other extremely rich pill-popping character is there on this show?
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:53 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


There's a theory going around that the recurring symbol, while it may end up a cult thing by the time the Yellowjackets are done with it, is actually potentially "hobo code," i.e. Depression-era symbols hobos left to indicate resources and warnings to each other. It's not exact, because in this case, the symbols would be layered into a single thing rather than one after the other. But it s a thought. Here's a chart of symbols and meanings.

Starting from the top:
- circle - "nothing doing here" i.e. there isn't anything good happening/to be had here
- slanted/broken triangle/lean-to shape - "keep away"
- triangle body with outstretched arms - "man with gun lives here"
- slash through shape (originally a circle, but the long line goes through the triangle here) - "go/leave"
- hook - "stop"

Other people have said they see: three slanted lines - "unsafe area"; circle with male arrow, slanted - "don't go this way"; crosshatched lines - "unsafe place."

If that's what this is, and if the reading isn't too fanciful, it could be hobo code meaning, basically "there's nothing good here, just a man with a gun, it's not safe, stop and turn back."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:47 AM on January 19, 2022 [9 favorites]


I keep seeing people saying a version of this - what if adult Lottie never left the woods - only, we SEE adult Lottie in (I think) the first episode! Or at least, we see a creepy woman with long dark hair sitting in an incredibly fancy dining room and being brought pills by a maid. How can that not be Lottie?

I thought that was teen Lottie, from before they got on the plane?
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:09 AM on January 19, 2022 [10 favorites]


I thought that was teen Lottie, from before they got on the plane?

Yes, I think that's right.

I also think that a major theme of the show is that things are not always as they appear. So far, that has played out in seemingly supernatural things having mundane explanations, but I expect going forward that the show will surprise us by showing us that some of our own assumptions are not correct. For example, I don't think the apparent narrative of the "girl falling in the pit" teaser is correct. We are expected to believe: 1) A girl in 1996 is being chased through the woods 2) she is being intentionally chased into a pit trap 3) someone sees her body in the trap and is satisfied 4) that same body is slaughtered and eaten. I think some of those facts will turn out to be false. I also think there is a good chance that there is no cannibalism in the show - or at least that the 1996 Yellowjackets did not consume their own.

Did anyone else read Taissa's final expression upon learning about her victory as "OMG, it worked!" I think it is possible that she is in fact aware of what she is doing while "sleepwalking" - either the whole sleepwalking thing was a lie, or that she has increasingly become conscious of it, maybe in a sort of lucid dreaming state. I think the altar with Biscuit on it was far too intentional to be the work of a sleepwalker.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:17 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


(There is recent scholarship that indicates "hobo code" may be a hoax made up by a hobo author to sell his books. Doesn't really matter in context of the show whether it's real or not.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:10 AM on January 19, 2022 [6 favorites]


I love Mad Men, as all right-thinking people do, and so the Hobo Code idea is a fun one to me. But I suspect these are occult symbols (even if the writers based them on the Hobo Code). For one thing, we see the symbols near the body of the man in the cabin, and accompanying the sacrifice (?) in Tai's basement. For another, who is there to warn away in the middle of the woods? I might be inclined to think the symbols had been there since the Great Depression, except that the ones carved into the trees looked pretty fresh.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:38 PM on January 19, 2022


I thought the shadowy man in the back of the crowd was Jeff, which does nothing to clarify if it was Jackie or Shauna’s dream.
posted by carmicha at 8:01 PM on January 19, 2022


Huh. Well my theory was that the bear that wandered up to the cabin all placid-like was in that unhurried state because he'd recently gorged himself on Javi, who ran off during Doomcoming and never came back.

If that's true, and the Yellowjackets eventually figure out that's where Javi went, then I could see that becoming the eventual justification for turning to cannibalism by that second brutal winter.

Because if they ate a bear that ate Javi, then technically, they've already "eaten one of their own" (even if it happened in a roundabout way).

