The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Yellowjackets’ Season 2, Episode 1 Recap

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Joanna and Mallory break down everything that happened in the ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 premiere. They talk about everything from meeting adult Lottie in the present day to how Shauna is coping with the loss of Jackie in 1996 (12:53). Later, Joanna is joined by ‘Yellowjackets’ showrunners Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, and Bart Nickerson to talk about some of the episode and what to expect for the rest of the season (1:27:58). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Guests: Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, and Bart Nickerson Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hilton, for the stay. Right now, there is a version of you that knows exactly who you really are and what you really want, a primal, elemental self. And there is nothing more painful than hiding that self. We want to blame the world for our pain. The parent who didn't support us, the lover who didn't love us back, but the truth is, we are the ones making ourselves sick. And the rest of it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Right? Because it isn't. It isn't real. Back into the prestige TV podcast feed, I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today is a woman who probably does not really care that much whether or not teenage soccer players cooking each other in the woods, but she will throw a fit if anything happens to Steve. It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. How are you? Joe, I'm thrilled to be with you today. And when I tell people about you, I say, brunette, stunning, looks like she'd stab you.

She's my best friend. I love this for me. Except I update the brunette, depending on the hair color of the moment. My current whim is true. We are here talking about. about yellow jackets if you haven't already noticed. And the Stephen question is, of course, not our sometimes producer Steve Allman, but the adorable replacement puppy that Ty gets in this episode, what could possibly go wrong. Program reminders for the prestige feed, lots going on, right? Succession. It is back. We will be covering that. Those episodes are dropping Sunday nights. I believe there will be some buried coverage coming in this feed. Malina will be back every week with yellow jackets. And who knows what else could be going on here in the Prestige TV podcast feed?

You never know. So you might as well just subscribe. What else should folks do, Mallory, to keep on top of things. Yeah, follow the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow the ringers. Many social media handles and feeds across the platform of your choice. And of course, send your thoughts and theories to Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. The inbox is open. we will be making these podcasts for you so that they are ready for you the second, the latest Yellow Jackets episode airs on your streaming platform,

which means that we won't get to incorporate your theories off the most recent episode. But keep them coming because it's a conversation, a living document that moves in real time. So you never miss the boat. It's never too late to chime in. We want to hear from you all season long. And we will be updating our secret map

of the wilderness together and with you. A clue at a time. One clue at a time. Spoiler warning is Mallory and I are watching the episodes one week at a time. So we have only watched up through episode one of season two at this point because we want to play the theory game with you all. It's more fun that way. So only spoilers up through this current episode, season two episode one, Friends, Romans, Romans Countrymen. We'll talk about that title in a second.

I do want to issue a blanket spoiler warning for the television series Lost. Here's what we're going to do. Lost is a TV series that aired over 10 years ago. Mallory and I love it dearly. It has a lot in common with yellow jackets. We will be talking about it. However, for the most part, we're going to try to keep it isolated to a segment at the end of the podcast. But we make no promises.

It's going to bleed in occasionally. And so if you care deeply about being spoiled, Spoiled on Lost, I would suggest you just go binge loss this weekend. What are you doing with your life? It's just many, many seasons of 22 episodes. It's fine. Go watch it. But yeah, just a blanket loss spoiler warning.

So we're going to put Lost in a little section at the end of the pod. And we're going to put theories, Theory Corner, Citizen Detective Corner at the end of the pod. Again, those theories might bleed up into the general discussion, though. So that's all possible. That's all on the table. Season two, episode one, friends, Romans, countrymen, Mallory and Shakespeare. What comes after that line in Julia's season? Let me your ears.

One of the most famous lines from the Bard. Love to get our guy, Mark Antony, here in the beginning of Yellow Jackets, Season 2. It's all happening. This is everything I want. Also, the word play, but the deeper idea of, of divisions, of sex, of leadership, of loyalty. There's so much here to chew on. It's the perfect yellow jackets title because it does have that highbrow lowbrow, right?

Like we're doing when you hear from the careers of the show, Ashley Lyle Bart Nekerson and Jonathan Liskow, which you will in this very episode because we have an interview. with them, they think very deeply about this show and about the themes and about what they're putting out there. So it is a fun, twisty, mystery box, theory, sometimes salacious show with this other component of something very quite deep and profound about sort of the nature of friendships and girlhood and adolescence and all this sort of stuff is in the mix as well. So, I mean, it's part of what makes the show so great, perfectly. boiled down into that title of the episode. This episode is written by Ashley Lyle and Bart Dickerson, directed by Daisy Von Scherler Mayer, who directed a Parker Posey movie that I love

Party Girl from the 90s. I really suggest people to check it out. The Guru, a film that I am less fond of, but maybe she has been some experience with the leaders, charismatic leaders, and Frenemones is a Zendaya, a Disney Channel movie that I just thought I've not seen. but I thought Frenomies is a sort of perfect word to feed into yellow jackets, right? So Dacey's got her bona fides going here. We're going to hit emails really briefly before we dive into the discussion of the episode. Malachi, I was hoping you could kick us off with this email we got. Okay, first of all, we got so many emails from women who played varsity soccer in high school.

Ladies, thank you so much for your email. input, we got a really good answer from Kristen, but I'm going to be relying on you for the rest of the season to give me more soccer insights. I want to hear from the soccer player listeners, for sure, keep them coming. But Mallory, what did Kristen solve for us this week? Okay, here is, here is the email from Kristen, handy dispatch from the citizen detectives of the Prestige TV podcast. Before the early 2000s, girls' soccer was played in the spring in New York and New Jersey. There was a major lawsuit.

I probably shouldn't be using such a cheerful tone heading into the there was a major lawsuit sentence. There was a major lawsuit that switched it to a fall sport for recruiting purposes. Big issue at the time was a lot of field hockey players also played soccer, hurt the sport, and then a link, a handy link to an article and the Grey Lady, the New York Times,

about this very matter. So thank you, Kristen, citizen detective, for this insight. However, just when we thought we had all figured out, I can't. Like, my heart was so settled on this matter. And then a listener named Joy sent me this little, like, viral video promo that Showtime put together for this season of Yellow Jackets, featuring a, like, a deep fake of my generation's Walter Cronkite, the great Kurt Loder, on MTV News. Not a great fake of his voice, but, like, they deep faked his face. And he's doing, like, a news dispatch, MTV News dispatch, talking about the yellow jackets.

And there is footage of girls playing soccer taken on a camcorder. And the date stamp on the camcorder is October 12, 1996. And I cannot think of a world in which that date makes any sense. Yeah. I got nothing. All right. Here's what I'm workshopping in real time. And really, truly, in real time, we started recording about 10 minutes ago.

I found out about this about 11 minutes ago when you told me about it. That's true. Maybe this is the in-world play that people are putting on to honor the yellow jackets. Like, Ari and bravos. You know, there are kids out there cosplay as the yellow jackets in October of 96, a few months after their disappearance to try to remember the good times, to try to toast the state champions who never made it to nationals because they're plane crashed and now we have an amazing show about it. That's what I'm going with.

What do you think? Who is Lady Crane in this scenario? Where is the wait? We should also say that part of that that Kurt Loder Deepfake has a fun like fake URL www. where are the yellowjackets.com. Again, Mallory and I just found out about this promo. I poked around the URL a little bit.

All I found so far is like an error loading page that gives you the symbol. You know the one. I'm not an expert at clicking around on fake websites to find the hidden, like, secret fun pages. I mean, come on. Yes, you are. You spent enough time chronically Westworld. I was not to say I spent a lot of time on Delosestination.com for sure. But I will look to you, citizen detectives, Redditors, whoever you may be, to,

find anything else that might be at that URL. Last but not least, we got an email from Marcus who just pointed out that the description that I was using for Yellow Jackets, that idea of a warring cannibalistic clans was the original old description, and the new description that they use on materials has replaced warring cannibalistic clans

with dissent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans while also tracking the lives they've attempted to piece back together 25 years later. Marcus wrote, I think it's interesting to analyze the change. They removed Ontario. Ontario was originally part of the description because the crash is very obviously not in Ontario. And warring cannibalistic clans and to savage clans is much more interesting.

I feel like it implies less war and clear devise between groups and possibly more shifting power dynamics within the group, a new antler queen every season to paraphrase, coach Ben. So maybe we don't have cannibals. Maybe there is a vegetarian clan. We'll see. Well, or a clan that just really loves bear meat and deer meat and any other non-human meat. Vegetarians, I don't know.

Non-travis has been in a seven-mile radius all around the cabin, no sign of game. I think they're very wary of the... The flora after the doom coming, shroom incident and the berry fermented. I will say, I was impressed last season when we saw them cook up like a bunch of grubs. And I was like, yeah, sometimes you got to eat some grubs. They seem to really be enjoying that. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

All right. Love some crunch. Let's get into the episode. You think the ear had crunch? Yes, because it was frozen. Actually, no, it might have thought in her pocket. Yeah. Yeah.

of defrosting while staring at the ear in the palm of your hand. Gummy bear that got warm in your pocket. That's absolutely disgusting. All right, let's talk about the new opening credits. Instantly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard you say. Congratulations.

It's only episode one. We're going to be here every week. Okay. New opening credits. Christina Ricci and Ritchie as Misty. Screaming in front of a red curtain is an overt Twin Peaks reference. That is new.

That was I like paused, screamed, got very excited about it. I love Twin Peaks. That made me really happy. We see Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessel, who are the new members of the cast, are added to the interkere. A little slip of paper that says, I am grateful for my friends. Yes. In front of a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a queen, a diamond's cards that we see at some point. Again, once again, since this is, as detectives, I'm going to rely on you to do an exhaustive breakdown. This is my superficial noticing of things that are different.

There's a very interesting shot because for most of the opening credits, we're in like a square ratio because it's supposed to be like kind of camcorder footage, but occasionally it'll sort of blip to a widescreen aspect ratio. And usually when it does, those are characters in the present. So like when you see a Juliette Lewis or someone like that, they're often in the sort of widescreen blip. So this person, this mystery person, is someone who's like wearing a blazer in the snow, in the forest with like a Bob haircut and turning around to look at the camera. And I couldn't even, you know, gun to my head, ear in my pocket, tell you, if the gender of this

person? Because I was like, is this Travis? Because he has like sort of long, I don't know. I don't know who this person is. Citizen detectives tell me who you think this person is. I have no answer. So the real episode opens with this montage. Mallory, will you take us through this montage? What stood out to you when we are sort of looking at the survivors in the cabin? Yeah, this was a lovely opening in part because of the musical accompaniment. Another thing that we will be tracking across the season, given the proud one-season history at this point of excellent musical incorporations and needle drops. So we get Sharon Von Eaton's 17.

