If I had been reviewing last weekโs YELLOWJACKETS, I probably would have given it an ‘Experience Now ๐คฉ’, but my colleague didnโt enjoy it nearly as much. It was weird and wild and jam-packed with excellent performances and incredible music, and it made me say โWTFโ just enough without detracting from the overall story.ย
IT CHOOSES isnโt as offbeat, but it sure is a trip. This season of YELLOWJACKETS excels more during the scenes with our teenage survivors more than it does when it focuses on them as adults. Even with standout actresses such as Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Lauren Ambrose, I still find myself asking, โWhatโs the point?โ. Yes, thereโs drama, but it can be silly and inconsequential. There are life or death stakes in both timelines, but Iโve become far more invested in what happened in the winter of 1996-1997 than I am in the present day.ย
This weekโs episode serves up (no pun intended) a lot of โwhat happenedโ and โwhyโ from that era. Itโs thrilling and scary, and itโs not hard to see how a group of desperate, starving teenagers were driven to the brink. I wish weโd had a full episode of this because thereโs so much to tell and a lot that seems left out as the story jumps between then and now.
Whatโs happening with the Yellowjackets in 2022 is both frustrating and often insulting to who these women could be. Itโs obvious that at least a couple of our survivors are semi-well off, but weโre supposed to believe that in the last 25 years, theyโve never, not a single one of them – dealt with the trauma of their plane crash. What have they been doing with their lives for so long, then? The late 90s was a very different time. Therapy wasnโt nearly as well accepted. I understand that. But in 2022, it is, and each of these characters seems to have some means to get help.ย
One has somehow become quite successful despite some very serious psychological issues. Most of them seem to have floated along, completely suppressing the events of 25 years ago. Itโs a common survival instinct, but it doesnโt seem to answer how blasรฉ they seem toward life and death as 40-something-year-old women. Iโm trying to be patient with the show and tell myself that โtheyโre just beginningโ and โthereโs a lot left to tellโ, but when a dozen or so folks are cooped up in a cabin for the winter without food, not much happens outside of the slow descent into madness. Thatโs why BURIAL worked so well. It walked a fine line between what was really happening and what our characters were imagining. IT CHOOSES, on the other hand, relies on some episode-ending shock value to keep us coming back again. Yes, Iโll be back YELLOWJACKETS, if for nothing else, that sweet, sweet soundtrack of my teen years. But I need for the women to pull their shit together and for the girls to be in the cabin to finally get a break from the cold and spend more time outside.ย
YELLOWJACKETS streams Fridays on the Showtime app, and this week, May 26th, is the season finale.ย ย