I'll take it a step further: They may find Javi's half-eaten body in the woods a little bit away from the camp where part of his body is still hanging from a tree. The bear didn't eat all of it, and the hand/finger with dad's ring is still visible.

This hypothetical scenario would explain why 1) Nat and Travis shared a vow to never to commit suicide (because that's technically how he lost Javi and they became cannibals), 2) Adam can't actually be adult Javi with a new name, and 3) Lottie had zero difficulty bringing down an adult bear with one knife blow. Which still seems INSANE to me, but okay...

I do think Lottie's family being stupid rich will be the reason why the kids eventually get rescued. That was a privately chartered plane that crashed, and Mr. Matthews has visibly deep pockets that paid for said plane.

Mr. Matthews is almost certainly going to send SOMEone out to find his little girl when initial rescue efforts come up short thanks to Misty's black-box sabotage. I sincerely doubt based on everything we've seen so far that the girls just wander out of the wilderness and into, I don't know, a 7-11 parking lot somewhere in northern Michigan.

Final thought: After a quick re-watch, the first episode campfire scene with the Antler Queen is happening right next to the plane crash site, NOT the cabin. Wonder why the Yellowjackets apparently abandon the cabin's guaranteed shelter and nearby water source to move back to the site of the plane crash/debris? We know that's not an easy trip for Coach Scott to make. And there's no clean water source or shelter near the crash site... more mysteries to unravel next season!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 1:26 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Unless he's going to be dramatized additionally in flashback scenes between the time in the woods and connecting with Shauna (not impossible), my gut feeling is that Adam is probably not Javi, simply for the reason that it would waste a key character's death in a sort of lackluster way.

I am betting he is connected to Lottie's cult.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:37 PM on January 20, 2022 [4 favorites]


I still feel like there's no way the '90s Yellowjackets wait five seasons to get rescued -- my guess is they are found by S3, and at that point the flashback story becomes about how they rejoin human civilization. Last night, though, I was like...what if they're found in S3, and then the 2020s storyline becomes the backstory, and the main story is set in like 2050? I got as far as casting (Pam Grier as Taissa, Jean Smart as Natalie, Ted Danson as Jeff, ??? as Shauna, Barbara Crampton as Misty!!!), realized I have spent way too much time thinking about this show, and stopped.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:47 AM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


Kittens, Sally Field would make an excellent 2050 Shauna IMO.

dammit
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:03 AM on January 21, 2022 [7 favorites]


That is a fun idea! I'd definitely support Barbara Crampton as elder Missy.

Even aside from the fun (if not especially likely) casting exercise, you bring up a good point though. What is the extended plan for the show? The girls already aged nearly two years between shooting the pilot and returning after the covid slowdown to shoot the series once it was picked up. They can't keep them out in the woods while they shoot five seasons and pretend they just aged dramatically in 18 months.

Maybe Season 2 is the descent into the cannibal cult, with a shock rescue at the end catching the Yellowjackets at their worst? "Hello Antler Queen and Cannibal Cult. Time to start college!"

Then future seasons could cut back and forth between the survivors attempting to re-enter the world and whatever is gonna happen with Lottie's cult in the current day timeline.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:12 AM on January 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


At this point I'm down for anything they want to show us. That said, Susan Sarandon would've made one hell of a 2050 Jackie.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:18 AM on January 21, 2022 [8 favorites]


This interview with the showrunners is definitely worth a look. Five seasons is not something they're holding themselves to:
We originally pitched it as five seasons. To some extent that’s just a function of how you have to pitch a show. When buyers are hearing ideas, particularly at a network like Showtime, they want to know that you have a plan and there’s more than one season worth of story. I believe we’ve said five seasons earlier in interviews and have regretted it every day since, because people really latched onto that. I think what we’ll say about that is that we have a plan, and we do feel very good about the potential for story moving forward. But we have no interest in beating a dead horse or dragging things out longer than the story dictates. I think that to some extent the show and the story and the characters will tell us when they’ve reached a natural conclusion.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:39 AM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


Good grief, Coach Scott has got to be absolutely broken in Season 2. “I was the adult, and I could have brought Jackie back inside - but I didn’t.”
posted by Mr. Excellent at 8:42 PM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


I'm completely hooked by this show: horrifying, depressing, pitch-black comedy... usually, I can't handle that stuff, but for some reason, with this, I couldn't get enough.