Now, this is a more recent song. You know, we're often looking for 90s bangers here. But this is from 2019. The lyrics are just so perfect, the tone, the mood. This was a wonderful musical note to open on. Before we go inside and spend time with our pals again, we're treated to a little bit of the landscape. We're going to be tracking whether we might be in that same landscape. elsewhere in the episode and a different timeline. So it felt very intentional to open on a shot of

the lake, say, before we see adult lottie in front of that lake and wonder if it's the same place later. We'll put a pin in that. But a couple of the really notable images, we see that Vann and Tye are tethered, are literally tied together and are sleeping this way with a rope around their wrist so that Ty does not go off and wander and sleepwalk and, in Ty's mind, inflict harm or lead to harm. Shauna, this one was like, gut wrenching is still sleeping next to Jackie's empty blanket and pillow. There's a spot where Jackie should be, but isn't? This is just deeply upsetting.

Lottie is making a tea that we will eventually see her put her own blonde. it into and give to Travis and Nat. And we'll prop on a window sill and then eventually etch the famous symbol into the window by hand is adopting. That symbol is making it her own. And Travis and Nat are getting ready to head out into the cold by packing their vests, their jackets, full of magazines of anything that they can find for insulation for warmth. and then using the seatbelts from the plane to hold it all together. I love little details like that in the show when they're using the wreckage.

Like no functional fix-in-diss for the characters. They don't have that luxury. They have to make do with whatever they have and be really inventive and creative and how they deploy it anew. Everything is very alarming. Right away. This is, that use of seatbelts, by the way, is like 10 times more ingenuity than I ever saw the Survivors on Lost Use because this.

They were basically like, is it a tarp? Then I can use it. Is it anything else? I don't know. The one time I'm pretty sure Kate had a bag that had a seatbelt latch on it. Anyway, really cool moment for Mallory Rubin who loves a date. We get a new date, a new time frame enters the chat here when we get 1998 as we get a little like Lottie montage at the beginning of the episode, right? Because not only is she putting her blood in the tea, but we get to see Lottie.

and a few other girls rescued in 1998. There's a press frenzy the way that it is shot and edited intentionally to obscure faces, hoods are up, hats are on, heads are down. We do get a glimpse of Misty, Nat, Ty, and Shauna, and I'm pretty sure Van that we do meet another redhead in this episode. Definitely see some red hair. Yeah. There's definitely red hair.

Again, I'm sure the citizens detectives will try to frame by frame this. But I think, like, I did do one freeze frame of a face that I didn't even recognize at all. This is very deliberately shot so that even when we are in wider pans and see a whole cluster of people, we cannot tell definitively how many people made it back. Keeping the mystery alive for us. One of the fun things is we do get some new information inside of this with the press conference that is taking place. And obviously this media swarm, you can see the Seattle insignia on the political. lease uniform. So we're in Seattle. We can glean, which of course makes sense. That was the destination. The investigation into the cause of the accident remains preliminary, we hear from the speaker at the podium.

The crash site was over 600 miles north of the designated flight path. So that helps us zoom in a little bit on how far away from that Seattle goal we actually are. We knew that they had gone north of the storm. The pilot said they were going to have to do that because of the storm. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But 600 miles. I mean, that's, I am not a pilot or an explorer. That seems really far. Really, really far. Lottie, like, we then cut to Lottie with her folks, and they are concerned about her, this catatonic state that she's in. We then see, it's sort of a cool bit of editing where she falls backwards onto a very

disturbing, like, shock therapy table, and we see her, uh, received, Shock therapy and what she sees are the same visions she saw when she was baptized by Laura Lee in the lake, which is like her with all these candles and the corridors and all that sort of stuff. And speaking of that song, 17, this is where the lyrics, I used to be free or was it just a dream, really hit. They play right here at this moment. And this is going to be an ongoing theme of the series of the season of this episode of this idea of. like the power you had in the woods is now a liability in the quote-unquote real world, right? And so Lottie, who was like a leader, a visionary, a spiritual guide, and, you know, we see her offering comfort in this episode to the survivors in the woods, is now someone who is just merely mentally ill.

You know what I mean? And that needs to be ground out of her, shocked out of her, all this sort of stuff like that. So, I mean, you know, the shunters have talked about this. They will talk about an interview. this idea of like, there is darkness in the woods. There was power, though, along with that darkness in the woods and how these women, these young women,

feel about giving up that power once they return to everyday life. Yeah. I really like this moment for, it was an incredibly effective way to achieve multiple different things at once. Obviously establishing a new timeline. You know, we talked about this in our primer pod,

we were really excited to flesh out that big swat in the middle. And obviously there's still a ton of room to play. I just knowing that we're going to get that immediate, like, what does life look like for me now? Like we always talk about when we talk about Lord of the Rings or any of our other stories. Like, what happens when you return to the Shire? And it wasn't like these characters chose to leave, but they were gone for 19 months and lived through something transformative. And so how do you return to what you had before? And for a character like Lottie, the thing you had before wasn't maybe the thing that you wanted.

or when you felt like you were your full self. And so like when we, you know, we cut into adult Lottie, who we'll talk about in the second, but like to come out of this moment into this speech that we heard at the top of the episode about this elemental self,

this primal self, this idea of what is real. It's the perfect way into that idea. And Lottie is the perfect character for that for a number of reasons. I also think that this vision that we're seeing these, her flash back to,

we're mirroring so much of that later in the episode with Travis. And we'll see if, you know, really analyzing what it means for Travis when we get to him in a bit. But that corollary of for Lottie, it was a hallway, it was following the antlers of the stag to get to those candles, then to wake up and see this halo that turns into this explosion with La Ralee, the idea of like the baptism, the rebirth religion mixed with this truer sense of yourself to remind us that that's what happened for Ladi before we see it happen to. Travis when he sees the tree stump, the candles, the halo, these recurring images through his particular version of them, very, very, very deliberate to remind us of what that, what course that set Lottie on before it happens with Travis. And I think to your earlier point of like, you can't go home again, that question of PTSD,

you're not a pilot. I'm not a, you know, psychiatrist. So I don't presume to speak with authority on this. But, like, from what I know about PTSD and element for at least veterans of the war can be this idea, like, you go from this life where you are killing all the time. Like, you are a warrior murder, if you want to call it that, which I would. Like, murder is a daily occurrence for you. And there is this aspect for some veterans where they miss that, where there is a missing of the way in which that makes you feel powerful. or godlike because you can kill without any sort of like, you know, consequences or retribution,

etc. And hashtag, absolutely, not all veterans. I'm not saying this is like a widespread thing, but this is something that happens with veterans. So like when you come back from the woods and you were living this primal, elemental self where the morality was different, how do you smooth that back over and just, you know, make chili for your family in the suburbs like Shauna was. So we see Lottie in an indeterminate time period between 98 and modern where she's like obviously in an institution, her hair is a little shorter.

And we see her lay hands on a woman the same way she will lay hands on Travis later in the episode. And of course, that's later in the episode for us, but it's earlier in Lottie's life. And so the idea that what happened with Travis has convinced her that she or the power that the wilderness has connected her to is she is either a healer or a conduit to whatever force she thinks can heal. And even like, I think it's a conduit. I think that's what she thinks she is. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like tracking the way that she talks about like hope over the episode, you know, there's the conversation very later, much later on in the episode with Nad about there's, there's no false hope. There's just hope, which is an interesting idea. But you hear Lottie saying like,

here, they can, they can make you better to the woman in the hospital telling Travis, obvious, and then again, when we cut to this adult Lottie in the first thing we hear is the truth is nobody can help you, it's for us to track, I'm really, really eager to track what feels like an evolution and a change and what feels like a repositioning of a consistent idea.

Because Lottie's saying then on the heels of that, you know, your truest most authentic self, again, that primal elemental self, nothing more painful than hiding yourself. The rest of it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. it isn't real, it isn't real. Like that question that you're raising, Joe, of, okay, if the wilderness, if an experience,

if a certain situation helps you unlock something about yourself that feels true, there's power in that. But what are you locking away in place of it? Maybe it's a social norm. Maybe it's some sort of type of expectation about people interacting with each other. Like, we spoke about this on our preview pod, but this is not just the case for Lottie. This is every, it manifests differently, but it's consistent across the character. We can look at Shawna and Jackie and say they were able to be more honest with each other in their final fateful fight than they had ever been with each other before.

And that's like a powerful thing, but a terrifying thing. Well, and it's a power dynamic flip, right, that Shauna is the one in that circumstance with the power because she has the attractive, powerful skills of like being able to butcher things, right? And what does Jackie have? I think that bifurcation is most clearly laid out in time. We'll talk about that a lot, of course, going forward. But so we enter 2021. I'm presuming it's 2021. We're no longer saying 2021.

It says present day. I don't know if they're doing that because they want to start like fudging the timeline a bit more or something like that or make it less confusing that it's 2021, but we're watching it in 2023 or anything like that, you know? Yeah. My read is that in the present day only a couple of times. days have passed because of the way that Misty is pursuing. Definitely.

Yeah. And because of Simone confronting Ty, whereas two months have passed back in the wilderness. It's a two month jump in the past. It's only been a couple days. It's probably 2021. I just wanted to note that now they're saying present day, I think because they know they tripped up some timeline stuff in season one, they're being a little perhaps looser in season two.

But adult Lottie, we get her. She's straped in like beautiful saffron and burnt orange. I got to say Lottie's wardrobe, adult Lottie's wardrobe, exquisite. Wall-to-wall, great stuff. She's reaching to her flock here that's gathered here, and they're all dressed. We saw a bit of this at the end of season one, but they're all dressed in, like, various shades of lavender. It doesn't matter what you're wearing as long as you're wearing lavender.

This hits Wild Wild Country for me if you've never seen that absolutely terrifying Netflix. For me, I'm ready. I got a lot of purple in my wardrobe. If you've never seen that absolutely terrifying Netflix documentary, I really recommend it. One of the scariest things I've ever watched. So good. And she's talking about healing the inner self and that speech that we heard at the top of the episode. And as Maloney said, she's standing in front of a lake.

We got that very conspicuous shot of the snow-covered lake at the beginning of the episode. Theory, up on the cork board, number one item, Lottie's new compound is at the – and doesn't that make sense? That she would feel like this was a place where she connected to some sort of primal energy. if she's going to, and we know that her family is very wealthy. If she's going to go build a compound somewhere, if she's going to go buy land somewhere, it makes sense to me that she would buy it on the crash site. I will be absolutely shocked. Obviously, when Nat is fleeing and escaping and running through the woods and there's like

literally a sign with the name of the camp at some point. There's a whole infrastructure in place, a lovely area where you can have your evening meal, a fire pit, where you can be buried in the nude. It's a great, versatile complex. Tell your friends. I was looking, of course, on every tree trunk to try to spot the symbol. This has to be the same spot. Mallory texted me. She's like, she's like, I'm scrutinizing the moss. Like she was looking at the moss. That's how cooked our brain is for yellow jackets. Okay. So what we're going to do is we roll forward, at least in this episode. I don't know if it's how we're going to structure it going forward. I decided to do it by character by character rather than chronological. on the episode because I think like watching an episode of Lost, it's going to be interesting to compare what's going on in 96 for these women versus what's going on in present day for these women. So we're going to start with Shauna. And the, I would argue that the side-by-side

thematic element for Shauna here is showing her affection in very interesting ways, right? Because whether it's eating an ear or having sex with your husband in front of portraits that you're lover that you killed made of you. This is how Shauna shows her love, right? So Shauna and Jackie are having a chat in the deep freeze. And I don't know if people, if anyone thought this might be a flashback. But like Shauna's, everyone's hair has grown out a bit. And this is two months later.

Jackie's on ice. But she and Sean are having an imaginary conversation here. I really liked this scene a lot for a lot of reasons. But one thing that really cracked me up is, I don't know if you remember one of the timeline inconsistencies from season one was the fact that in Jackie's journal in her bedroom in season one, there was like a mention of Titanic,

which came out in 97. So Jackie would never have seen. Jackie did not live to see Titanic. And so the, I mean, I mean, and so the showrunners were like, well, we think that Shauna would like go and write in Jackie's journal and pretend to be Jackie or something like that.

And I was like, that doesn't really make sense. And then we see her do it in this episode. But I was like, actually, I got to buy it. Perfect. I get it. You know, they're playing mash. It works. Exactly.

It works so well here. And it was so not only to address that detail from season one, but it was just so. Everything with Shana in this episode is so deeply upsetting and disturbing, but also so human. And like there's something inside of the revulsion that you feel like kind of tenderly toward her for. I'm calling her jacksicle. You know, we had Capsical over in the MCU. The moment where you realize that Shauna is just having these conversations and working through her own guilt by having a conversation with herself, that's what this is. But also the game of MASH, the journal, the idea that she would have continued to chronicle experiences in the future and pretend that she had shared them with Jackie is like really heavy stuff.

And when we think about some of the particulars, like what's the MASH game pointing? toward. You know, some of it's not exactly a one-to-one with her eventual life. There's not in an apartment. She doesn't have a million dollars, but a mom. Marrying Jeff. Marrying Jeff. Like there's the idea, Shauna's future, you know, there was that great conversation back in season one with Thai, with adult Ty and adult Shawna about the futures that they thought they would have and the futures that they ended up with. And so that's in our minds as we watch this as well. Just, uh, great stuff. I love the way the other girls talk about.

Oh, yeah. How concerned and troubled they are that Shana is just hanging out with Jackie's frozen corpse in the meat shed. And they're right to be alarmed. The, what I think is super interesting about this event, like this conversation that let's be clear, she is making up with Jackie is that it doesn't absolve her of her guilt. In fact, it frames her as even guiltier for what she did in terms of like, why was Jackie thinking of breaking up with Jeff?

because he wanted to have sex with her or stuff like that. You know, and she has that dead Jackie. Jack Sickle has that interesting line where she says, where Shauna says, Jackie didn't know. And Jackie says, but you did. You know what I mean? And that's just, that's just Shauna working through her own shit in her head. And it is fascinating to watch.

Not a ton more for Shauna to do in this episode other than lovingly stroke the ear. First she strokes it. Then she eats it. And I just want to say that while she's stroking it. Sorry. I'm phrasing. I'm sorry. While she is tenderly considering the ear,

the girls downstairs say, Shauna, dinner. So, like, we didn't have closed captioning on our screeners, but I imagine that that's going to, like, that's going to be a fun thing, just that, like, you can freeze frame that right over the shot of the ear in her palm. Shana, dinner. And hearing that, like, pulls her out of a trance, the way that she is utterly transfixed looking at this.

And again, that's another moment where, to be clear, this is, like, sick and unhealthy and disturbing. But there was a part of me watching this. It was like, she can't let go. She can't let go of Jackie. She just wants to hold on to that little piece of her for as long as she can. She's just, she just rose on the, on the door. I'll never let go, Jackie. I'll never let go.

All right. In 2021, yeah, and then she eats the year. We definitely talked to the showrunners about this moment, which I thought their explanation was so fascinating. If you were going to eat a piece of a cherished friend who you felt responsible for seeing leave this mortal coil and maybe had some guilt about some other stuff in your past with this person, you were hanging out with their corpse in a meatshed, journaling,

you knock them over, something falls off. You're going to keep it in your pocket. you're not going to tell anyone and then you're going to nibble on it later. Let's just be clear. Mallory is reworking something I said before we started recording where I was like, if I'm going to eat a body part, the first one I'm starting with is not the ear because it's full of cartilage. So what is it?

Well, now you're framing is something has to fall off a body and all the things that could fall off a body, a finger, a toe, or whatever. Like all that stuff is going to be crunchy. I'm just saying if I get to choose. Okay. If you want to be more active about it and just slice off. something. Go for it. I'm not making the rules. Tongue. I'm starting with tongue.

Wow. But I get to cook it, to be clear. Oh my goodness. What are you starting with? What are you starting with? I mean, I don't know if I'm, is it okay to say I'm not going to eat a part of my friend? That's such bullshit. How dare you entrap me into giving an answer? And then what's that? Of course, I'm not eating my friend. Sure, now you say that. Oh, my God. I ask.

The tongue is a good idea. I like that. I don't know, maybe like some thigh meat. It's a choice that we both hope to never have to make. Watch out Coach Ben. Thy meat is just like right there, ready. Okay. Shawna in present day, she and Missy are role playing a police interrogation.

Mallory, did this make you think of the affair, your favorite show that has ever existed? I mean, everything makes me. think of the affair. There were some other moments, actually, that made me think of the affair a little bit more just in terms of whether we can trust what our characters are seeing and then later recounting.

But, you know, you also have in our notes here, or Big Little Lies. And Big Little Lies was always a comp. I think going back to the pilot where we see all these interviews, we don't exactly know what has happened or what people are talking about.

So I think those are both handy comps. But in general, Misty is singular to me and defies comps. Defies comps. There's no comp for Misty. One of my favorite Misty lines from season one is when they were talking about, like, who plays you in the movie, right? She's talking to Jessica about that.

And she's like, ooh, one of those ladies from that show where rich ladies kill a guy. Love that. Okay. Misty has a message cookie that says, I want my lawyer on it. Unbelievable. 10, 10, no notes. And then Shauna goes home. And Callie and Kyle are enjoying some TV time.

Mallory, anything you want to say about that? There is something I want to say about this. And it's that this is one of the, and I, this is not hyperbole of. believe this, most important moments in ringer history. The fact that Yellow Jackets, a ringer obsession, features a scene where Callie and Kyle are watching the challenge, another ringer obsession, and not just any episode of the challenge. They're watching one of the most famous moments in challenge and reality TV history. They are watching the banana's backpack.

They are watching the scene from season 20 of the challenge cutthroat when CT picks up Johnny Bananas, ringer podcaster, Johnny Pananas. follow the ring or reality TV podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast like a backpack. And this is, in addition to being a shocking moment and an iconic moment, it's a big moment where character arcs alter and move in different directions. And C.T. who was always the most physically imposing force in challenge history, but kept getting kicked off for fights, makes his grand return. And then a couple seasons later wins his first championship. It becomes one of those dominant players in challenge history. And I'm like,

is Callie about to have a CT moment? Like, why are, why did they pick this exact moment? What does it mean? I'm so glad that you brought your encyclopedic knowledge of the challenge to this. I have not watched an episode of challenge since, like, it's been like 10 years, I think. Though I did enjoy it. There is a great ringer.com, Andrew Grotidado, long article about this one moment. I don't know the banana's backpack if anyone is interested.

Um, all right, so Shaw and Kelly have this, like, very tense interaction. over Adam. This sort of plays out the way that we talked about it. Might in the preview, which is like, Callie's like, I'm going to tell dad.

Shum's like, tough shit, dad knows. I already did. I thought, like, how dare you tell dad. Yeah,

I thought Cali's actually was really, no, but I think it's kind of interesting. I don't think it's just funny. I think it's like, we're seeing some fraying happen for Jeff in this episode.

He's got a, you know, he's got a traumatic minivan to the tune of last resort by Papa Roach moment. So like when Callie says, like, how could you?

I think there's something to that of like, Shauna has this accomplice in Jeff and he has been so supportive of her, but like, where is the line for Jeff? He is clearly in this episode, not as okay with Shauna's affair as he initially, when he was fully in the throes of his guilt

for the lone shark mistake, the blackmail, the lies, all of it. Did you pose for him? Oh, have you been there a lot? Like, we feel the jealousy And no, never.

No. Never. And then the way that he is looking at the paintings, the way that he can't stop flashing back to them, particularly the mutilated face painting later on. Jeff is struggling. And why wouldn't he be if you walked into an art studio where your husband, where your wife's lover had a number, a wide variety of nude paintings of your wife, you would have to confront the fact that this was the thing that happened.

We get an incredible 90s banger here, number one crush by garbage. And I really love this moment when Shauna's talking to Jeff about how she used to feel when she thought about him having an affair and how, in addition to the jealousy and whatever else, it also like turned her on. And they have this like really interesting couple moment where you like confess a dark fantasy side of yourself. And I really love this moment when Shauna says, I used to think that made me a pervert. Jeff says, what do you think now? She says that I like being the way I am. This is just another instance of that sort of like darker self, that sort of primal, elemental self and embracing it.

What does it mean to come back? Do you have to let go of that entirely? Or can you embrace it? I'm not saying that this sexual encounter that Jeff and Shana have in front of the painting is entirely healthy. In fact, again, seems to take it. a toll on Jeff, but there is something healthy in her being able to confess how she actually feels to Jeff and for Jeff to not reject her in that moment, but to roll with it, I mean,

can these two crazy kids work it out? Yeah, and me too. And I think to your primal elemental self point, there's something so, like the specific things that Shauna is saying, this idea of like someone else's tongue in his mouth. the idea of someone else's smell and scent on him. Like the things that she is saying are grounded in the elemental animalistic primal nature of interaction with another person. And I think that this was a great thing in season one.

And I love that even though these two folks made it out of season one in a good spot, relatively speaking, it's all relative in yellow jackets, that right away they take us back to that, wait, are they going to be okay? Are they going to be able to make it through? The thread is inside the hat. Will Cali disrupt something for them? Can they find a way? And we can have those,

it's not just like everything's fine and easy. That would be weird. This is much more interesting. The, I have one, I think that this thematic stuff is ultimately much more worthy of discussion, but I was like frustrated with Shawna,

adult Shana in this episode for making so many clearly boneheaded decisions and mistakes. Like, and I think, again, it's emblematic of why we love the characters and love the show, because there's the part of your rational mind that says, would you have really kept the money clip and the ID? Would you still have your own journals? Would you lie to Misty about it? But then you say, yeah, I mean, this was a character who kept the journals the whole time and had the plain number as the code to the safe. That's a very human thing. And it's actually important for

Shauna to not be this cold calculating killer and a criminal mastermind. She's a person who is confronting these horrible things in her life and then has to confront them anew. And so I, I, I netted out liking it. And yet, when they went to the art studio, I was screaming at my TV. Like, this guy is on the news. You can't show up there just looking like yourselves. Send Misty or put on a fucking head. Like, call Misty.

And that's what I mean, that's what I love because, like, in the beginning of season one, would we have said, well, you know who you need, you need Misty? But now we're like all, we're all like, no, you definitely need Misty. You know, when she's like, we miss something, I know it. Like, she was right. I love her for that, maybe not for everything that she does, like a murder. The art studio was just a treasure trove of potential. Yeah, we're going to get to that.

Mallory, I promise you, we're going to get to that. Mallory, who is obsessively on her Adam's hobby beat, sent me so many photos of various blurry drawings in Adam's studio. We're going to talk about it in theory court, I swear to you. We have to get through this. Jeff and John to have a barbecue. Really fucking hate that they put that license in there thinking it would melt as easily as the journals.

but also hilarious. The only thing that didn't melt was, of course, Adam's little face, which Callie finds. And so just because Jeff knows, and Callie can't play that card, does not mean that Callie is off the case. Callie is citizen-detectiving her way through this. She is not letting this alone.

So we'll see how that all plays out. What did you think of the flame catching on the tree? Is this symbolic representation of their crimes encroaching? on their domestic reality. I think it's biblical, actually, Mallory. No, I just think it's, I think it's to your point of they're fumbling their way through this in a certain regard. All right, let's talk about Misty.

Please. Please. She loses one friend. She gets another. As I said, it's been two months. Everyone is still extremely pissed. And Misty is, like, not allowed to go anywhere near the food. Fair.

Were you surprised by the two-month time skip, by the way, just given that we only have 19 months to work with out there? Or no? No, because I think they really want to push the desperation of winter upon them so that we see perhaps a little bit more cannibalism this season. I don't know that for a fact. Again, I haven't seen any more of the season. But then we get this really important moment, this thing that we talked about in the primer pod, which is like, are we going to get some of these like sort of faceless yellow jackets brought up to the four? And we do. We get three named yellow jackets. Melissa and Jen.

Jen has dark hair. We'll return to that. Played by Milo, who's been there from the beginning. She's been there in the background from the beginning. So they literally pulled a background actress, gave her a name. She was like Yellow Jacket number one in season one. Now she's called Teen Jen and she gets lines. Melissa is very rude, very mean to Crystal about her singing. They're both rude. Melissa and Jen are not nice girls. But that's okay because I would be not nice too if I had been in that cabin for two months with everyone else. I thought you were going to say that's okay because these characters have clearly been introduced and given lines so that they can be characters we know when they are killed and eaten. It's like a table of characters who are going to get eaten.

Delightful. They did it. Very, very possible. Though, however. Yeah. Hopefully not Crystal. Well, but I thought it was really interesting that in the closing credits of this episode, these actresses are listed as teen Melissa and Teen Gen, which made me wonder, are we going to see Adult Melissa and Adult, like, why bother calling them Teen Melissa and Teen Gen if we're not going to get Adult Melissa and Adult Gen at some point? Just putting that on the table. Great question. I will be astounded if these characters are not eaten.

I mean, at least one of them probably. I was shouting new candidate for Pit Girl when I saw dark hair at that table. Yeah. Jen with her dark hair. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, Mari's breathing a side of relief that she's no longer the only named dark hair character for sure. But I mean, but Crystal's like the big one, right?

Like Crystal is of those three girls, the new character who we see the most potential in. she bonds with Misty. She's singing this song from Beaches. By the way, Beaches, a movie I was way too young to watch when I watched it, but I definitely had the soundtrack and knew everywhere to every song. So I recognize this from the Beaches soundtrack. Not the first Beaches call out in Yellow Jackets either. Someone in that writer sort of loves Beaches. But I love this idea of like Crystal and her buoyancy and her optimism.

It reminds me a lot of these conversations we have about surviving versus thriving. Survival is insufficient. Like, we didn't have a ton of, like, this is a lost reference, Hurley builds a golf course moments in season one of Yellow Jackets other than Homecoming. And that went horribly wrong. But for the most part, the girls just seemed to be like sitting around, like, washing their period rags and figuring out what they're going to eat. We don't see to play games.

Little paper football. Yeah, yeah. But like, singing. Crystal, love it. And we see her connect with Misty. She says this thing about like how she sings to sort of ease her way. And this is something we heard Misty say to coach Ben when he was trying to poop in season one made for each other.

What better way to bond. I loved this. I'm sorry, it's taking them this long to find each other. I'm sorry that Misty has felt like an outcast for months, you know? It's sad because like to see Misty, to see that there's still no trust around the food to see that Misty who, you know, had found this new sense of purpose and relevance in the wilderness. And obviously that could be a dangerous thing to like want to hold on to that power, but had gone from feeling like the person who didn't fit into the person who had a real

role to play and then has lost that again. And so her first instinct is to lash out at Crystal. And we understand that Crystal just from that one little table scene is the Misty of that group, right? The one who doesn't fit in, the one who other people don't like. And for these characters to find And like that line that Crystal had about how they could harmonize together, was genuinely touching. This is really, really sweet and wonderful. And I want Misty to have these meaningful relationships and these sources of connection. I want Misty to be able to harmonize. Do you feel like Melissa and Jen and Crystal are like juniors or maybe even sophomores?

You know what I mean? There was like one freshman brought up, but like do you think I think they're like, they're underclassmen, right? Yeah. Okay. Misty and modern day. 2021, Misty, logging on, right? After the interrogation scene,

all she wants to do is call Natalie, but she's called Natalie a lot. So she's restraining herself and doing what any one of us does when we are lonely and frustrated. She's logging on. And here we get, like, if you thought Adams' art studio is freeze,

frame a paloza, let's talk about this. The Bureau of Citizens, the Citizen Detective's website is a treasure trove for us. This is not technically Reddit. This is at for it, which is like a combination of forum and Reddit, like, it's their little Reddit dupe, but it is laid out exactly like Reddit. Just in case you're listening to

this and watch the show and I've never been on Reddit, this is a Reddit dupe, okay? Really fun details all over the place. My favorite was the Parsipani Poisoner. What are the cops missing? Any non-adam-centric detail that popped out to you on the, on the system detective board here? Obviously, I have a number of atom-centric thoughts, but I did love. the over on the right rail, there's a about this community widget with a long, like the whole paragraph is worth reading,

but this is like a letter from the showrunners to the fans. And I just thought this was really nice and cool. You know, we like to ask questions and refuse to believe that there's nothing beyond what we are told, but you build toward the end of that paragraph,

all are welcome and welcome to all who seek the truth. Like a real embrace of the way that fans have latched on to theorizing and speculating and discussing the show. I just thought this was, really cool. Other other non-Adam things, I'll just quickly mention, I took note of the UFO sightings near the Fleming family crime entry because it is not the first UFO call out on Yellow Jackets. There's a news broadcast about UFO sightings in the area of note in the season one. So I'll be, I'll be tracking that. Not that I'm saying I think aliens are involved, but I like that they're playing again on the history of like, oh my God, did I see a UFO? What does it mean? Yeah, we're in like X-Files Times. Like this is the time to be really interested in that. So is your new theory that Jave was abducted by aliens and then they send them back to Earth as Adam?

It's not. But if it's somebody else's theory, I'm all here for it. I will just quickly mention on the Adam front here, though, because there's a lot to talk about with our guy, Elijah Wood in a second. But before Misty starts to engage with that one, there's a check out Adam's last art show totally blew us away. can't wait for the next one, bro, comment. And of course, my concern is, did that art show feature paintings of Shawna? Does anybody have pictures of the art show? Also, again, on the Shana and Jeff with love and respect or not criminal masterminds front,

like the turpentining of the paintings and smudging them. The most suspicious thing. Is going to make people certain that whoever is in those paintings is the perpetrator of a crime? Like, why did they do that? But yeah, what was the art show? What paintings were there? Also, we heard in season one from Callie that Adam had no digital footprint. Can you have an art show and have no digital footprint? I have questions. If you were a member of the citizen detective for it board, what would your handle be? Oh, I mean, I don't think you can compete with putting the sick in forensics.

This is just iconic stuff. Absolutely wonderful. This is our introduction to Walter, which is the character played by Elijah Wood, whose handle is putting the stick in forensics. Amazing. A cookie, a call your lawyer cookie for whichever writer came up with that one in the writer's room. And then we get to hear Elijah Woods lovely little piping voice coming through as Misty is reading. And again, just like in the past with her sort of meeting her match in Crystal, she's meeting someone who is reflecting her. Like Walters' breakdown here of what's going on with Shauna, et cetera, is very Missy. behavior. So I am so excited for these two characters to interact. Will we be shipping them?

Will we want them? I mean, like, yes, yes. But like, but it'll be so fun because they'll be at odds, right? Right. Missy is going to be hiding, because she's very loyal. She's going to be hiding, because she's very loyal, she's going to be hiding stuff about Shauna and Walter is going to be after stuff about Shauna. And that is just like a delightful premise. going forward. Love this place. Yeah. Is she going to entrap him into...

Oh, I hope she honey pots him. I'd love it. Yeah. Let's work together to solve this either so she can constantly monitor how much he knows how close he is to solving it, maybe so that she can redirect him towards a false target. Yeah. Will he end up being killed? The number of characters.

Put rice in his cigarette if she needs to, you know. Right. In this episode, I was like, this person has to die now. I guess one of our main characters has to kill this other character now, just a long list, a long list right away. But maybe he can become an ally, you know? Maybe he can. That would be great.

I love the role of Misty for Christina Ricci because Christina Ricci is an actress who I've always found, you know, she's a child actress, has done some stuff as an adult, but I've always found her to be like a little mannered. And Misty is perfect because Misty is like constantly performing and it's like a perfect role for Christina Ritchie, and I just want to shout out when she blusters her way past Larry, the whole gambit that she pulls there, talking about the Nora Roberts novel, her abnormally large bladder, rolling out a social security number, like, all of that stuff. When she's sitting on the bed and she thinks that Nat has really has left without saying goodbye to her,

and she says, don't cry, like babies cry. I thought it was some of the best acting that Christine Ritchie has done on the show. I thought she was like really truly tapped into something very great in that moment. And then this is a detective shines through and she notices the door. Is that a different shade of paint? Is that a chip of wood on the floor? Are those security cameras above the door? Larry, you couldn't best misty.

I hope Larry gets a spinoff. We're in the Paramount Plus with Showtime era. Everything's a franchise. What will the spin-off candidates be? Give Larry the motel clerk a spin-off. This guy was a riot. I loved him. You only can hold on to your discretion in life, Joe.

That's it. I just like, and it's something I love about Yellow Jackets is like they didn't need to go that hard with this character. But they decided to give him like delightful dialogue. All right. We move now, not to another girl, but we're going to Travis. And I just want to hit. So in 96, something that we talked about in the primer pod and a moment that really stuck out to me in the rewatch of season one is this moment when Natalie says about Travis, he never believed in all that. And that was a truth we were carrying into this season where we were like, okay, when we're doing our who joined the cult math, we were like, well, not Travis, because according to Natalie and he never believed in all that.

That's out the window, man, because Travis is not only drinking Lottie's blood tea. And saying thanks a lot, like nicknames. There's a closeness there and a trust and a warmth. When he has a panic attack, she lays hands on him. He calms down and gets a bonner at the same time while experiencing those visions that you. mentioned before. And the boner, which, like, listen, he's a teenage boy, things happen, whatever. Another way to the audience, you know, a hard on for the supernatural. It comes right after, comes right after he has, like, sort of zagged on Natalie trying to kiss him by the fire.

So, like, Natalie is pissed at Lottie for giving Travis, which she considers false hope. And you already brought up that idea of, like, hope and Lottie and there is no such thing as false hope. just hope, this tension between Travis needing to believe that Havi is still alive and Natalie trying to be as sensitive as possible, but also like, hey, man, it's been two months. Like, what are we going to, like, when are we going to confront this? And Lottie's saying, Lottie feeding Travis exactly what he wants to hear, which is what I think we're going to see Lottie do over and over and over again, what, in fact, she does to Natalie at the end of this episode.

I have a message from Travis, you know what I mean? And, like, Lottie has is just giving you what you want to hear. Havi's alive, I know it. And I don't think she's doing it necessarily maliciously. I think she genuinely believes this stuff. But Lottie is not just like a bad influence point of view threat. She is now like a romantic threat to Nat. And, yeah, right?

Yeah. I think so. You know. There's only one teenage boy. There's a teenage boy. Yeah, 19 months in the wilderness. I mean, and everyone's going to fuck at some point. And previously injured gay man.

That is who they're working with in the woods here. So, like, you know. Fascinating Travis episode. I think, like, first of all, I wouldn't be me. And when we're talking about our true selves, Joe, wouldn't be my true self if I didn't call out the excellent new balance scheme. Great kicks on Travis across the episode. Some classic new balance.

They're in great shape considering that he's spending all of his days trekking through the snow. Just note of that. Shoving magazines down them. Yeah. The point you made earlier about Nat and how this new information about Travis recontextualizes her prior characterizations of his point of view. And the impact, really the seismic impact that has on how we process the show at large and everything we hear. But also, we get another moment with Travis that forces us to rethink everything we see. see because he thinks he sees Javi dead in a snowbank. Like we get a close up shot of dead Javi's mutilated

face, not the only mutilated face close up in this image. Obviously, that progression of Shauna paintings from like smiling, happy, cheerful, engaged to face torn open looking like van after the wolf attack. There's a lot of imagery like that. But Nat has to pull him out of that and say it's just a skeleton of a fox. It's a fox. But that was what Travis saw. And if we had only been with Travis in that scene, that would have been the only thing we saw. And so that question of like, we talked about in the, in the primer pod,

how the attic seance scene was, felt really distinct because we shifted point of view with the character sweeping in from the outside to the inside. The showrunners talk about a lot, this internal, external idea, what is where and when. And so this moment were right away,

we get a check on the thing someone thought they saw was not there, felt really notable and like a reminder that we should be keeping that in mind. At the end, the vision, we already talked about the candle, the imagery, but like, what is that tree? Like, where is the tree? What is the tree? Is it connected to Javi? Because the particular, there was something about the framing and the positioning of it. We see it from different angles. There's, like, light shining through it. Are they supposed to go find it? Is it our hobby is? The covering of the hatch and Javi is hiding below. Is it a marker that leads to? And like, especially because we get that interesting moment with Nat and Travis at the very end of the episode where, they do stop in front of a tree. And Nat takes note. And we were both trying to figure out exactly what.

That's definitely not that tree. Yeah, that's a full tree. We don't, I will just say, Mallory and I stared long and hard at that moment when Natalie stops in front of melted snow. Yeah. Broken branches. Like, maybe a paw print, but I couldn't really tell. And she says, weird.

Right. And Travis said, we got to go. We got to go. we don't really understand what we're supposed to be taking in there. The only thing that I think we can lend on is that... Yeah, it seems like Nat

thinks someone or something was sitting... Why was this snow melted there? I think is the best thing we could come up with. Exactly. But the thing I wanted to ask you about the tree and the specific

mirroring of what Lottie had seen during her baptism and what travesty is during this Lottie hand on heart experience is for Lottie, was not only the baptism and the rebirth, but a moment where she felt like chosen, right? There was a connection that happened there.

Is this that moment for Travis where something is calling to him and he feels that he is being summoned, called by this force? I mean, I think if you were to ask him in that moment, he would say yes, you know, whether he will hold on to that idea I've, this is going to lead directly into Theory Corner and I want to talk about this a little bit later.

But like, I think that, I think what's really important is that Lottie's brand of leadership works best in conjunction with someone an extremely vulnerable person. And Travis is so extremely vulnerable because Javi is lost and as supportive as not as being like nobody except. for Lottie seems to think that Havi is still alive. And this is exactly what he wants to hear. The number of, there's no way that Havi can still be alive from Nat, from Coach Ben, across this episode. Just makes me absolutely certain that Havi is alive.

No, he probably is. The question I have is if we're going to see that young actor again for lost related reasons, which you can talk about later. Okay. Rolling on to Ty. Yes. The two faces of Ty. All right.

So in 96, as you mentioned, like Van and Ty are sleeping together with ropes around their wrist. literally tied to each other. Ty wakes up. Her shadow self is definitely behind the wheel in this second sort of sleeping together scene where she starts like approaching Van with like what seems like lust but then turns into

literally biting Vans lip, this idea of consuming someone. And again, we'll hear the showrunners both talk about that Travis moment and also this idea. of like consumption, love, lust, friendship, consumption. I really thought they had some really interesting things to say about all of that. And Van is like fine with it. Van, who we should recall is one of three people who was kneeling at the end of, you know, last season.

One of two people kneeling behind Lottie in her Antler Queen moment. Van is another person who is like searching for meetings, searching for some answer. as to why she has survived so many near-death experiences, etc. And has said something is out there, who's out there with us. Feels that present. But let's talk about what she says here and then in contrast to what Simone says in the present timeline, right? Because Van says, you think I can't handle this. I'm not scared of you, Ty.

I'm never going to be scared of you. And Ty says maybe you should be because you're bleeding. And Van says, you didn't know what you were doing. This isn't you. It's just something that's happening to you, happening to us. besides you killed a wolf for me, which is about the most romantic thing imaginable. And then Ty says you're nuts, right? In direct contrast to in 2021, there's a lot going on with Ty.

She's feeling immediate pressure from winning the election. She hasn't even taken office yet. We're talking about re-election. She meets an optimistic young voter who's like, you're the real thing. I'm so excited to have voted for you. So it's like pressure upon pressure upon pressure. She's bought a replacement dog for the dog that she slaughtered and put on an altar. Totally normal stuff. Incredibly worrying. And when she goes to pick up Sammy, Simone,

justifiably, I would say, freaks out at her. This is what she says in contrast to what Van says. She says, I found that thing in the basement. You're not well. And if you don't get help, I mean, real help, you'll never see Sammy again. Seek treatment from whatever this is that's happening to you. So there's like a mirroring of there's something happening to you. This isn't you. Something's happening to you. But there's acceptance. then there's rejection of the shadow self. Right. The idea, too, again, of the external and the internal, because the way that Simone is positioning her threat is, the only way I can break through to you, the only way I can convince you of how serious this is, is telling you all go to the press.

I will bring the swarm. I will take your shame. The very thing you fear, the spill splashed across the exterior of our home, take your secrets and lay them bare to the world. And for Van in this conversation is very much about the internal and the private and the personal and the fact that they have a clarity and a sense of truth that is really for nobody but them. And, you know, the idea of taking something like the wolf attack and making that like romantic using the blood that Ty has drawn and writing, I love you and that's how they say I love you for the first time. Like that's very, it is a, okay, this bifurcated self, I love all of you. I accept all of you, and there's something beautiful about that. There is also a real presence here

of the Lottie, like, let the darkness set us free idea. Like, I can't think of a ton of things that are darker than writing, I love you and the blood that someone drew from your body, but they try to cast some light inside of that. What if you try to entrap your podcast co-host

into saying what body part they would eat first, then you try to back out of that. I think that's a little like darker personally. So what entreats about this, and this is me bleeding a little bit of theory corner into the main episode discussion, but like Thai

is like smelling Simone's laundry, like is lonely as cut off from her family, blah, blah. We know that adult Van is in this season. If she meets Lauren Ambrose's van in the season, and if Van offers her acceptance for that shadow self, if Van offers her a narrative of, of nobody can understand what happens and happen in the woods, but us, no one can understand you like I do.

What is that, what is that going to do to Ty, you know, is there going to be a rekindling of that relationship along with that acceptance of that shadow self? Right. And I think that connects to this larger question with Ty's character and this bifurcated self of whether that division has maybe kept Thai grounded. grounded inside of her everyday life or whether it has been a hindrance and a cap in some way. And I think like the moment where she's just horrible to crawl back into the biscuit sacrifice site, deeply distressing, but even just like the movements and Ty's response, covering her mouth and weeping and saying,

oh my God, and, you know, her hands are over her mouth and this like very recognizable pose of horror and shock. But when she first brought her hands up to her face, it looked like prayer. Like she was holding them in front of her. I thought she was going to pray. I did. In a position of reverence and like religiosity.

And so you get both of those things right there in that moment. And then precious, perfect little Steve protect Steve at all cause. Moseses on in and she scoops them up and says, oh, Steve, oh, Steve, this was a mistake. I'm going to do better with you and kisses him. Is she going to do it? better with Steve. Also, if you're Simone, you have a fucking moral obligation to scoop up Steve from that car and take him with you and Sammy. Yeah. Also, honestly, between Steve and Simone, I'm more worried for Simone safety than I am for Steve. Simone is the more active threat,

you know, like, sure, Steve might, never mind, I don't want to talk about what might happen to Steve. I don't want to talk about it either. But like, Simone Death Watch, I'm worried about it. Okay. last but not least before we move to our corners, cult nap, Nat. I think we've covered Nat in the past, except to say,

to go back over something you alluded to before, which is that she and Coach Ben have a secret map board that they are creating. And the only reason I can think that they would keep it secret was like, so it was not to scare the other girls with the fact that like they've mapped

seven miles, you know, in all directions and not found any game. Why else would they have? have a secret map, Mallory. Why they're keeping it a secret from the girls, I think, yeah, that reason that you presented is a good one. Why they're building the map at all is so that we can track it and see how closely it matches Adam's back tattoo.

What have you decided? Have you done a side by side? Is there? Oh, have I done a side by side? I'll just take a screenshot of my camera roll for you later. The piece of paper that she hands over, which again, has like a lake drawn on it. Also, there are words. If you zoom in and, you know, we're watching on screeners.

So it's like, it's a little harder for, for us to see. I'm, I'm eager to watch on a bigger screen this weekend. But you have to do what I have to do, which is freeze and then take a photo with your phone. And then zoom in on the phone. Yeah, but there's a lot of mapping. You know, we've got a little drawing of the plane. There's the cabin. So also we can kind of like try to now compare that to the wilderness that Lottie's cult is inhabiting that

Nat is running through, et cetera. So I think it's handy in that respect. But I definitely think it'll be something that we look to later for clues where our people. Maybe it's how we spot where Javi is. What I was going to say is that in the present, Nat, Nat, not Nat who's chained up in Lottie's compound, nobody, if this is indeed the same area, I would argue nobody knows this area better than that, except for poor dead Travis.

So, you know, she's literally mapped this entire area. I don't, if this is the same spot, we are, again, we're going to be shocked if it isn't. But if this is the same spot, she hasn't realized it yet. But she will. And when she does, that hopefully will be an advantage for her. She knows every stone in this, in this whole area. All right. Let's go to Nat chained to a bed in a cabin on Lottie's compound.

Okay. I did, I did compare window panes to see if this, like, was maybe a refurbished version of the original cabin. It's not different windows. We're not, it's not the same cabin. Okay. All the woods new, but I thought maybe they would keep the windows. I don't know. Anyway, there's a Breathe Banner above her bed, which I thought was interesting because Lottie has his whole like putting hands on, breathe, et cetera.

Then we meet this new character played by actress Nicole Mains. Nicole Mains is, people might know her best from Supergirl. She is 25-year-old actress playing a kid. character called Lisa in Lavender. So obviously a member of the cult. Should we do it now or should do it in Theory Corner? Just hit it here. Let's do it. We're almost at Theory Corner. I'm so convinced that this is Shauna's baby. Okay. I just threw it. Okay. This is my like high-flown fantasy version of what has happened, which is that like they're going to come out of the wilderness. they'll have a baby

that will have survived. They did not eat the baby. The baby's alive. Right. No cheeseburger or roast chicken baby. Yeah. But none of the girls were visibly pregnant when they got on the plane. So they have no reason to know whose baby that is.

So when they come back to reality, any of those girls could claim that the baby was theirs. By the way, very similar plot happens on Lost when Kate Austin claims that Claire's baby is her baby when she comes back, just saying. So I think that Lottie claims the baby as her baby for whatever reason and raises it as her daughter. Wow. Okay. Like that first her parents take care of her because obviously she's institutionalized for a while and then eventually raises her as her daughter. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Let me hit you. Let me piggyback off your theory. which I'm loving with a slight tweak of that. Another lost baby plot. Yes. Rousseau.

Alex. Because if, Ben, because if Lottie is currently at the crash site. And I am, we talked about this for a while in our baby pot, just can convince that they're going to find other people. So the baby is born, but I don't think the baby stays with them.

I think whoever this shows others are. I'm going to take the baby. Takes the baby. And the baby grows up there. And when Lottie goes back all this time later, Lisa has grown up in this place. I think the real answer to this question is going to be how Canadian is Nicole Mains' accent. Did she grow up in Canada or did she grow up back in Jersey? Any, regardless of who she is, I think I thought this Lisa character was super interesting.

I really liked this introduction of her. I loved her interactions with Nat. Also, it's just amazing if the character is going to be really central to open with who the fuck are you from Nat really draws our attention. Hashtag this is Sean, this is my like number one favorite. You are like Adam is hobby. I'm like Lisa is Sean's baby. Can you share the email that we got about this? So because I do think this is a good question.

Well, yes. But I think you answered some of it. for me. Okay, so email from Brandon. Brandon wrote, so excited for the return of yellow. A big question looming large in the show right now is what happened to Shauna's baby. The darkest theories are that the cult either ate the baby or sacrificed it to not Jacob. That's a last reference. My question is if Jeff read Shauna's journals, presumably he would know what happened to the baby, which is his baby. If it was something extremely cruel, then why wouldn't he confront her about it? If the baby is still alive, then why wouldn't he

confront her about that? Either Shauna just didn't write anything about the baby in the journal as a way of trauma shielding or whatever happened to the baby is tragic, but not as disturbing as we may theorize. What are y'all's thoughts? I find it hard to believe that Jeff would not want more info about his child. So I completely agree with Brandon. But, Sean is already, like, writing in her journals as Jackie, right? Like, I don't think Shauna's journal is the historical record that we might have thought

it was last season when she was like, you read it all and you still love me? I'm like, what, did you read the Jackie part? Like, you know, like, what is he read? I took a picture. One of the things I took a picture of so I can easily find it for reference later is the overhead shot of the grill, which has Adams money clip and ID and everything in the middle. And then the four journals around because they're different colors. They have different markings. The providences notes on it.

So like, we'll try to track where when Shauna is scrawling in each of them and what that might indicate about their veracity. Oh, Jeff. What a journey. Jeff is on. I mean, like, I have to imagine that if Jeff read literally anything about the baby, he would have been like, you had a baby? You know what I mean? Like, that would have been a conversation, but they didn't have it at all.

So I feel like the baby doesn't get journaled about at all. Oh, except that, like, Jackie read about, all right, we're going to have to reexamine the journal question. I'm still sticking to my theory, though. But we'll revisit, and theories come and theories go. We hold them loosely. All right. Last thing, Natalie, running around the property, I mean, just shout out to Juliet Louis in like these leather pants and high heels just flailing about in the woods, just like great stuff. And she encounters this ritual where this is my interpretation of the ritual.

We get like the followers, they're wearing these animal masks. And then we see like a older middle age man who has been stripped down and is being. buried in the ground. And to me, it looks like he is very willing to be a part of this ceremony. Yeah. Yeah. So to me, this read more like a service he had paid for. Like he's going to be buried and reborn out of the grave or something like that.

Then, like, Lottie's cult is actively murdering a man in front of Nat eyes. I think so, too. I also viewed this as a opted into rebirth ritual. It made me think, you know, of course, there's a little bit of like the eyes wide shut energy, but also I was thinking a bit of that great scene. from reservation dogs where they stumble upon the ritual out in the wilderness and everybody who's just sitting there in their diapers willingly partaking in what horrors await so yeah this is a this is wild the mask for very scary very scary ever once uh great mom

mo not goes to attacker lot he says she's my friend is that what we are loved that exchange also Lottie's face, Simone Castle is playing Lottie. When she first sees Nat, looks angry and enraged. And then she has this mask of friendliness and then says she has a message from Travis, which is like the only thing that could stop Nat in her tracks. And then Cornflake Girl from Tori Amos plays us out of the episode 1994. Bangor the line, things are getting kind of gross plays as Shauna E. the fucking ear.

So there we go. Theory Corner. We've covered some of these. I want to hit Travis's death again, based on what we learned in this episode. Is it possible that whatever happened where Travis died was similar to this rebirth ceremony that we just watched where he actively asked Lottie's followers to do this? And that's why the candles were, like, that's why the symbol was there. or something like that, that he asked for this because he believes or has believed at one point in his life in Lottie's power.

And is the draining of the bank account not I embezzled this money, but Travis paid for a very expensive service that Lottie provided. And that's how she got his money. And then it went wrong. So, okay, that's what I was going to ask. So do you mean the ceremony went wrong and he was killed accidentally? or is the ceremony less for rebirth and actually I'm asking you to kill me and send me to this different plane

because if we think back to the dream and the season one finale and that idea of the hunter saying you know we've been waiting for you like this idea that you're being another summoning adjoining and maybe if Javier is dead this is part of Travis trying to find him on a different plane that had not occurred to me until you just said it I love it right I think

I think this idea of like briefly dying so as to be able to talk to Javi again and like whatever that is, whatever is happening, we have to rethink the whole like Nat was tell Nat she was right. Right. Well, and like Van,

that's where Van is interesting as an adult figure. If Van is still involved with Lottie and Travis in some way or just they have this awareness of like what we heard Van voice to tie at the end of season one, this idea of being between,

between planes, between phases of life and death and seeing something and accessing something in that state that wasn't available otherwise. Like, yeah, maybe Travis is trying to have that to replicate that same experience. That would be, like, really horrifying and dark. Yeah.

Love it. And, like, a way to do it by, like, stringing them up on that chain, like, that's a, I mean, bearing in the words. Maybe that was just the cover-up part at the end. Maybe. Okay. I think we've hit almost everything else,

but I do want to live, let you just revisit Adams Art Studio because you sent me so many screenshots of paintings. I, we did cover most of it. I think, like, the only other thing I would note is that if you are looking at the other paintings along the walls and there are a couple different pockets, you could talk yourself into these being paintings of the 96 Yellow Jackets team that you can see, like, the close-up shot are those Nat's eyes? is that a very young Jackie younger than on the 96 team,

certainly in another stretch of the of the room. Like, is that young Shauna? There's just some very similar looking figures to members of our cast. So does that mean Adam as Javi or just somebody who had been maybe more aware of the team than he had let on? Or it means nothing. And these are just other people that he painted. Who can say? I was looking all over that fucking studio for a wolf etching all over.

But I think, you know, even more so then are those paintings of the Young Yellow Jackets. What we already mentioned about the mutilated Shauna face was like there's a, again, I think a progression of mood and tone across the paintings that works thematically no matter what, which face of Shauna is he seeing. And this connects to that larger idea of the different versions of you that you present to the world or allow yourself even to access. And how maybe in very intimate moments, somebody can see those versions of you. But then also there is just no doubt that that evokes visually something we have seen on the show with Van. after the wolf attack. So like, what does that mean?

I feel like the writers are just going to keep feeding your Adamus Hobby obsession. I'm here for it. Let's just roll through it. All right. We're going to pick

favorite needle drop of the episode. Mallory, do you have a favorite needle drop? I thought this was flawless. It's really good. It was great. I would pick the Tori Amos cornflake girl.

I thought that was, I mean... Book ends. Perfect. Great. All right. Last, before we go to the interview, we're going to do our Lost corner real quickly, so like skip ahead if you don't want to hear us talk about Lost, but we're just going to keep doing it.

So let's just really quickly go through this. In Season 2 of Lost, famously, the writer's unlossed and their infinite wisdom decided to pull some anonymous survivors out of the background into the foreground. These two survivors were called Nikki and Palo. They are considered one of the biggest blunders that Lost made. They eventually had to quickly had to kill Nikki and Palo off because they were were so unpopular. I'm rooting for you, Crystal.

This show operates differently than a 22-episode network show. They can't react that quickly, you know, if people hate Crystal, but people will love Crystal. She's lovely. I think she's already off to a huge start, a much better start than Nikki and Paolo. But Crystal is definitely the Nicki and Paulo of Yellow Jackets. What else? What do you want to hit, Mel, in Lost Corner? I think we covered a good amount of this.

You know, obviously it's difficult not to think of. of the Oceanic Six when we're introduced to the 1998 timeline and the returning survivors and trying to figure out who made it back and pieced together the entire crew. Already mentioned Rousseau and Alex and the baby. The Oceanic Six guessing game I really love because in a later season of Lost, we have survivors who come off the island and we spend all season trying to figure out who made it. And they kind of played with that a bit in the Seattle Press Conference. I mean, there is like a press conference literally for the Oceanic Six.

It's a whole thing. So, like, they're engaging in the Oceanic Six guessing game of who made it back with the hoods and the hats in this episode. And then the hatch map, obviously. 100%. One of the one of the all-time freeze frame. Let me parse every single detail on this picture. Yes. But back when you had to do it on your TiVo.

So, you know, it's a whole thing. Well, I guess that's the answer from before of what we should be looking for in the in the Nat. Coach Ben map is different. Dharmah initiative stations. What's the Pearl Station? I'm so confused. All right. Let's go now to our conversation with Jonathan, with Ashley and with Bart, the trio showrunners.

I will just say Ashley, you will hear her voice first, then Bart, then Jonathan. I understand that three voices on a call can be a little confusing, but like I think they're distinct enough that you'll be able to tell the difference. So let us hear now from JAB. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound tersephatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity. Or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

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If you know, you Verbo. Terms apply. Seeverbo.com slash trust for details. How's everyone doing? Good. I'm good. It's so nice to see you all. You too.

I'm going to start selfishly by pushing my own agenda because I'm a massive fan of musicals in general. I was delighted to meet this character, Crystal, who we sort of brought out from the background of some of the nameless yellow jackets into the forefront in this episode. And I'm curious, you know, of course I want to learn a little bit more about Crystal if you have the time of the inclination, but also just, just, just. just your decision about when to bring the other girls forward, how many to bring forward, how to maintain that balance of new and familiar. Absolutely. I mean, we knew from the very beginning that we would ideally, over the course of the series, you know, introduce some more players.

It's just impossible to, in a first season show, when your world building, you know, also serviced that many characters. but, you know, we had the idea pretty early on for Crystal. We also do have our resident theater nerd in the writers room, Julia Bicknell, who was an incredible resource in terms of this. I think that she knows every musical that's ever existed. But, you know, we were just kind of thinking about how we could, you know, we really try to pride ourselves on having each of our characters.

be really specific and really unique and have their own voice. And, you know, I think that their music is a really big part of the show. And this was a type of music that we kind of started to explore with Misty. It just felt like a very Misty thing. And so to be able to sort of expand on that and show the origin story of Misty's love of musicals was really fun to us. And I'm not going to give too much away, but if you love musicals, there's something in the back half of the season that you are going to enjoy.

I've only seen the first episode, and I'm doing that so that I can play the theory game every week. Oh, interesting. Nice discipline. Yeah. But I wanted to ask you with the level of surreal in the season, there's a great little moment in the opening credits now of Christina Ricci, giving Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks in the Red Room.

Yeah. There's the lengthy, you know. Dead Jackie's scene. So, you know, I'm curious how peaks you are we getting? How much are we leaning into the surreal in this season? Will it feel much

distinctly weirder than season one? I love weird. Yeah, I definitely think you'll see some more kind of weirdness. The show in kind of a fundamental way is like a very kind of interested in our characters, a kind of subjective

experience of, you know, the things that are happening now and the things that happened in the past. And we found that using the tools of like the surreal and of genre, like, kind of allow us to give a sort of like visual topology to, like these kind of interior kind of spaces in a way that we might not be able to completely explore kind of without using those tools. I also think that, you know, by design, season one was a little bit more of an exterior show.

You know, they were coping with and getting used to and getting acclimated to their surroundings. And, you know, season two, because of the circumstances of winter is very much an interior season. And so because of that, it gave us some room to, as Bart said, explore the interior lives of our characters a little bit more. And, you know, surreality and sort of fantasies and hallucinations or visions or dreams or whatever you want to call them is, is a really fun way to, again, it's a visual medium. And so we get to have fun with what's going on inside our character's heads. That's so interesting. In terms of the point of view, I was really interested by this question of Travis in this episode, his first encounter with Lottie and her visions

that we've seen from him. And I thought it was so interesting because in season one, Natalie said of Travis, adult Natalie said of Travis, he never believed in any of that. So my question is, how do we reconcile Natalie's statement of season one with what we see of Travis doing here? And what should that make us be thinking about in terms of the reliability of these adult characters in how they remember the past?

Well, let's not forget that there's a big gap in between sort of like what we see in the premiere of this season and when Natalie says that. And so she might be deliberately, you know, she might be an unreliable, there's a couple of choices, right? She might be an unreliable narrator. She might be deliberately framing it that way because that's what she wants to believe, or she may be misremembering it. And I think all of those are on the table and all of those are kind of an insight into where she's at in the present day. I also, you know, speaking for myself,

I am a person and both of these guys can attest with not the most stellar memory. But what I find so interesting is, you know, I'll look back at, you know, my early, 20s and that's years of my life. And there will be eight or 10 things that that really stand out. And I remember with crystal clarity and then there's entire weeks that are lost to me. I'm like, I don't know what I was doing in, you know, August of 2004, like couldn't tell you for a million dollars. But I think that, you know, one thing that we talked a lot about in the room is that not only is this the past for these women, but they were starving to death. They were, you know, in these incredibly intense circumstances and memory becomes hazy, memory becomes unreliable.

You know, I don't know that any of them are necessarily an intentionally unreliable narrator, although I think there is a lot of denial and what they want to believe and what they don't want to remember going on. But one thing that we've kind of talked about is that if you really took each one of these characters and interrogated them with a lie detector test, I think you'd get a lot of different answers about what really happened out there. Because I think that things get hazy and, you know, it's just what they experienced as opposed to their idea of what really, truly, truly, exactly happened. I also think given where Natalie's at when she makes that statement that you just referenced,

it's very threatening to her to admit that whatever happened to Travis might have been the consequence of something he experienced back then because she thinks, at least she tells herself, that she's dealt with it. And then it's behind her. And if that, and if she's, and if she's, She admits that, no, actually, it was that thing from the woods that has continued to plague him. I think that will really destabilize her in a way that she's not willing to accept. We don't want the audience to be constantly questioning, is this real? Did this really happen? It's more that each person had their own subjective experience of it and their own reality.

And each of those realities is valid and real for them. I love that. I love hearing you all talk about your five-year plan, how you have certain things that you're aiming towards. But also, like any good showrunners, you are reactive to what's working and what's not in the show. For example, I love hearing that the great Liv Houston, who plays teenage Van, that their performance saved Van from the chopping bog that Van was not supposed to survive in season one, but did because you were so interested in what Liv was doing, et cetera. I'm wondering if there are any other characters or storylines that surprise you in season one that you decided you wanted to lean into a bit more in. in either season one or a season two. Yeah, I mean, definitely,

Laura Lee. The original plan was for her to die sort of in kind of the opening of episode two. And that again, it was just a matter of, you know, just like a really incredible actor that we wanted to keep around. And then in a lot of ways, I kind of ended up serving the same,

like to be a sort of like a first step in like a spiritual journey for a kind of Lottie. I would also bring up Warren Cole, who portrays Jeff on the show. And I think, you know, and I appreciate you saying that, you know, quote unquote, good showrunners have to be reactive

as well as have a plan because we certainly wanted the audience to invest in that marriage. You know, Shawna and Jeff. But, you know, it's a tough role sometimes to play the accessory husband to our main character. But, like, luckily, we got Warren to do it,

and he embodies that character in a really human way. So he becomes, like, fully three-dimensional character that you also want to root for. You know, and that's so, we decided to lean into that storyline, and now we've got a marriage that people are rooting for on screen. Had we not had him portraying it, who knows what would have happened? We would have had to pivot. But we're very gratified that he actually took that role.

And then we would have missed air drums in the minivan. Of course. I want to ask you a cult question, or if you were on Lonnie's PR team, I guess a wellness group question. When we're watching this story unfold and we learn more and more about Lottie's PR team, I guess, a wellness group question, when, you know, when we're watching this story unfold and we learn more and more about Bodies group, there are images that will look familiar to people who are familiar with the history of cults. Monochromatic clothing has to make us think of that Netflix doc, Wild Wild Country. The animal masks and the ceremony that we see towards the end of the premiere made me think

of this cremation of care ceremony that takes place with the Bohemian Grove. I encourage listeners to Google that if they are unaware of it. Anyway, I'm curious, in addition to any of that, what else are you studying? What else are you looking at between season one and season two as you're trying to put together this charismatic leader and her followers? I mean, there's a lot of research done between being 12 years old and now. I think all of us. I think you're talking to three people who have sort of a mutual, sort of morbid fascination with cults.

Because, I mean, there's something about, you know, it's a classic story, the charismatic leader who, you know, what I love about, we've seen, I think, every documentary in Colts Wild World Country. The Source Family is a great one. We, the deep end, and we had been tracking Teal Swan for a while before that documentary even came out because she is fascinating. And what I love about every single cult with maybe. be the possible exception of Heaven's Gate, which was pretty weird from the get-go. But, you know, I feel like every time I watch a cult documentary, you watch the first part and you're like, ah, they did it, a good one. Like at first, you know, there's always that sense of sort of understanding what drew people in. You know, usually there's a really positive message at first. It's people who are in some way hurting or in some way vulnerable looking to better themselves or to grow as a person. And then it just always takes a turn. Like it's just, you know, you're like, oh, they did it. And then you hit the next play in the next episode. And it's like, and then a bunch of

bad shit happened. And so just the fact that it happens over and over and over again. And it, it tends to follow the same narrative, which is well-intentioned people coming together. And then, you know, power corrupting or just, you know, that search. for spirituality, taking people to a strange place, that, I mean, I just find it endlessly fascinating. I mean, I think on some level, we're just looking for a cult that can, you know, like, stand up to. No, I really, I mean, I would substitute the word, yeah, I would substitute belonging for the word cult. Yeah. I mean, isn't that what we're all after as human beings? And so, like Ash said, just now, and Bart reiterated, like,

who wouldn't want to belong to an intentional community where everyone was sort of vectoring in the same direction and open and good listeners and, you know, communal food and living in a beautiful place. So there's so many things to recommend it. But then inevitably, whoever rises to power in that organization has a scorpion's tale that comes out at the end because in a way, the same people who want to belong also are kind of seeking that. They're seeking someone to tell them what is right in the world and what is good. And then it goes off the rails. I would just point out, though, like there's sort of like a reverse kind of survivor's bias. Like, They only make the documentary about, like, the disasters.

There should be a bunch of good cults out there. Right. We may start winning season three writers for. It's like they're farming stuff. Yeah, it's like, it's great. We don't know. And then you never have to decide what you have to wear that day because it's just the same thing every day.

Right. Although if you notice, there is a lot of differentiation at our cult in the show, so to speak, and I'm not even sure I'd call it our intentional community. Like, people don't necessarily have to wear the exact same uniform. It just has to be roughly. the same color. Sure, sure, just different shades of lavender. I wanted to ask you more about Lottie.

The end of last season, Courtney Eaton, who plays, of course, teenage Lottie, gave some great interviews about the question of mental health and mental illness as it pertains to Lottie and how careful you all wanted to be in depicting this story. And, you know, in this episode opens with some shock treatment in Lottie institutionalized. And so I was just curious to hear from you, you know, as we roll into season two, what are the pitfalls you want to avoid and what do you want the audience take away to be from this storyline? I think the biggest pitfall that we want to avoid is demonizing Lottie. And, you know, I think part of why we introduced her the way that we did, and I think that Courtney did an incredible job building Lottie as a real, understandable, empathetic, three-dimensional. girl in in the past is that, you know, I think I think some people, especially, you know, with how we

ended the finale, we're expecting us to come in and have Lottie be our sort of quote-unquote big bad. And that's never how we viewed her character. I think that she is sort of a nexus point and, you know, also puts things in motion that have a lot of consequences for our women, both in the past and the present. But, you know, we, we, we, we. We wanted to be very careful. She is also somebody who is struggling to figure out what exactly is going on with her. And one thing that we also talked about, we wanted to be as sensitive as we could be around the subject of mental illness.

But throughout history, something that I found really interesting is that there's a lot of questions about sort of spiritual leaders throughout time. You know, Joan of Arc, you know, the question is, is this somebody who spoke to is somebody who is suffering for mental illness. And I think that, you know, whether it's artists or writers or musicians or spiritual leaders, you know, there's a, there's a real correlation between people who are in touch with something, who are open to something in the universe, but who experience, you know, you know, sort of negative consequences to that. And then, of course, there is the the biochemical reality of mental illness.

And so, you know, I think that there's some ambiguity as Lottie is trying to process what she's experiencing and what it means. But more than anything, we don't, we never wanted to create a scenario where it was like, oh, this person is mentally ill and thus they are a villain or thus they are doing bad things. In that van, I wanted to ask about Ty in this episode because at the end of last season, she wins the election. there's a shot of her with this sort of, you know, Mona Lisa smile almost,

this very interesting smile that you at the time described as this sort of recognition of the potential power of this shadow self that she has. But then in this episode, when she goes to visit what I like to call the Biscuit Memorial

with New Dog Steve, she seems almost shocked by what she finds there. So how much awareness does she have of what she's doing, how connected are these two sides of her personality? Well, certainly, you know, certainly in the scene that you see in episode one this season, she's very conscious of it because it's right there in front of her.

But what was interesting to us is, I think Tony plays it beautifully because she sort of like plays it as shocked. But there's also an element of, oh, I knew this was here. Of course it was here. And so those two scenes speak to one another, the scene at the end of season one, where that smile, which you could portray as evil, Or you could portray it as like a rippling energy that's going through her of the knowledge of what she is and her shadowed self bubbling to the surface of consciousness.

And that's kind of the way I've always perceived it. I think we always have. But then when she sees it, you also get that wonderful performance from her where she is both recognizing that this is something she knew all along while at the same time still shocked by it. I think she's shocked but unsurprised. Yeah. Which, again, I think Tani delivered a beautiful person. performance of that. And, you know, you can talk about these sort of two sides that, you know, we've talked about shadow selves, you know, we've talked about a bifurcation. I think in a certain

way, you can also look at it as sort of a manifestation of, you know, ego and id to some extent. I think that Taiz is somebody who has repressed a large part of herself. And it's the part of herself that is a little less pragmatic and a little bit more intuitive. And the part of herself that is almost the most clear on what she really wants, as opposed to what she thinks she should want or she thinks she should be going after. And so a lot of it is, is her, you know, struggling to reconcile those two parts of herself. And of course, because it's a TV show and because we get to play around a genre a little, you know, we, we, we, um, get to play to play. play with it in a slightly different way and a slightly heightened way.

But, you know, I think what we're really trying to speak to is how everybody has a part of themselves that they're, you know, not necessarily proud of, not necessarily willing to confront. And the more you try to push that to the side, the more likely it is that it will manifest somewhere in your life. And I think through this story, like, I'm also trying to like explore and play with, you know, I don't think that, you know, all of that stuff that is cast away is always bad. some of it feels kind of forbidden or feels like dangerous, but there are like huge parts of people that they don't feel kind of safe to express

because it, you know, has made clear to them that it was very, very dangerous. And like, I think the extent to which she is connected to it or kind of aware of it, I think is like kind of also a kind of a question that we're trying to play with, you know. Like, I think there is also kind of a spectrum between kind of repression and actually just kind of kind of remembering like with like a, childhood abuse, say, you know, there is this, like, kind of phenomenon where the memory is stored, but it is stored without the emotional significance. And so it's like, like, there are times

that people aren't even aware of the abuse that they suffered, not because it was repressed, but it's because the meaning of what was happening, you know, how could a six-year-old kind of understand all of those things? And so there is, like, it is even more complex, what we know about ourselves, even more complicated than a binary of kind of remembering and not remembering. There are, like, various states of knowing in kind of a weird way. Right. I also think it's like what does psychic health look like? Because everyone needs a release valve for some of our darker, more self-destructive impulses.

It's funny, just to joke around for a second, like, thank God we're writers in a way. Because sometimes people will meet us and they'll be like, wow, you write a lot of demented stuff. You guys must be kind of nuts. And it's like, no, that's why I'm not nuts, right? That's our relief valve. We get to like sort of have psychosis for the mentally well, in a sense. by being writers, we get to explore things and purge those things so that we can, like, lead a stable existence.

That's one theory anyway. Semi-stable existence. Yeah, semi-stable existence. Speaking of theories, I felt so I was so sure that Coach Ben was going to be the first one to be eaten. But I think we have to say that technically it is Jackie, first on the menu. Can you talk to me about why this was the moment that you wanted to cross that barrier in to eating human body parts and also sort of what's going on in Shauna's mind

as she's making that decision. It felt to us that, you know, we knew pretty early on in the Writers' Human season one that we weren't going to go there in season one because we just did not feel that we could earn it and earn our characters getting there without it feeling unmotivated or a little salacious. And to our minds,

the fallout of Jackie's death and Shauna's grief in conjunction with the worsening of their circumstance, with the impending starvation, and her, you know, advancing pregnancy was just a very ripe situation, as it were, for getting us to this place for the first time. And we also talked a lot about how, you know, in season one, Jackie and Shauna is really a love story of sorts. It's a about this incredibly intense, profound friendship, one of those, you know, like initial childhood friendships that will either last and stay with you forever or you will grow apart. And, you know, I think that the intensity of those friendships at that age, you know, there's that love, there's the resentment, there's the wanting to be the other person, and sort of wanting to consume

that other person felt like a really apt metaphor to all of us for, for what. what those types of relationships and friendships felt like. So all of those things combined felt like, okay, I think, I think we're ready to go here. And this feels like a natural progression and something that we at least could kind of understand on at least an emotional level, if not, you know, a personally relatable level because I have not eaten an ear personally. Right.

Not you, yeah, not, yeah. Yeah. I think there could be like I guess this is like so it's like I think there's something fun about doing these kind of interviews because like you sort of like go back over the show in like a slightly different way so this is not something that we talked about in the room but is occurring to me kind of right now and that's always a great idea just to shoot it out live sure but like like I wonder if there is like something potentially powerful about this idea a deep like a physical expression of a kind of a secret you know is to like a whisper something. into your friend's ear. So it's like to sort of have this like kind of inversion of that of that the ear put into the mouth. It's like, oh, I wonder if there's like

kind of something also like floating around in that stew that's just like, oh yes, this weird thing that friends do and it's like the same stuff but in like a different way. Well, yeah, I mean, I think if we did it right and I hope we think we did, it's very intimate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's very intimate.

There's like an even slightly erotic component to it, I would argue. Yeah. That's both about friendship, but also like almost a quasi-sexualized love in a way. I mean, I just think it's really... Oh, you're going to get the fandom going with that? No, I'm not. Hey, look, I think a lot of good friendships have that, like, bubbling under the surface.

Oh, of course. Yeah. So, like, I don't mean to speak, like, casually about it. I genuinely believe that. There's a lot of, like, those impulses. Oh, yeah, especially at that age when you just, you don't have the tools to kind of compartmentalize different components of these intense relationships that you form with another person. And I think it is a stew.

I mean, I think that there's naturally sort of an attraction between two people who make a connection. And that doesn't mean it's going to be externalized or acted upon in a sexual way. But I think that to say that it's not there at all is to deny something very real. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, you know, who knows how the dynamics of any kind of relationship would be different given a different kind of social context. Right. Where it's like, you know, like given various kind of repressive forces kind of of the age.

Sure. Like, you know, who knows what would have been different. It's not to say that it would be different, but it's to say that we don't know that it wouldn't be different. Right. And like, why judge the anatomy of desire in a certain way? Like, why can't it be all of those things at the same time and have us not judge it? I love that. Well, that is my time.

Thank you so much for this. I'm so excited to watch the season. We're excited to have you see the next episode. Yeah. I saw the first one. Buckle up. All right. That's it for a lengthy little episode

of the Presti-TV podcast, Yellow Jackets, season two, episode one. Please do send us your thoughts, theories, contradictions, fact checks to hobbes and dragons at gmail.com. Mallory and I cannot wait to read all of your citizen detective theories. We'll be back next week, of course. with more theories of our own. And thanks to JAB for their great interview,

I thought it was fascinating. And thanks as always to our producer, Carlos Chirovoga. We'll see you next week. Bye.