Also: Misty damns a bunch of people to a fate of death, madness and cannibalism and grows up to be an elder-abusing murderer and she is probably gonna get no comeuppance 'cause it's not that kind of story. But I kinda need it! But if someone else said that I'd think they were being an annoying killjoy! But here I am!
posted by pelvicsorcery at 9:15 AM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also: it's like I wish the villain lady of Midnight Mass was being treated with the same "we report, you decide" complexity as Misty, and Misty treated more like the villain lady from Midnight Mass. But I realize that is unpopular. Idk, man, she's just responsible for a lot! A lot!
posted by pelvicsorcery at 9:20 AM on January 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


Misty is an absolute beast, and the evil is coming through with the younger (very good! love her!) actress, but Christina Ricci is just so funny in the role that I can't get mad at Misty. If I met a real life Misty, I would absolutely run in the other direction. But to the show's credit, that kind of happens in-universe. Misty is perky, smart, and (apparently) helpful. As an adult, her styling is not optimal, but she's still very pretty. And yet...we see every character running from her, even first dates. This could just be one of those dumb Hollywood conventions where we're supposed to all pretend we don't notice that Christina Ricci is lovely, but I'm treating it as a case where everyone stays away because they notice that there's something wrong there.
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:56 AM on January 22, 2022 [13 favorites]


When Misty is describing who would play her in a movie, she says "the woman in that one movie where the rich women kill the man." What movie is that?
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:32 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


I thought she said "that show" which made me think Big Little Lies, i.e. Reese Witherspoon.

It would be very on-brand for Missy to read that show in terms of a) women who have things she doesn't and b) sympathizing with the guy in that situation.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:44 PM on January 24, 2022 [6 favorites]


(Or alternately, she thinks being rich and committing murder sounds awesome. Which I could also buy.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:10 AM on January 25, 2022


Is this just the writers throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks?

That's the impression I've had for the past three or four episodes, yes.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:35 PM on February 5, 2022


It just occurred to me that Coach could be the spectral frightening man watching Taissa, an acolyte of Lottie’s.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:12 PM on February 6, 2022


What just occurred to *me* is that Misty is surprisingly well-equipped to keep a prisoner in her basement. I know, Misty is awesome, so maybe she got all that stuff together on the way to kidnap the fixer, but I also remember that in an early ep, she invited a guy home for "coffee" (and we all know not to eat or drink anything Misty has touched, right?), until Nat with a rifle sent him fleeing. I am wondering if Nat saved his life by accident?

Btw, is that the original cabin rifle that Nat carries around with her and was about to kill herself with?
posted by Mogur at 10:17 AM on February 8, 2022


Favorite line from the series so far: Coach Jeff saying "I think Misty poisoned me again."
posted by Mogur at 10:18 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Ah! This explains a weird little bit of business from an earlier ep: while driving to see Travis, Misty and Nat stop for gas. Nat takes the opportunity to search Misty's car while Misty goes to get food for them. The part that puzzled me on first watch was the way Nat looked at Misty as she very slowly accepted the candy bar from her...but now we can picture just what's going through Nat's head at that moment, as she suddenly remembered the "don't let Misty near the food" rule.
posted by Mogur at 9:53 AM on February 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


Late to this, just binged it all, really enjoyed it.

The only thing I have to add is - I don't understand what that Allie character was there for (the girl who missed the flight because Taissa broke her leg), in so much as she was prominent in the first and last episode yet didn't real add much to character or story development. It makes me wonder if she has a role to play later on in the story (e.g. post return home).
posted by chill at 5:50 AM on April 10, 2022


No way to tell what the show will do with her in the future, but I don't need any more of her. I thought Allie was great for a) infusing the pre-crash part of the show with an early, Lord of the Flies horror note b) hammering on the existential horror of the people who survive and c) hinting at some of the leadership battles to come. Taissa didn't intend to break Allie's leg, but she had been doing something almost as bleak, which was arranging for the other girls on the team to bully Allie into "stepping up" or stepping out of the role that the team coach and captain had assigned to her. She was planning to hurt Allie -- just not that badly.

Some of the contested leadership dynamics resurface when the girls get lost in the woods -- the coach can't provide much in the way of leadership because he's sidelined by his injury, and no one trusts Jackie with the well-being of the group. Allie's injury also hammers on the cruel capriciousness of what happened. The day she broke her leg was probably one of the worst of her life, but of course it turned out to have saved her from a much worse fate.
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:00 AM on April 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Whew, just finished my binge of this. Originally, I didn't want to watch it because I do not do horror. But the story is compelling enough and these are essentially my adult contemporaries in terms of character age and actor age (generally), so...

Anyway, the show is wild. It's great, but wow. So much going on. I'm still digesting it. (... no pun intended.)

Quick note about the French: "versez le sang":

Shed the blood could work. Spill the blood could work. But as someone who's mostly bilingual, I read this as "pour the blood". When we say "pour me a glass of wine", we tend to say "versez-moi un verre de vin". (Or verse-moi, for the familiar form or singular form.) So to me, "Versez le sang, mes beaux amis" is "Pour the blood, my beautiful friends".

Oddly, this phrasing also indicates that at least one male is among them. In French, if there's one guy who's a friend, we say "un ami", one friend. If the friend is a girl, we say "une amie". If there's two guys, we'd use the masculine plural (deux amis, two friends). If there's two girls, we'd use the feminine plural (deux amies, two friends). But if there's 20 girls and one guy, we use the masculine plural -- 21 amis, 21 friends. (I blame the patriarchy.)

So, the phrase is being addressed to multiple friends, including one dude. If it were just women, it would be:

Versez le sang, mes belles amies.

Interesting stuff.
posted by juliebug at 4:44 PM on May 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


"Also, regular bleach leaves behind hemoglobin for the luminol tests."

"This stuff is the good stuff"-Misty's face simply shone when she realized that she was being asked to help with disposing of a body.

I am misty?

Show was not what I expected coming in, turned out to be great fun. '96 was my grad year too, and recently saw a bunch of old friends after a few+ years. The actors are all a little bit older than they portray?

Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci have an electrifying dynamic and both really lend the show additional depth. Lewis was a great casting choice as was Sophie Thatcher as teen Natalie.

I could be wrong, but the pendant symbol thing, I think that's just generic Aleister Crowley/ HP Lovecraft stuff.
posted by porpoise at 9:27 PM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Since we're regularly discussing Liv Hewson's work as Van on this show, seems worth noting... I noticed in a recent interview that they identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:25 AM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


> If Jessica hadn't asked for her cigarettes back, would she be alive? I'm quite certain that the answer is yes, and -- barring some flashback that explains why Misty has an extreme aversion to smokers -- I feel like Misty didn't care one way or the other way which way the dice landed. She was just having fun.

Oh, Misty's a more astute manipulator than that; she knew for certain that a smoker denied her cigarettes after being imprisoned was going to go to light up ABSOLUTELY FIRST THING. So Misty set up that "I threw them away" maneuver complete with ironic "those things'll kill ya" one-liner just so that she could revel in her own cleverness when Jessica fell for her trap.
posted by desuetude at 9:30 PM on April 6, 2023 [4 favorites]


« Previous Episode  |   Next Episode »
« Older Peacemaker: Better Goff Dead...   |  Movie: Memoria... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments