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

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Mallory and Joanna break down ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2, Episode 2, “Edible Complex.” They talk about what happens with each character, from Shauna’s poor attempt to lie to the cops to the complicated dynamic between Nat, Lottie, and Travis. They also touch on the introduction of Elijah Wood’s character, Walter, and, of course, the episode’s shocking ending. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Erica Ramirez, founder of Ili, and host of What About Your Friends? A podcast dedicated to the many lives of friendship and how it's portrayed in pop culture. Every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed, I talk to my best friend Stephen Othello and your favorites from within the ringer and beyond about friendships on TV and movies, pop culture and our real lives. So join me every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed where we try to answer the question TLCS back in the day, what about your friends. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. I'll never have another friend like you. I don't even know where you end. and I begin, I'm sorry. And I love you. Back into the Presbytee TV podcast feed, I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today is a woman who will...

Hello, welcome back to the prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, it's a woman who will ask you what body part of a friend you will eat and then leave you hanging out to dry when it's time for her to answer the same question. Have you mended your ways? It's Mallory Rubin. You know, I wasn't going to ask you about cannibalism. I was just going to let you know that my mom is texted.

She wants to know if we want some chocolate chip pancakes. Quick question. We're here to talk about Yellow Jackets, of course, season two, episode two, edible complex. But a quick question for you, Malli, if you are in the middle of breaking up with someone and their mom is offering chocolate chip pancakes on the middle. Oh, I sit down for a meal without question. Yeah. Press pause. Absolutely.

Eat the pancakes. Yeah. Resume the breakup. That's what I thought. Yeah. Okay. I love chocolate chip pancakes. But both of our moral compasses are completely aligned.

We are here to talk about a very tea. A very snacky episode of Yellow Jackets. Quick programming reminders, of course, elsewhere in the feed. We are covering Succession in multiple ways on multiple days. Tune in. Coming soon. Barry on the PrestiH TV podcast feed, very excited for that. And a bunch of other stuff.

So follow the pod on, you know, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. Follow us on the ring or on social. That's what I would suggest. If you have any thoughts or feelings, Hobbits and Dragons and Gmail. email.com is how you can reach us. That's, if you're just tuning in for Yellow Jackets, that's ported over from another podcast, but don't worry about it. You could just still reach us.

We got a ton of great emails, including theories, little details you missed, all that sort of stuff. Mal, how are you feeling about the Yellow Jackets email engagement we're getting from our listeners? This is part of why we were so excited to cover the show. Yeah. The idea of tracking, the prospect of tracking the theories, the screenshots. shots, the freeze framing, the clue parsing in real time for us to turn the prestige TV podcast into the Bureau of Citizens Detectives was one of the things that we were looking forward to the most.

So this has been a fun beginning to the season in that respect. And if episode two is any indication, we're not going to slow down. Edible Complex, another sort of classical illusion made in a yellow jacket's title in this season. Edible spelled E, D-I-B-L-E. So it is a fun little pun having to do with cannibalism because this episode ends. Spoiler alert for Season 2 episode 2 with the consumption of Jackie. Yes. Okay.

There we are. We're full blown seas cannibal now. It's not just one defrosted ear in a pocket. It's the whole from snout to tails we'll talk about later. Okay. This episode is written by the full JAB. All three showrunners wrote. on this episode and drinked by Jamie Travis, who has directed some episodes of The Bold Type,

as well as some Tegan and Sarah music videos, which I feel like it's very much a Yellow Jackets vibe. I love that. Before we get into sort of our breakdown, and we're going to go again character by character, as long as that seems like it makes sense, I think that's a good way to go through the episode. But I want to just start with overall thoughts on this episode for you, Mallory. How are you feeling about it? Two episodes into the season. How are we doing?

this was probably my least favorite episode of this series to date. There was still a lot to enjoy. There's certainly a lot to discuss and chew on. This is the second pot in a row. I believe that I said that at the very beginning, and I would like to apologize to you and all of our listeners. There's plenty to talk about. And I think it's certainly an episode that we could have a different relationship to

when we're further in the series and have a better sense. of perspective, the idea of the reliable or unreliable narrator, who we could trust, what the idea of trust really even means inside of these timelines, inside of these character arcs, but there was so much

inside of the episode where we had to, in the process of just watching the episode, correct our understanding of something adjust in real time to a new data point that I actually just thought it was little untidy and confusing and almost like overly stylized. There was just like a sensory overload aspect of the episode where I think some of the stuff that we really tend to enjoy

about yellow jackets. Oh, Travis and that are fucking and Travis is not only not fully in the moment, but is seeing Lottie, light emanating from her person, cradling him down into the mattress. Let's talk about it. But when you're flashing in and now of timeline perspective, moment, reliability, and that's true for Lottie, it's true, Travis, it's true for Ty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it's difficult to catch your breath. So, again, while there's plenty to like and certainly plenty to talk about, and I think we could have a greater appreciation for it down the road in real time here in week two of season two, not sure this was the most successful execution of their concept. What about you?

Yeah, I mean, when I think about Yellowjackets and sensory overload, I think of the opening credits. The opening credits always make me feel really tense because there's just like a lot to pay attention to. The music is loud and frenetic. And like we're, we're cutting back and forth between fuzzy images. And I think my questions around this episode do circle back to that idea of the unreliable narrator. I think, you know, we talked a bit to the showrunners about this last week, you know, and they had some interesting thing to say about how they don't want people to watch this show and never feel like they can trust what they're seeing. But in an episode like, this one, we get both, like, both versions of Thai, past and present. Flashback, Shawna,

present-day Lottie, and Flashback Travis are all having these, like, visions or hallucinations. And then the sort of, like, mass-shared hallucination of the feast, which I, like, I kind of liked, but, like, there's just, like, a lot that's slippery in all of that. And we're going to revisit this, again, as we talk about maybe some pop cultural illusion reasons for that. And then again, in theory section. So there's like potential reasons and it's potentially true that at the end of the season

it will all feel correct and worth it. And like we have a grasp on it. But I think in the isolated watching of this episode I felt a little like, okay, I need more reality to anchor to

than I'm getting quite in this episode. We got this interesting email from a listener Izzy, who's a, I believe, psych major, who wrote about the idea of memory. wrote, our memories are colored by so many things, how heightened our emotions are we have an experience, how much sleep had we gotten the night before. Sleep is essential to encoding memories. I know.

I'm like, oh, is this how we get better memories, Mallory? How much food we'd eaten. The brain requires a lot of energy to encode memories, and the girls are lacking sustenance. And every life experience we have prior to that memory being encoded. Even after that, every time we recall a memory, we change it ever so slightly. And usually it's an unconscious change. The idea that we have any reliable, any reliable narrators is interesting. How much can we really trust any of our memories? So yeah, these girls are sleep deprived and starving. So, you know, the idea that Nat is misremembering or misattributing Travis's faith in

season one or anything else that we get, all these delusions. Again, I'll just be interested to track it as we go forward. For anyone who's interested in seeing another television show grapple with the idea of memory, I'd like to recommend another Showtime classic, The Affair. Yeah, because the affair has a solid sort of like Roshamon style of storytelling where you see it from one person's perspective and then another. It's pretty interesting. Or the best television show that ever existed if you asked Mallory Rubin. Mallory, just some roundup on some other emails and ideas.

How do you feel about the fact that Jeff Sadeki has a Spotify playlist called Old Fashion Dad Shit? How do you think I feel? I feel fucking fabulous about it. We just had the pleasure of recording our first Doctor Who pod together over on the Ring ofverse. Check it out, folks. So I'd like to quote from that pod. Fantastic. That's how I feel about this.

10 out of 10, no notes. Showtime is really crushing it on the like social added ephemera front, you know? Like they're really going, splashing out on this. Shout out to the official yellow jackets Twitter account that like is constantly responding with like really funny cannibals and jokes. I love it. Like, great stuff. But yeah, there's a Jeff Sedecki playlist over on Spotify right now. I really recommend 10 out of 10.

We also get some feedback and there's some questions about like our theory that Lottie's compound was up in the Canadian wilderness. We are slowly collecting evidence that that might not be the case based on boats in the lake, how long it took her to get to Travis as she recounts in this episode. The fact that Nat has spent now a considerable amount of time there in the daylight and has never once said, wait a minute. taking me back to the site of our 19-month trauma in the wilderness, etc. So if you're keeping score, that's the first, the first Malin Joe theory busted quickly.

We love that for us. That's okay. We have many more. Yeah. We got a great email from Kristen about the families of these girls. I'm not going to read all of it, but, like, Kristen had a bunch of questions. We saw a bunch of parents in season one and, like, some of the flashback setups. We saw like Van's mom, Nat's terrible dad and mom, like all this sort of stuff.

Lottie's parents. Ratt swimming in a pool. But the question is like, are we interested in these parents, like, in the 1988 timeline, how parents are going to react? Are these girls all moving home? You know, we know that Lani, we already know like that Lottie's return to society was bumpy, but like, to put it mildly. But like, how are these others? So are you, how interested are you over under Mallory in the like parental contribution? Or do you prefer that we keep the focus on the teens and then their adult counterparts?

This is a great question. I have to be honest, I had not really thought about this before. But now that, now that Kristen has put this out there for us, I don't know if I'll be able to stop thinking about it. You know, one of the things that I really like about, say, count. And Callie and Shauna and Jeff's relationship in the present day timeline is that Callie is not just a new character who's trying to figure things out and has her own life. She allows us to think about the perspective of a teenage girl in high school trying to make her way through the world as strange things are happening around her. And that's an interesting parallel, but also distinction to her own mother back 25 years ago. But part of our understanding of Callie's life is through the lens of her parents and her family dynamics.

So yeah, like giving us versions of that for the other. characters does feel important. I could see the 98 return being the way to do that and like other people beyond just parents or siblings as well. Like if people are going to college, what's, what are their roommates like? Like, you know, we had that great scene in season one with Ty and Shawna when Ty was afraid to go to sleep and went over to their home. And they both talked about like the lives they thought they would have and then what actually

ended up happening in Ty runs through her college years. Like, I hope we get to see. some of that. You know, I think that understanding each of these characters on their own and in isolation is interesting, but it's always more interesting in relation to other people and their families seem like they would be a big part of that. So I would expect we get a little more, though also, like the flip side is it's suddenly just a ton of characters to juggle. And if you introduce families for like five, six, seven people in a meaningful way in a now third timeline, you end up with episodes either where you're skipping key characters entirely for full

episodes, which I don't know, might be, obviously that's just a lost model. And maybe they want to avoid that close comp, but might be tidier at some point than like zipping in and out of, you know, six or seven different point of views inside of one episode. But that would be a lot of perspectives to juggle. What do you think? Well, and we're going to get to like a really fun rundown. We got from another listener about like Lost and how it was handling the rollout of information versus Yellow Jackets because obviously, like, Lost had so many more episodes in which to work. But I was just thinking about the Oceanic Six, which are the survivors of the island and how we did get people in their lives in all of their lives, except for one very important example, and how all those

people reacted to their return. And so that is an interesting question. Anyway, I'll be thinking about that and I'll be curious if other people are interested in that. We also got an email from Brianna. I want to read this email, but I just want to say that Mallory and I are not medical professionals. We are not at all educated in this arena whatsoever, so we will not be weighing in on this, but I thought it was an interesting perspective, and I wanted to read it, which is Brianna wrote in regards to Lottie, the depiction of Lottie in episode one, I'm really concerned about the depiction of ECT, which is the treatment we see Lottie receive when she returns. By the 90s, ECT was done under sedation and was the last resort

treatment for severe depression, but not for schizophrenia slash a person experiencing delusions when all drugs fail to help. While it might be uncomfortable to watch a person filmed who is having ECT done, it wouldn't be any worse than watching a surgery under sedation. ECT already has so much stigma because of one floor of the cuckoo's nest, but can be life-saving and life-changing. Comedian Gary Goldman has talked about it saving him. We probably had 20 more years with Kerry Fisher than had she not done it,

and probably many more famous people who don't talk about it because of the stigma. The only charitable explanation I can think of is that Lottie never had ECT, and this is an example of the unreliability of her narrative. So anyway, just some added context for something that Mallory and I are woefully ill-prepared to talk about. Last but not least, Ben wrote in to talk about the date on the camcorder that really flummoxed us. And we actually got a couple responses in this vein. But Ben pointed out that any time that he used his camcorder to make dumb movies, quote-unquote, in the 90s, the date was always wrong on the bottom of the camcorder.

And I think this is true. It was definitely true on, like, my digital camera that I had. I just don't understand why they would even make us have to grapple with that. Yeah, not everybody Sammy and the Fableman's, that's fine. But, you know, with love and respect for all of the amateur filmmakers out there, Ben included, you know, I would ask, were you making any of those home movies for Showtime, put out into the world when everybody who was going to be watching it spent the last year asking about this exact time frame question.

Not everyone is Sammy Fableman. Oh my God. Fableman discourse post Oscars. Who knew what happened? All right. Let's go to the episode breakdown. As I said, we're going to go character by character. And we're actually going to start with my new favorite storyline.

By far, far and away. No competition. It's Missy and Walter. This is the stuff, Lionel. Oh, yeah. A love story for the ages. Missy and Wollinger. as played by Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood.

We don't get a ton of, like, mystery-centric stuff in the, in 1996, except, like, further bonding with Crystal. And then Mari very bitchily saying, and I don't like to say bitchily, but I have it out for Mari in this episode, and you'll hear more for me on that. Oh, great, there are two of you now. I just think that, like, if the outcast weirdo finds another outcast weirdo to be friends with and I much love and respect out Casperdos. I might have been one. You just leave them alone. They're enjoying each other's company. Mari, did you have to go there? Anyway, how do you feel,

Mal? Seeing Crystal and Misty together in this episode, like just little moments, little glimpses of them, they're play acting outside together. Delightful. Argal Mari had one of the roughest episodes in Yellow Jackets history. Tough look after tough look. Literally. ended up throwing hands with other characters at a fucking soon-to-be funeral site. I mean, it was a disaster for Mari start to finish. Mari has been like Mari after Lottie and then Lottie no longer. But for the entirety of the run, Mari has been like number two, now number one candidate for a pit girl.

And now I'm just sort of like, am I on the side of the cannibal girls thing? would I also chase Mari into a bit? I'm not a fan of her in this episode is my point. So, okay. But the point, her saying, oh, great, there are two of you now, destroys whatever theories you might have had that Crystal isn't real, which is a theory I saw a lot of which was baffling because when we first meet her, she's talking to two other characters.

But listen, no bad theories in Yellow Jacket's season two. But I think we have to accept that Crystal is real. Which brings us to, I mean, do we have to accept that Walter is real? because it's just too perfect for this world, in my opinion. Here we go, present day. Misty, we see Misty calling Ty with a very classic, Are You Hanging Out Without Me, vibes? Are you and Shauna having a spa day?

Folks, it hurt. It hurt, and we've all been there. We have. We really have. Like, if, you know, when you see two of your friends tagged on social, you're like, wait, why wasn't I invented that? Okay. And so she could use the support of her, quote, quote,

teammates and tracking down that. And I just like, you know, listen, Misty has literally killed people. Like, I don't know how much. Actual murderer. That's true. Sympathy I was supposed to be extending to her. But like, I just find something so heartbreaking and charming about her calling them her teammates when like she's the equipment manager. Do you know what you mean? Does equipment manager part of the team? I'm watching Ted Lassow. Yes. Absolutely. I was going to say, you're watching Ted Lassow. I mean, not only a part the team, what would Zava say? Yeah. My goodness. But I find

this so sweet and winning. And I think to your point about like how drawn are we supposed to be to a no and murder, that's like really still one of the great tricks of the show. One of the great achievements of the show is taking these people who we see do terrible things and then having to say, this is absolutely my favorite character. I love to rue for this person. I can't wait

to learn more, etc. I do have to continue with what I guess might be a season two to recurring line line of inquiry for me though. I was not really expecting this, which is asking you if you were expecting these characters to make these sloppy mistakes. Do we believe Misty, citizen detective, leader of the crime scene cleanup, leaves this voicemail?

Like, it's not like she's mentioning Adam or cleanup or things like that, but any details about any of the people in this web, I just don't buy Misty being that careless. That just doesn't seem like a thing she would do. I mean, possibly also you could extend that to the post that she puts up on the on the board. Yeah, or even logging in on your work computer to your citizen

detective bureau? Misty! She didn't even create like a second profile on the for it anyway, okay. Yeah, where's your citizen detective

burner, Misty? Walter comments on her post saying he could help her if she stops shitting all over his Adam Martin theories. Misty flustered responds, this small detail of her responding and then having to edit her response and like hit

send again and then close her laptop. I am like so emotionally, immediately emotionally invested in Walter and Misty, the way that he can fluster her. I'm a huge fan of this, this wild goose chase that is this ship. I'm aboard. I might be even the captain of this ship. How do you feel, Mallory? I love it. And also the anxiety of needing to edit a message.

Yeah. You know, it's keen and it's sharp, folks. I mean, you text with me quite frequently. You know how often I make typos in a text. You very kindly look the other way. But now text messages have an edit button. So the question is like, do I show how much I care by editing my error? Or do I just let it stand and be like, listen, we all make mistakes. It's fine. I did just love this misty scene. I thought that all of the scenes. were great. Obviously, we build toward like a truly wonderful, you know, we had gotten the Elijah

Wood voice work in the premiere. But I didn't know how long it would take to see him in the flesh. I know. In the high sock. Flesh. Socks up. One of the, one of the thrills of my week to get this sequence here. Just amazing. Cheeky little side eye he gives her. And then he leaves her a puzzle, which is like her love language. She leaves a blacklight message for her, which she only discovers because she was cleaning Caligula's cage and had her trusty blacklight out. And it's like, of course.

And not only that, not only does he leave her a little mystery note on top of her Tupperware, by the way, like he's as good as she is, right? He has set up a fake FBI interrogation for her. If this is not like, primo first date material for Misty.

I don't know what is. I'm so excited. Mal is all well and good in the land of Misty and Walter? How are you feeling? Couldn't be more thrilled that this is unfolding in season two of Yellow Jackets.

The Tupperware, the letter, just the extent of the bit that he stages, you know, that he's scoping out the facility for his mother, like the details

of the questions that he's asking, knowing that he's going to draw her attention. Misty has met her equal in a way that is really thrilling for us, especially because we think back not only all of her relationships with the members of the team, but we've seen Misty go on dates. We've heard her talk about other dates. This would be an exciting thing for her to find somebody who shares her passions.

But of course, the complicating factor is that Walter is a threat. Walter is on to Shauna. Doesn't know what Shauna yet, but knows that thinks there's a girlfriend, right? So, like, this whole scene, finding where Misty works, figuring out who she is, leaving the letter, setting up the fake FBI, meaning all of it, it makes us see how capable and creative and inventive he is in a way that really makes us excited to spend more time with him and see Misty spend more time with him, but also has to make us more afraid of him then because he poses even more of a risk for Shawna than we previously know. So will Misty be able to win him to their side? Like if they hit it off, if they bond, will she be able to actually, would she ever bring him in to that level of confidence? And there's this question. So, you know, as you said, we saw Misty in season one on dates or whatever.

And it was disastrous and horrible. And all we want in this world is, what is it, a lid for every pot, right? a lid for every kettle. Like, you know, you want to find your lid. You want to find someone who's like, not only is okay with who you are, but, like, is enthusiastic about who you are. And we talked about this last week in terms of, like, the darkness of some of these characters, like, how Van reacts versus how Simone reacts to tie, like, that sort of stuff.

So I think this is something that we should be, like, constantly looking at. Like, how Jeff sees Shauna read her journals is, like, I'm still into it, right? I think this is the theme of the season is, like, is. is like finding someone who accepts all parts of you, including the darkness, let's say. And so if we're doing the comparison of the past and the present, watching Missy meet Crystal, who's like not only tolerates her but is excited to be around her,

and then watching her meet a Walter who seems like he also might be excited to be around her, that's heartening. But then, as you say, there's the delightful tension of, like, that is also at cross-purposes from something else that we want while watching the show. This brings me to a little theory I want to throw your way. And you just mentioned Jeff. We should have led with that at the top when we were talking about what felt like it was missing from this episode. It was Jeff.

It was Jeff. Where was Jeff? But on the Jeff front, when Misty's reading the letter and it says, however, I did idea man who's been living at the motel for three months, he thinks he's being interrogated by the FBI tomorrow. Right away, sirens blaring in my head. I think this is going to be Randy. because we saw in season one that Randy was saying at the hotel, little marital strife had gotten the boot to the old motel, had the conversation with Shauna by the ice bucket in his hands in the parking lot.

Now, has he been there for three months? Who can say, would we be surprised to find that Randy had been living at a motel for three months? Certainly not. Now, why might this matter? Because Randy knows what Jeff did. Randy knows about the entrapment plot for the money from season He knows all of that. And Shawna crucially did not tell them about Jeff's involvement and that whole thing

when they came to help her saw up Adam's body and dispose of it and cover up a crime. So if through Walter and this fake FBI interrogation Misty learns about the Jeff action, what will that mean for her and Shawna? What will that mean for this whole? Yeah. Yeah, this whole little crew that they've got going. I'm completely with, like, it has to be Randy. Like, there's no other, I mean, there's no other thing that makes sense.

I'll be very interesting to see if the rest rolls out the way that you think it is. That's so interesting. Always great to see Randy. Again, I'm really hoping for the motel spin-off now that we, now that we met Larry. That's true. Week two. All right, let's talk about Shauna, Callie, and the fucking cops. This is all present-day stuff, obviously, right?

So first of all, we get, as we mentioned, Callie and break up with Kyle because there's only so many relationship problems you can vape your way through. Also, I love the writing on the show generally. And as someone who grew up on Dawson's Creek, I have a high tolerance for teenagers who don't sound like teenagers. But there's something about the way that Callie was talking about her situation where she was like that her life with her parents was like a fun house hall of mirrors. I was like, what teen has ever said anything remotely like this while vaping in bed with their terrible boyfriend who has a gallon of lotions on his bedside table? The lotion was so funny. Callie may not be a recognizable teenager in this moment, but Kyle with his Yankees poster, his devil's poster, and his vet of lotion to jack off with every teenage boy in recorded humanistry. This was so funny.

Oh, my God. Poor Kyle. Man. Really? I don't know. He's fine. Better out of this family than in. Probably, you know what I mean?

They're going through it. So, yeah, so Callie's looking at the little, like, melty portrait of Adam that she fished out of the barbecue last week. Good to be holding on to what could definitely link you accidentally, potentially, to a murder, if it is discovered on your person at any point. Yeah, good things the cops aren't circling them at every turn in this. episode. So everything's fine. So Shawna comes in and she's like, should we go to the mall, L-O-L and be girls? And Callie's like, are you fucking kidding me? No.

Dude, I'm sorry. I don't speak grunt. Is that like a what a dumb question kind of grunt? Or, oh my God, are you choking on something? Was so funny. And I love these moments from Shawna. I really do like that this is such a fascinating dynamic between mother and daughter. And I love that Shawna is not totally cowing to her kid here. But, like, also clearly should be taking Galley's rage and resentment a little bit more seriously. It's fascinating. But I think this is like, I don't know, it's who sees you, who accepts you, who's on your team or whatever. Because, like, despite this friction here, when it comes down to it, when hot cop Kevin Tan makes his reappearance.

Unbelievable. To the narrative. Looking sublime. looking great. Like, ACAB except for Kevin T, no. But anyway, like, he comes in. He's got the text messages.

And I just don't understand. Like, it's not that I don't think, when the police have the text message, it's not that they, like, have the data that they happen. Don't they have the texts of the text messages? Right. I don't know.

That's a good question. I mean, eventually, yes. Maybe that comes, does it come in stages? The first thing is just the law. of like numbers. Yeah. Maybe just phone records and then, okay.

I don't know. We'll add to the list of we are not ex. We are not detectives. Please. Citizen detectives, not actual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, Shauna keeps lying in this moment and blithely. Again.

And it's just not, I don't know. What do you want to say? I just, I guess I'm surprised that Shauna is behaving this way. And maybe I shouldn't be. And this is sort of the knot the pretzel I twisted myself into and then out of last week with would it make sense

for her to make these choices about burning the evidence or to lie to Misty or to go to the art studio in the first place and there's a part of it that's like, right, Sean is not a criminal mastermind.

She's a human being who's going through some really gnarly shit and it's actually like endearing to see her make this many mistakes because she's not a professional killer and fix her. But the insurance lie. For example,

Like, do I believe that Shauna in this situation with a cop coming to her home would be flustered and not just have the perfect cover story? Of course. Would I think that maybe after sawing up a body and disposing of its parts, they would have come up with a cover story in case the police came? Yeah, I kind of do think that would have been part of their checklist. Maybe not. But the insurance thing was a speed bump for me because, and please tell me if I'm remembering something incorrectly here. A large portion of the car accident plot in season one hinges on, let's not use insurance. Let's go through my guy who can give you a cheap discount at the shop.

Who's the guy? It's me. Let's fuck. Right? That was the whole thing. It's a classic line. It's classic line. You have to admit.

Listen, it worked. It worked. It worked. Why tell a lie that is so easy to disprove? A guy and I think. I mean, later, Kevin calls Shauna smart and she is, but maybe, like, not smart enough to evade all these detectives. So the question is, like, what are we rooting for here? Like, are we, I think we are as TV watchers attached to Shauna and actively rooting for her to get away with the murder of Adam?

But, like, again, that puts things at odds inside of us because this is someone like, for sure. She just killed this guy. and everyone's helping her cover it up, including, again, Callie. Callie cuts into this conversation as like, Mom, L-O-L-L, we said, you said we'd go to the mall, right? And so after just rejecting that offer. And so that teaches a lot about Callie. Like, when push comes to shove, like, Callie has been so resentful and shitty towards her mom, like, the entire series. But when push comes to shove, you know, on Halloween and now, like, she is, she has loyalty to her mom.

Will Callie have to kill the cops? We'll get to why this. I don't necessarily think this is what's going to happen. Maybe. But I do want to shout out that like, so Callie and Sean have this conversation in the kitchen and like, Sean is preparing like meat patties, like turkey burgers. And you have to think about like all the times that we've seen Melanie Olenski in that kitchen, like defrosting, carving, preparing meat of some kind. is like skin in our rabbit. Yeah.

All of it. Defrosting the chuck roast, you know. Yelling in Cali for not defrosting the chuck roast. All of it. And there's that. There's the meat and obviously meat and Shawna are very central in this episode. But also just the, there's something so spine tingling about seeing Shauna go from what would be a very destabilizing conversation with your high school associate or not, a police officer who's coming to ask you about the guy you killed and telling you. you that there's a trail of text messages that they have.

And you just walk back into the kitchen and resume your work on dinner. Like those moments with Shawna to me are more chilling than the actual acts of violence we see her commit. The way that she is able to compartmentalize the horrors in her life, like is really, really harrowing. We're going to talk about Shawna and how worried we should be about her later. Here at least we get to balance it with the comedy of so you lied to be a feminist. Like comic.

All right. And so Kevin Tan, of course, we met last season. He slept with Nat, was in love with her, his whole life, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, very mad when she fired his official weapon. I'm kind of rooting for those two kids, but, you know, we'll get back to that. But enter Cop 2, played by John Paul Reynolds. This is just perfect casting as far as I'm concerned. It's like being back in Stranger Things.

Right. He's in Stranger Things. I met him first in this film called Fullernells. Fort Tilden, and I saw it south by them, then those people made search party in which he is like a perfect douchebag in. And search party is a lot in common, I think, with yellow jackets. But he approaches a teenager in a bar. He knows as a teenager.

And does this whole try to coax information thing out of her? Here's my question to you. If you are Detective Matt Saracusa, which is his character's name, going undercover, as Jake, the crossword puzzle-doing bar guy, would you shave your mustache that screams I'm a cop, or would you just leave it be? No, he said he was from Brooklyn. This is like Brooklyn hipster look to me.

I bought it. That's a cop stash, remember I saw one. Oh, man. You know, you earlier, mere moments ago, identified Misty as a puzzle lover. Are you concerned that in exchange in this episode about this very crossword puzzle doer, He could be a psycho.

He's doing a crossword puzzle. Serial killers love puzzles. It's a documented fact. I mean, if Walter and Misty want to, like, cut a bloody path through, you know, the Northeast, I can only support them. They've done nothing wrong, and I support them and all of their murders. Kevin, obviously, like, does not like Matt at all, Detective Matt. He's only been had one year on the job, is already doing, like, sketching. She's shit, like approaching a teenager in a bar and, like, flirting with her.

And it is extremely sketch. How do you feel like Kevin being on the case, though? Like, I'm not as worried about Detective Matt as I am about Kevin. Yeah. You know, his partner flat out asks him, like, you think you're a little too close to this. You went to high school with these people, the whole plane crash thing. Are you sure you can see this clearly? Meanwhile, when he walks in and gives him the coffee, what do we see on Kevin's computer monitor, like fingerprint?

He's working the case. He's trying to tell his partner to slow down. He does warn him as you noted that Shauna's smart, that they need to take this seriously. My guess is that his deep lifelong affection for Nat will be the thing that pulls him to the dark here. But that's not a neat and tidy thing right now because Nat's not there.

Nat is in the Lottie's cult. So maybe he will go to find Nat at some point to talk about this, realize she's gone that will lead him down another complicated and perhaps dangerous path. I will say I don't really trust anybody who says I don't do late. I don't do coffee late. So that's a warning sign for me with Kevin. Very hot, but who doesn't drink afternoon coffee? Okay.

Follow question. Do you trust someone who drinks afternoon decaf? Boy. Oh, no. Okay. Let's move on to another coffee plot. Is this the end of our friendship? Okay.

No, nothing. Nothing can come between us. Yeah. We are the well-term misty of podcasting. If it wasn't me asking you which part of your friend's body you would eat and then leaving you out in the wilderness, it's not going to be learning that you cease caffeine consumption by like 3 p.m. We're going to come back to Cali because I want to like, I think the Jackie Callie parallels are

also interesting to me, but we're going to switch over now to tie. Speaking of coffee, my preferred coffee is an espresso. Tie here gives the worst endorsement for an espresso machine you ever did see in these like horrible montage. I would say the present day tie storyline is my least favorite part of the episode. We'll get to that in a second. and let's do tie in the past 1996. Shit bucket interlude.

Mallory over under, who's shit in the bucket? Was it Ty? Herself. What do you think? This is a classic whoever smelt it dealt it situation. I think.

It's just genuinely a very funny scene. I love this in part because I like when the show actually brings to the fore like what it would be like to live in the wilderness with a dozen plus people in basically one room. Yeah. You know, and everybody smells and everybody's like, man, I have to take a shit, but I don't really want to go outside in the middle of the night. Can I shit in this bucket? Will anyone know? Will everybody yell at me? Will people not look guilty when everybody asks. But everybody looked genuinely confounded by the mystery shit in the pee bucket. And we know with a lot of love for Ty that routinely Ty's sleepwalks in the night and has no idea what she is doing. So Ty is shitting in the bucket. Does she? sleep shit is the question.

Very probable to me. Very probable to me. Now, Joanna, here's what I wanted to ask you about this. I will circle back later to the shit bucket in a theory. I can't wait for your shit bucket theory. I do have a shot shit bucket adjacent. A shit bucket adjased theory. If you were in this one room.

Now, I know there are little nooks, you know, Travis and Nat are fucking over in the, the private corner, there's the meat shed, there's the outhouse, etc. But the bulk of the... The attic, the bulk of the people are in this one area. If someone just, like, dropped trow and took a shit while you were two feet away sleeping,

don't you think you'd wake up? This is a group of characters who was awoken by the aroma of cooking flesh. They're sensitive to changes in the smell of the air. I'm just saying. What if my, like, what if my body is eating itself, I'm so starving and I'm so exhausted and malnourished that, like, I'm dead to the world as I sleep. Sure. Maybe.

Meanwhile, in support of. Incredible. Ty sleep shitting. We get another instance of Thai, you know, escaping from the ropes and going out into the wilderness. We get Thai, dark tie POV as she wanders through the woods. The camera's in her POV. That sort of speaks to some of the, like, jumbled visuals of this episode.

We cut this from the pod last week. Mal and I were debating this sort of like figure that was in the opening credits. And Mallor's like, I think it's Ty's eyeless guy. And I was like, I'm not sure. And it definitely was. And we see that same, self-same shot. I just want to give you credit, Mal. We cut it, but you were right.

So no one heard you, but I heard you. You were right. What a jam you are. Wow. But this shot, that shot from the opening is in this episode, right? and we see the eyeless man dressed very well. I think he's got a different

hashtag wig watch a different wig this season is just like a little shorter and sleeker. Some new product? This character is called no-eyed man. Like that's how he is credited

on the episodes. Horrifying. Horrifying. That is so upsetting. Ty is following him. This in my view, a well-dressed eyeless man in the forest

is the twin-pexyest part of this episode. We talked to the showrunners last week about this idea of a Twin Peaks homage that's in the opening credits, which is a shot of Christina Ricci in front of this red curtain laughing. That's a clear Twin Peaks visual homage. We talk about Lost a lot. Twin Peaks is a show if you've never seen it because it is now like, you know, well over 20 years old, is a show that deeply inspired lost. Like Damon Linda Lough loves Twin Peaks and use a lot of Twin Peaks. It's like the original mystery box show is Twin Peaks. And so there is a lot of the DNA in here. We're going to get to

an email in a second that outlined some of it. But I just think this like the, and the way that Peaks plays with surreality and dreams and all the sort of like middle, you don't know what you're looking at space, I think is definitely a blueprint here. It's just hard to capture that like Lynchian vibe perfectly. It's really hard. That's why it's lynchian and not. any, you know, a broader thing. But I think a well-dressed eyeless man in the woods that is leading you off a cliff is a very twin-peaksy moment in the show. I want to read this email from listener Amjad who wrote, there are some great little twin peaks Easter eggs throughout season one.

But in general, the two shows share broader themes that are rooted much deeper in the DNA of each show's respective storytelling. My favorite Easter egg is Laura Lee's name being an amalgamation of Laura Palmer, is the dead girl at the beginning of Twin Peaks, and Cheryl Lee, the actress who played Laura Palmer. But more importantly, both shows are rooted in the existence and consequence of multiple states of being. Think of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks and the crash site from Yellow Jackets as locations where characters are confronted by their id or shadow selves to use a young yin term. Both shows emphasize the woods as a character unto itself and as a site of otherworldly transformation.

both shows traffic in the power of dreams as a language to be deciphered, much like each of the shows ask of their audience. So I thought that was a great email. I will just explain the Black Lodge concept really quickly, which is like there is a cabin. There is a place, there is a spiritual, and it is like a spiritual portal to another place. And what is really fun about Twin Peaks is that David Lynch wrapped all of this like absolute bonkers, surreal murder mystery, demon forces from another dimension into a cozy little Pacific Northwest logging town where you have like diners and cherry pie and coffee and, you know, lodges and cabots and stuff like that. So he's like trafficking in this visual imagery of like, you know, cozy America,

Americana. And just like he did with several of his other films, like Blue Velvet most specifically, showing you like the rot and the terror and the horror underneath. And so I think that ties so well into Yellow Jackets and Lord of the Flies, this idea of like, what happens to a girls soccer team or an all boys, group of boys from an all boys school when they are plunged into the wilderness? And, you know, how does that just devolve? How does the varsity jacket become a symbol of something else in the wilderness. So I just think that's, I think it's fun to be on the lookout for all the peeksy stuff. If people want to email more things that they see, that's, that's really fun to me. But it feeds back into that idea that we're talking about the top of the episode, this idea of

like multiple unreliable narrators. There's something about peaks where you're just, which is just like a vibe, where you're just sort of like weird shit's going to happen and I'm just going to be okay with it. There's something that the Yellow Jackus is doing that it's a little differently where it's like, I think it's because all the flavors are different depending on who is being unreliable in the moment. You know what I mean? Lottie's flavor is different from Tye's flavor, which is different from this other flavor. What do you think, Mel? Well, given that the apparition that Ty is following is a very familiar symbol to us. after one season of the show, like tracing back to the scene with Ty's grandma, when her grandma is being pulled into death and sees this figure that Ty then sees,

we see this image in Sammy's drawings. And maybe that's, you know, the other one. But what also certainly recalls that same look in Sammy's drawings in season one on the window. So if this figure is like loring, tie in this stretch and to connect to what you were saying about like the idea of the cabin and this portal to a different plane and then we can go back to the dream in the Jackie death sequence in the finale and the mysterious hunter figure like calling to Jackie this idea of like a summoning. We've been waiting for you, right? We've been waiting for you. This idea that Van in her wolf attack near death experience felt like there was another present.

out there with them, is that figure that traces back to that scene with Ty and her childhood and her grandma? Like, what and who do you think this is? Is this a manifestation of this darkness that we keep hearing about? Let the darkness in. Is this not connected to the wilderness and the darkness, but a part of Ty's experience specifically? Does this connect to the figure in the Jackie Death Dream?

Like, where are you on that? I mean, I think it goes back to this constant, like, I wish, and maybe they have, and I haven't seen an interview yet, but I feel like in season one, they were really trying to play with that whole, like, this all could have a plausible explanation. Versus, like, I mean, at this point, I'm out on that as an idea after, like, a spiritual wind dumped all that snow on top of Jackie's body. Like, how is that, how is the supernatural not involved in what we're seeing here, right? Maybe it's just a gusty night. It's just the wind. And it happened at the exact same time that Nat and Travis are fucking and Travis is imagining the hallowed form of Lottie, gently caressing his cheek. That really bothered me.

We'll get to that. But like the, there's this character into a piece called Bob. And Bob is like much scarier to me than eyeless man because Bob, it's just like, by the way, Bob was like a, I think he was like working as like on the lighting crew or something like that. He was just like a guy in the crew and he looked scary. He was like accidentally in his shot and he looked scary. And so David Lynch just like used him. And then he was like in the show and so scary every time you see him, this character, Bob. And so like I think of Bob when I see eyeless man is this like just figure of demonic malevolence.

That's what it seems like to me. But again, like also when I watch shows like this, I always want to question like it seems like an eyeless, well-dressed eyeless man leading you seemingly to your death off a cliff is a bad thing. But what this question presupposes is maybe it's not like, was that figure beckoning off the cliff or was that figure beckoning her to the symbol that we see carved in the tree, right? Where, you know, right as she and Van head back to the cabin, we see that there was a symbol carved of the tree right by the cliff there. But that's part of why I ask because the symbol keeps popping up in these places where grave things are occurring or where people are being killed or being killed in some way. And like, is that part of the supernatural thing that's unfolded? with this different kind of plane.

And we, and we should say that, like, odd symbols carved in places is also very much a twin-piecey thing. And it's also, and the way it's used in Twin Peaks is a little bit more, like, Masonic.

So, like, this symbol doesn't look very Masonic to me, but, like, that's, you know, somebody to think about. Anything else? Like, how do you think that Ty got out of her ropes? So, yeah, this is where I'll, I'll get back to the shit bucket for a second. Oh, okay.

Because Van asks, Ty, what did you even use to cut these ropes? Ty doesn't know. Do I think Ty shit in the bucket? Probably. We've already talked about that. Ty also, though, asked where the lantern is.

And there's a whole conversation about who was using the lantern and did they put it back. So mystery shit in the bucket. Mystery missing lantern. And now mystery ropes being cut. Is this all potentially just tie, sleepwalking, not knowing where she's putting things, where she's taking shits or how she's severing ropes? It's possible. But are we sure?

Are we sure someone is not cutting her loose? loose, trying to sow dissent, trying to spark fear and terror and uncertainty, trying to turn the members of the group against each other? Are we sure? It's like a shard of Besscar armor in a spaceship adrift of the galaxy. Interesting. That's interesting theory. Yeah, I mean, yeah, who took the lantern? Who took a shit? Who cut the rope? It reminds me of Survivor, honestly. We're like, if you see, not to always mention Survivor in the affair. Yes, you should.

yet because what is lost if not the combination of twin peaks and Survivor like that's what lost is the signature group but like on an episode of Survivor if somebody's socks are missing they can't find their socks where are their socks how will they stay warm at night where do the rice go how will we stay fed there's a moment where you're like maybe they just left them somewhere and don't remember maybe somebody accidentally no it's always somebody taking the socks and hiding them to drive them crazy it's always somebody burying the rice to make their tribe mates desperate so that they can manipulate them. So it just made me think of moments like that on Survivor, and I'm like, who would be doing that? And again, maybe the answer is somebody else in the group, just a person.

But maybe it's some sort of supernatural guiding hand. Malevolent, eyeless, man, and a very nice suit. And a dapper get up. Van wants to get a lot of his help. Ty is vehemently opposed to this. This is as we're tracking, like, who's, going to be on what side of what. But Van holds her very tightly and says, I can feel your heart beating. You move a muscle. I'll know. There's something like, obviously, like, disturbing

about what's going on here, but also kind of heartwarming at the same time. And again, it goes back to that whole thing of like Van just like fully embracing whatever tie is, Van wants to hold it close to her. Here's what, I think that the van tie aspect of this, I also find very sweet and wonderful and I'm excited for adult van. Like, I'm now, I'm now wondering, will given the state of things for adult Ty, will she maybe reach out to Van? Will she say you were the only person

who's ever been able to, like, stabilize me in a moment like this? Yeah. But I did want to ask you, when Van says, what if we talk to Lottie? And Tye's response is, I'm not talking to Lottie, and neither are you.

Right? Right. I was surprised by that. Because that's not where we left Van in season one. Right. But it's been a couple months and it feels like this is sort of... But what happened to this like bold declaration that Van made that like, this is, like, I'm not going to let you talk.

You need to accept that this is a part of who I am. Because, and I think if that has changed, that's potentially really rich dramatically, specifically because of what you're identifying, which is Van has found such grace inside of her and such empathy inside of her to accept and embrace and help. Tye. Is Tye not going to do that for her? Well, this is an important thing for you. I understand that.

Go kneel with Lottie and put bare hearts in the snow if you want to. It seems like something has changed there with her saying, I don't want you to actually do that. That doesn't feel like an even ground for a relationship. No, I agree. And it feels like it happened off screen and I have questions about it. So present day, again, an espresso has a notes. Mainline an espresso. Same.

Massive attack is playing. inertia creeps is the track here. And then, yeah, we get this whole Murgam rule with, like, what, I don't know, to me was clearly not Sammy. And I was like, this is a delusion, like, from the bat. Because, like, the kid who plays Sammy is good, but he's been instructed to play Sammy as, like, overly unctious and, like, I'm so excited to be the dog. Yeah, this is not, yeah. So I'm just like, okay, she's deluded. She's going to call Simone.

Simone's going to come over. Sammy's missing, but Sammy was never there. And they go in this wild goose chase. And then Simone finds out that this is not the case and is pissed and worried all at the same time. And then there's a whole car crash, which dark tie, something that I have in tracking Tani Cyprus's performance of tie between, I don't know, shadow tie and regular tie or whatever. It's a tightening of the eyes. She does this thing with her eyes where she like squints ever so slightly. And there's that eerie shot before where you see dark tie in the mirror and regular tie like going about her day sort of thing.

Very Mark Stephen and Jake in Moonnight. Yeah. Also very twin peaksy. And so like, yeah. So dark tie seemingly caused a car crash to possibly injure or or kill Simone who is a threat to her. How do you feel about that? Well, it makes me worried about Steve once again. It's just like, okay, when we see those same shots again and realize that Sammy was not there,

we do see Steve just hanging out on the cushions of the couch, where is my sweet baby, my beautiful little fluffy baby Steve when Simone comes over later, I'm concerned and troubled. In terms of the car crash, you know, the theory active part of my brain that's always looking for, connections when watching an Yellow Jackets episode. I found myself wondering if there was any way that could be the same intersection where Lottie anticipated the car accident in season one. And I went back to try to look. And you can see there is like a brick building on the side and in each shot.

But I couldn't say with confidence if that was the same spot. But I did wonder like if there was a force, a force at play there. Real citizen detective behavior. I love this. I don't know. Could it be? Could it be? I was reminded of a line from.

Season one, where Simone says to Ty, when Ty is, like, regretting her behavior at the party, when she lashes out at this political fundraiser in season one, right? And Simone says to her, you've never been good at being anything other than yourself. Honestly, it's your superpower. So it's so sad. I mean, like, first of all, I think what's clear is that Simone never really knew all of Thai. So actually, she is way off the mark and Ty has kept this shadow self hidden. But how heartbreaking for Ty to go from that kind of relationship with Simone to this utter rejection of this other part of her. You know, I'm not saying there's something wrong with Shadow Ty.

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Priseline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary. Limited time offer. Nat and Lottie and Travis, a complicated little triangle here. Back in 1986, we talked about this

when last week this idea of like Nat's being wound up about Lottie and her insistent that Javi is alive is on the one hand because she would like

Travis to like move past us because she's convinced that there's no way Javi is alive but he's also tied up in like teenage jealousy and and like

we see Nat looking at Lottie and Travis outside the window as Lottie is like you know once again then sort of like calming him and talking to him, stuff like that. And it looks, it's just very teenage jealousy to me. That's how it read.

How about you? Yeah, you know, I think there's a, the stretch in season one with Travis sleeping with Jackie and just in general, like, you know, if you think back to the lake scene, and everyone like watching Travis frolic naked in the water, it's like, wait, is Travis hot? You know, this idea of like how, of course that should be a part of this experience that everybody's like, wait, do I get to the couple of, I mean, not everyone's time van seem pretty happy on your own, but yeah.

Yes. Nat has also always been like, I don't really care like who you sleep with. We have something bigger than that, but I think you're definitely right that, of course, that's just a part of being alive and being human is like, why are you forming a connection with somebody else that you don't

have with me? And I think that what feels like it's unfolding with Nat and Travis in the stretch, it's the jealousy is beyond just sexual or like anything inside of that kind of a relationship. Like she is seeing that Lottie is able to provide Travis something that he thinks he needs, that he's not getting out of his relationship with Nat. And, you know, when they're trekking off in the snow before they decide to split to go in

different directions, and he's lamenting that she wasn't there for the blessing, he calls it. And, you know, he's explaining that he is just a symbol and Nat says of what exactly. And he says of not being so closed off thinking you know everything and has to clarify for her that he's talking about himself, not about her. But it's just more evidence that Nat knew exactly what Travis was inclined to believe and interested in exploring. And that when she's saying in the present timeline that that was not something that he bought into, that she's lying to herself about that. because it was an active threat, I think, to their relationship and the bond that they shared. Lying to herself, but also we don't know the full arc of Travis's beliefs in the forest. And it might be that by the time they are getting ready to leave, he has moved away from it.

And then she will convince herself, well, he never believed it in the first place or something like that. We don't know how it's all going to shake out. But certainly, right here, he's seeming to draw a lot from the comfort of Lottie. And then he hits us with a favorite, something you and I love to talk about, whether it be the mushroom apocalypse, or Station 11, survival is insufficient, right? He says, we're going to need more than just food

if we're going to make it through this winter. What's an ass reply? Oh, for fuck's sake, did she put that in your head? And so when they agree to go different directions to scout that day for hobby, for game,

for the cartography mission, etc., they're not just going their separate ways in that literal sense in that moment. This is a breach for them. This is a, yeah. Like, he wants to go,

a new way and she does, does not. And this is this like literalization of this philosophical and spiritual divide that is unfolding for them in real time sparked by hobby, but that has become a bigger thing than that. Man of Science, Man of Faith, would you say? Still, every time I hear it still gives me chills. They have, they have a plan to meet by quote unquote. We miss you. They have a plan to meet by quote unquote that weird mossy tree, which Mal and I both think

is probably that tree that not found before that had mysterious snow melted around it. We couldn't tell you for certain because we are also not tree experts, but we think it's the same tree. Then we get a mild flashback within a flashback, which is interesting because in the present day, not in Lottie storyline, we get a flashback within, like we get a little flashback inside. And again, it feels unnecessarily like confusing. Why don't we just watch? Because it happens so quickly after we could have just watched it unfold in real time. We're like in that room with Nat when everyone else is outside watching her watching through the window.

Just show us her taking the pants there. Yeah. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But anyway. Yeah. She does the thing. She puts blood on it. She claims she got it in the tree.

She has this whole thing where she tells Travis that Hobby, you know, it implies like, hobby's dead. Here are his bloody pants. So this confirms to Mallory Rubin and Jimenez, Robbins said Hobby is 100% definitely alive. And we'll be coming back because this is going to bite. Nat in the ass. Very hard. Dude. Very hard. Okay. Every minute that passes our certainty that Javi is alive grows.

Yeah. I had so many questions about this. First of all, I just think there's no way, no matter how long they had been outside and how cold they are and how badly they need to get back and how they broke down into each other's arms and wept in the snow. And it was very sad and moving and touching. It genuinely was. There is no way that Travis does not insist on Nat taking him to the spot where she found those and looking himself. There is just simply no way. Like the character has been obsessed with finding his brother and to not have him go do that is just bizarre.

But in terms of this lie that Nat's telling, there's kind of the practical like, yeah, that blood would seem pretty fresh on those pants. And also, couldn't you say, well, maybe he just got injured and he needs our help even more. Let's keep looking. But in terms of the idea of the lie, like I think it's fascinating that Nat, thinks she is doing this genuinely, like, there's nothing malicious about it. There's nothing mean spirit of quite the opposite. She genuinely thinks that Javi is dead. She genuinely thinks that Travis will not be able to find peace, to find closure, to move forward if he keeps harping on the

fact that he might be a lie, harping on this impossibility from Nass perspective. So she's trying to be kind, but this is like a pretty, even if it is well intention, I think like a pretty cruel thing. And like there's a plain God aspect to this that I think is fascinating. to track across the character sets, but even more so than that, when I'm interested is what you alluded to a minute ago, is like when you play out the string of the consequences. And this is one of the things that's so great about the show

and the multiple timelines and getting to be with these characters over these long arcs. What is the long tale of a choice like this? Like how long are you maybe regretting or seeing the fallout of telling someone you love a lie like this? And like we know that Nat and Travis, though they had,

this like relationship all through their adulthood, never found peace together, right? Because they both sort of chase their addiction issues together or try to keep each other straight at the same time. We're not together. And in fact, you know, we can't really trust Lottie necessarily. A little bit Lottie says like that Travis is not to call Nat. It would only make things worse or whatever, right? But I mean, that's that's the devastating tension of watching Nat and Travis, especially in season one, watching Nat and Travis like fall for each other and know where all of this is headed,

which is, you know, the business end of a chain on a crane and a barn somewhere, you know? So seeing something like this, this is an unforgivable act from a character we really, really like and are rooting for. Yeah, absolutely. I want to shout out when she cuts her leg.

I want to shout out the very visible leg hair on this actress. and just let's just circle back to lost for a second. Now, granted, the survivors of Flight A15, had an ocean right there that they could wash themselves in. So it makes sense that they were like cleaner in general than the Yellow Jackets girls who their lake is frozen over. They can't really wash very well.

But the way in which all of those attractive people were constantly clean-shaven, if not waxed on that island, I'm just happy to see some body hair. Okay? Plus it's the winter you need some furry insulation. like, I'm glad we're seeing some, like, here, here. Okay. Lott, they get back.

Travis throws the pants on this funeral pyre. That burns the evidence, essentially. But that's like, that's his funeral for Hobby? Yeah. Time to move on. Time to move on. Lottie is like, Havi's still alive. I can feel it.

Not chees out. Same, Lottie. Same. Then we get this, like, very sad sex. I was devastated by this, actually, because I care. a lot about Nat and I'm just like, how horrible. It's not Javi's fault. I'm not Travis's fault.

The heart wants with the heart wants or whatever, but it's just like to not only, it's and, and, you know, we've seen this a million times in film and television where like a character will flash to imagine they're having sex with a different character. Like, that happens. But for it to not just be like about sex, but to be about this sort of like beatific, divine. And like when, when this visionary light streaming out of her pores, Lottie appears to him, not only sort of like standing near the bed and whatever,

but holding him in this sort of like pietta sort of imagery, again, I'm just like, I'm so sad for Nat in that moment that he is just completely not with her in that experience and his mind is somewhere else completely. Absolutely heartbreaking.

What I wanted to ask you about this, and this ultimately is cut and mixed intercut with the gust of wind that gives us our Jackie Que. because of that, because of the entwining of, and not just like, oh, is it Augusta Wind

or something supernatural? That's making sure they eat Jackie. The camera movements mirror what we saw in season one in that attic scene in the seance scene. We leave, we shift to a different eye level, a different point of view.

It's almost like we're back with old smoky unlost, right? You're zipping through the air. Wind vision. Exactly. And because of that, that it enhances the already very present sensation because Lottie makes us think of this always

and these halos and these visions that we associate with Lottie's baptism, et cetera, and supernatural rebirth. It's not like Travis and Nat are having sex and Travis is just like, I'd rather be sleeping with Lottie and is consciously even thinking about her. Is this other force, the darkness, the wilderness, planting this in his head, pulling him to see these things. Like, it's just so reminiscent of that seance sequence where there's another hand at play,

another force at play of this, like, supernatural element. Again, which, like, we have to... You mentioned the wind vision when we were talking about supernatural versus not in the show. Once again, I just... I cannot... With the music-musicing and the Cameron doing what it was doing, I cannot view this snow dump as anything other than something completely supernatural and as anything other than a call to the heart of darkness.

Same. I agree. But so then does that impact because it's cut between cut in and out with the sex scene? Does that change how you're reading what Travis is seeing as also being guided by that supernatural force? Well, I mean, I view his stump candelabra erection moment, like also supernatural and, you know, connected to stuff. some, whether or not it is the darkness, I don't know, because calling it the darkness, which they constantly do, feels, it feels like it's putting like a moral judgment on or whatever. But it's like for, for Travis, whatever it is, he feels about Lottie and Lottie as like a divine mother spiritual guidance figure is tied up in a sexual attraction to her. Present day. And that and Lottie compare notes on their history of being institutionalized, which is a nice thing to

to bond over rehab or mental health facility. I just want to say really quickly, you got a lot of emails about this. I've seen this everywhere. In season one, when we first see Nat in rehab, she's wearing purple. The leader is wearing like some sort of

burnt sienna color, which Lottie appears to favor. And so a lot of people are asking, like, does Lottie actually secretly own the rehab where Nat was in season one? Could be. Very well could be.

What, I mean, and it would not be out of the realm possibility, given how closely Lottie seemed to be keeping tabs on, is it just not? Is it everyone? You know, how many, how many purple jumpsuited spies does she have out there in the universe? Right.

I didn't kidnap you. I had my people watching you to make sure you were okay and you stuck a gun against your head. So we had to come intervene. Like that's supposed to be comforting and reassuring. And that's like part of the whole lot of the experience in the episode, certainly. But, you know, overall, like even the more not a cult explanation, we're an intentional intentional community, turning suffering into strength so we can live as our best selves.

There's a part of that that's like, that sounds lovely and to see the different ways that she actually tries to do that. And the comfort that that affords people, like the warm welcome, that that can be for a person like Travis or maybe even Nat in the present timeline eventually, though that doesn't seem like where she is or where she intends to be, doesn't totally obscure the real, like, sinister aspect of that. manipulation of what is unfolding. I think it's worth whatever my feelings about cults or intentional wellness communities, I think it's interesting to keep in mind what the showrunner said in the interview

last week about this idea, like how they're very fascinated by various cults. And this idea of like, in theory, all these cults do seem like, almost all these cults seem like a good idea, this idea of like intentional community and like, you know, a constant engagement with your spiritual wellness and all this sort of stuff like that. And that the problem is the figure at the center and that because we are infallible as humans, there is this concentrated power source that cannot do anything but corrupt at the center of a community like this. So with Lottie, I mean, you know, but they also said Lottie's not our big bad.

And I think I think what's interesting is like because we saw antlers on Lottie's head, at the end of last season. And because we are very rightly so trained to fear cults, there is this instinct to read negatively into everything Lottie says in all of her movements. But I don't know. I don't know. Like, I'm not joining this community.

First of all, I don't look great in heliotrope, I think. But like, I am, here's what I'll mention. Neither Mallory and I have watched this docu-series, The Deep End, which is available on Hulu, which is about a figure named Tiel Swan, but the showrunners name dropped Tiel Swan specifically in our interview last week, and then we got a couple emails about it. Elizabeth wrote in and says there's an interesting similarity with Lottie and Tiel Swan in the documentary. She, Tiel Swan, discusses how her parents tried to, quote-unquote, trick her and explain away her talents as mental illness. If this was an intentional inspiration, it speaks to the continued.

theme of is this real or is this mental illness? Teal Swan has a lot of followers, so it's not like you have to be starving in the wilderness to find yourself believing in a charismatic leader and a bat-shit-crazy message. We got an email from another listener who said, Teal's had some major controversies for being quote-unquote pro-suicide. Allegedly she has condoned suicide as a means to an end for particularly distressed people and has talked about the values of death. Several followers have committed suicide, possibly as a result of her influence. She denies this, of course. So, like, between, I mean, if you Google an image search this woman, T.O.

First name, Tio, last name is one. If you Google, like, the design is very clearly model on her of what adult Lottie looks like. But these other aspects, again, I haven't watched this docu series, neither is Mal, but I might in the next week. But, like, the mental illness factor, the encouraging, you know, we meet her burying a body. And then she is sort of engaging with Travis, however passively or actively, in this. suicide as a way to cross a boundary, you know, near suicide as a way to cross a boundary to the darkness sort of ritual in the barn. Any thoughts or feelings about that, Mo? I mean, I am not familiar with the figure or documentary, so I don't think I have anything to add beyond that,

but I'm curious to check it out now. And certainly those comps seem notable. If you asked one of your followers to bring you a smoothie with Ashwaganda and they brought you one with Maca Root instead, how would you react, Malarubin? I would say I'm trying to increase my focus, not my libido. You should together. Macarroot is apparently, I mean, I'm very familiar with Ashwaganda, but Macarut apparently is often used for male virility. So that's interesting. Another appearance from Lisa, you know, mystery, mystery young woman. Then we get this whole lottie telling us how Travis died, which partially aligns with the theory

we had last week about like this being his idea, he willingly giving access to his bank account, all this sort of stuff like that with a few extra special twists. Mal do you want to take us through this and your thoughts and feelings about it? I, boy, this was a journey. So one of the things that feels most important, though I don't know if we can trust anything we learn in this stretch. And that's that obviously gets back to our larger question about the episode. You know, there's a read on everything we learn from Lottie and everything we see here, which is this is what we are seeing is actually what happened. And Lottie is not sharing all of it with Nat.

Like she doesn't tell her I saw. She's just leaving the Lorley. Yeah, corpse and the wind blew out the candles, et cetera. It leaves some key details out, but that the rest actually is what happened. But I think because of that larger question over the episode of what can we trust, you have to wonder, like, did the rest of it happen? Are we sure? But here's what we get with that question kind of present in our minds.

Lottie says that Travis called her. Quote, he said the wilderness had come back to haunt him. Now, we get a shot of Travis, like, looking out into the woods. he looks very afraid. Lottie's not there yet. So is this the show showing us something that is objectively true and how he was behaving. Is this like what Lottie and or Nat are kind of imagining in the moment? We don't know. Crucial geography marker in the...

Where's the compound? I drove all night to get there. So, you know, again, not driving from basically Vancouver in one night. So we cut to Travis saying the only way to confront the darkness is to get as close to death as possible. when Van almost died. When you did, you both said you saw something. The only way to confront the darkness to find out what it wants

is to get as close as possible. As you noted, very much in line with the theory we discussed last week, is Travis maybe trying to commune with Javi if he still thinks he's dead? Is that part of it? Potentially, is this just a larger darkness, wilderness idea?

That's sketched out here. What do you think caused this in this moment? That's one of part of what I'm curious out. Like before we get to the rest of what Lottie sees, what caused Travis is to be at this point of distress? In this state. Yeah, because he, you know, again, we know the literal answer is he said the wilderness had come back to haunt him. But what is unfolding that is sparking that change? I think it's similar to asking the question, like, what is unfolding to spark the chain, you know, tie shadow self to resurface? Like, there's something, well, I guess I don't have a good answer.

I feel like it's going to be something about like Harvey haunting him in some way or another, right? It's probably something they'll show us. Javi. Good old Javi. I don't know when. I mean, I think Javi's alive. When did Javi die?

I think Javi's probably dead now. But I don't think Javi is dead in 1996. Right. So one of the things that I noticed watching this was that when Travis, when we're initially seeing him speak to Lottie, Lottie's lips are moving as he's talking. Right. And it's like, is that editing or is that?

Okay, so here's as a media literacy thing, I feel like if we see Lottie tell the story and then we see her hold something back from Nat, which we do, she tells her everything except for the whole Laura Lee bit and says it was just a button malfunction. But then we see Travis is way higher in the air than he was at the beginning of like that. I feel like what has to be true from a media literacy point of view is that she's telling the truth about that other part and is holding back this part, the part that she didn't share. Yeah. But Yellow Jackus is on such a tear of like unreliability at this point that like, is that what Lottie believes? And then we're going to see the, these events again from a completely

different point of view and something absolutely different happened. Like, you know, how did he get that high from being like two feet off the ground. You know, like what happened? Did the darkness take over her and she jammed down the button going up rather than down? That was my read on it. That's probably what happened. So, like, I'm tempted to believe her. But also, like, what's interesting inside of that from Lottie's perspective is, like,

what has changed with her relationship to the darkness? How, like, let the darkness set us free at the end of season one. Everything we see happening with the hands in the chest and Lottie's relationship to this ability in season two so far. But when she's trying to calm Travis down and saying you're in the vice grip of your trauma, like, I feel like, and of course she wants to soothe him and help him, we get the hands on the chest again. Yeah. But there's a part of me that felt like the lotty we've been with in the wilderness, hearing Travis talk about the darkness, would have said, let's crack the case together. Not like this isn't a thing that's happening.

So has something changed about her relationship? I think it has. I think she is, you know, because like when Nat says her thing about every time you try to save someone, a lot of bad shit happens and look at you now 25 years later, like, the way that Simone Castle plays that, you know, as adult lotty is, like, there's guilt there and there's anxiety around it, you know what I mean? So then why is she using the symbol from the wilderness as her groups? Is that an example of that, like, turning suffering into strength idea that? I don't know that it's like a full rejection of what happened in the woods.

I think it's like I can do I can do it better this time. There's power there. I engaged with it incorrectly last time. I can engage with it correctly now because I am older and I am wiser and I've had psychiatric help and I can do it this time. In terms of like what to go back to your question like what happened, not to like beat a dead horse or whatever, but there's the cycle of 25 years is something in Twin Peak. Right. At the end of Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer says, see you again in 25 years. And then David Lynch did his like TV reboot 25 years later. So this idea of like a 25 years later, the demons resurface for all of our characters is something that's kind of interesting to me. So. I love that. Because Travis has that line where he says, if it tells me what it wants, I can make it go away. And like, yeah, maybe there's this activation. That might just be his mental state.

It might also just be the end of the rope, end of like 20 or, you know, whatever. 23, however many years of trying to medicate it away and that not working. So maybe if I actually can talk to it, I can do this without drugs or alcohol or whatever it is. Right. Right. And the show is obviously in many different ways interested in examining the choices that people make when they are in some sort of dire, desperate state. In this stretch when when decomposing Laura Lee comes in death shrieks at Lottie seemingly via supernatural force causing the chain to lift and kill Travis, another potential summoning into this other plane.

We get these flashes, and some of them are things that we've seen before and we recognize the baptism. The baptism, et cetera, et cetera, a pretty long list of flashes. We get this, it's very quick. I was like, is that the bare heart? I was trying to pause on it.

I had to go back a few times. If you get the freeze frame pause at the right spot, It's a bloody face, like swollen, oozing, beaten. I don't think we've seen that yet. I don't think so either. It's not Vance face. And so I'm interested to see whose face, that is. And I'm also interested to see what the citizen detectives do with that freeze frame themselves.

We're working off a screener is a little hard for us, but, you know, I mean, poor us. But, like, you know, we can't quite do all the great work, forensic work that you guys will be able to do. I also say this other thing before we leave the Nat and Lonnie. You know, first of all, Nat's like, get me the fuck out of here. Lottie's like, oh, sorry, the last train has left us, you know, can't got to stay the night that keeps you alive, blah, blah. And then as Nat is like, Nat rejects the genuinely, like, fugly purple items that they have left on her bed for her. by the way, not as a lot of style.

You do better purple people in terms of what you leave her. She has a flash, a flashback to something of like medical professionals working on her, reviving her as someone who looks like it might be Travis

sort of looks away in the background. So is this like a memory of like ODing, you know, and that's what it seems like. That was my assumption, but like, yeah, what happened? What is the context of that scene?

What kind of key moment with Travis? Has she recalled something in this moment. Does this have anything to do with Nat was right? Is that note even real? Who knows? Again, you know, if we're believing Lonnie's narrative, you know, the note is real, she took it. Though I do feel like Lottie lied about Travis. Told me not to call you. Told me not to call you. That felt like a lie to me. I agree. Yeah. Last on at least, I just want to say in this little section here. Maybe we just want to believe it's a lie, though. I mean, it would be so sad otherwise.

Juliette Lewis had something really interesting in a red carpet interview where she talked about this improvisational work that she did with Simone Kessel in some of their scenes where she would like lean forward and smell her. And so we see Nat and Lottie are connected in the flashback, flash forward so far this season. I'm wondering if we're looking at another one of those dynamics of like enemies, friends, consumption, jealous, blah, blah, which we talk about with Shawna and Jackie, right? As Jonathan Liscoe was talking about last week, this idea of like a sort of sexual friegelne that runs through like

all really close friendships or, you know, all kinds of intimacy. So it doesn't have to be, I know there are a lot of Shauna Jackie like shippers out there and the showrunner seemed very like concerned about like feeding that theory too hard. Not that there's anything wrong with it, by the way.

But that it's something else that they're trying to convey, which is that sort of like possessive lust consumption idea that is just like ever so slightly different from like pure sexual attraction. It's a I want to be you. I want to consume you sort of thing. So I don't know. If Nat is like leaning into smell lot,y that like that is that is in that same arena for me, if that's something that Juliet Lewis bless her has decided to add to the performance. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, that would feel like a new aspect of their relationship if it surfaces. I have not gotten that from them at all, whereas it is impossible to ignore it with Shawna and Jackie.

Well, and with Sean and Jackie, that is like, it's not purely around a Jeff love triangle, but it is like around a like, you, you're in a relationship with this person. I fuck this person because I want to like feel closer to you or whatever. That's its own thing. But like, you know, if for not to. look at that window at Travis and Lonnie outside and feel jealous, there's also like a component of like, should I be more like that? You know what I mean? Like when you're jealous of someone, part of that is like, how can I be more like that person? And that sort of like that other person to see to see me that. See that and me, right? And so that Shawna and Jackie, like I want to be more like Jackie or Jackie. I want to be more like Shauna. Anyway, that brings us back to Jackie and Shana in the fucking meat locker in 1996. Okay.

Really, really disturbing stuff. Hairbraining. Really, I mean, like, listen, Ghost Jackie is maybe even meaner. No, definitely meaner than a live Jackie, I think. Real, real, real mean girl energy. I don't think she's wrong by the fact that Shana is bad at makeup, given the eventual makeup job that she receives.

Well, again, as we talked about last week, It's, it's, it's Shawna hurling these accusations and insults at herself. You know, this is self-loathing ultimately. To build on the point you were just making, though, about that, like, consumption, that that type of longing, that was so present in that first scene with the hair braiding where the camera is, like, lingering on Jackie's neck and we see the look on Shauna's face. Is it, I want to eat you because I thought your ear was delicious and I can't wait to cut off a piece of your arm? Maybe, but there's, like, a different ferocity.

in the hunger and Shaana's expression in that moment. I think it's all of those things that you just outlined. Lottie is very supportive of this form of therapy for Shana. Ty, however, is very concerned. I think they're both a little wrong. That's my feeling on it. Ty is being a little too judgmental and harsh, and I think Lottie is missing some of the signs.

Well, and I think we get that great shot at the end of the funeral where we've got Ty on one side of her and Lottie on the other. right is sort of this like two sides both incorrect it seems like timeline check seven months pregnant is what they assess of Shauna and if we were to assume that she got pregnant right before she got on the plane seven months into 19 month sentence in the wilderness a full year to go great year what could go wrong what could possibly go wrong Mari suggests that they should eat Shauna's portion and I say get thee to the pit Mari That's fucking outrageous.

She's saying that before she even knows that Shauna's slicing off pieces of Jackie's arm for a little midday nash. I think it's really interesting that throughout the episode we see these moments where like a decision has to be made and like people just like a bunch of people automatically look to Lottie. Absolutely. How is Lottie going to weigh in on this? Travis and Misty in this moment.

That hit harder in this episode than in any other. Like nothing is decided and settled until Lottie has weighed in. I do want to point out just in case you are young in listening to this and didn't live through the 90s that the pink case of makeup that Shana has found is what is known as a caboodle. And it is a key. I did not wear makeup in the 90s, but I was a theater

kid, and so I am well aware of what a caboodle is. So whose caboodle do you think that was? I think this is Jackie's. Yeah, probably. I had one of these not for makeup, but I used to keep rocks in it because I collected rocks. Fun fact for you.

Anything else you want to see? the group investment in the baby is interesting to me. Ty being like, this isn't good for your baby and Shauna being like, what the fuck? Do you know about my baby? Like, leave me alone. It was interesting how Shauna responded to that, not only the substance of what she's saying,

but that the need to say that kind of pulled her back into herself. And then obviously later when we get to the feast, you know, the hand on the belly on the belly. Justifying it. Necessities, yeah, lead to this justification or rationalization of something horrible. And, like, you know, you see the makeup on Jackie and there's this part of you. We talked about this last week, like this complication of there's something in a sick way, sweet and, like, endearing about what is happening, not being able to say goodbye, being consumed by this guilt.

But you look at Jackie's face. It's like, this is the Joker. Like, we're in Gotham now. Like, this is just deeply, deeply, deeply upsetting. Yeah, I wrote Baby Jane. Whatever happened to Baby Jane's last Joker vibes on Jackie, 100%. There's the argument over Jackie's clothing. You know, Achilla suggests that the, you know, great look for Mari. Lottie breaks it all up and she puts the crucial pit girl necklace that was on Jackie back on Shauna. We've seen this necklace move around. Yes. She also sees the missing arm flush and doesn't comment. Correct. So you wonder what that will do for Shauna's relationship with Lottie to get back to that idea of acceptance. But yeah, like with the necklace moving in such.

close proximity to the eventual eating of the corpse. It was impossible not to think back to the pit girl moment and like, is this going to become a part of the ritual when this goes on your neck? Like, it's dinner time. Ooh, I love that. Yeah. Love it. Get ready, Mari.

All right. Shawna gives us eulogy, which you heard at the top of the episode. Jackie, I'll never have another friend like you. I don't even know where you end and I begin. I'm sorry and I love you. Because I have so much of your flesh literally inside of my gastrointestinal tract at this moment. But something about, I mean, like, okay, we, we, if those of us who've done therapy, know the power of an I statement. So I statements are important. But this, she says, I four

times, you know, and she says you four times. But it's just like, it's so much about her and how she's feeling in this moment, then it is about Jackie, right? I, I kind of love this. It felt so honest to me and true to life that, like, you would, you would, of course, be sad. I think maybe part of it is the context. Like if they were back home, maybe she'd be thinking more about Jackie and her family and the other people who missed her too. But out here, all she has is the mistakes that she made and the the unbelievable regret that is weighing her down. We had a classic sort of like Looney Tunes character in the desert, wafting of delicious smoke. We've already talked about the snow falling a couple times. I don't think we need to go back to that. This made me think so strongly,

Joe, of the Knights Watch over in a in the Thrones universe. and Ed saying never knew Bannon could smell so good as he's cooking on his pyre. I was just recently in Austin, Texas, so it made me think of some really good barbecue. I was like, I know exactly how that smells fuck. Where O'Do Jackie lures everyone out of everyone, even Coach Ben, who eventually declares his veganism,

out of the cabin as fucking radio head, climbing up the walls place. Great needle drop. Sean is the first one out there. She's the one with the knife. She's the first to eat. She says she wants us to. Yep.

I was reminded of this season one moment from that party that Ty went to. You're going to love dinner. It's nose to tail. A whole roasted pig from this amazing little farm upstate. I've already told him I have dibs on one of the ears. Okay, the pig moment starts with I have dibs on the ears. Like, that's amazing. Fun stuff.

But, yeah, they eat Jackie Nose to Tail. And we get this- Crackling here on the... Yeah. Shout out to a listener, Rachel, who's done in that clip. But, like, yeah, we get, we get, then we get this really interesting decision to cut between this feast and the snow

to this fantasy vision of them dressed up in sort of Greek, ancient Greek regalia, looking like gods and Olympist feasting on Ambrosia, that sort of stuff. or something slightly more sinister. I wrote this in my notes before I knew that it was something that the Reddit detectives had been on for a little while. But I was reminded of the Maynads.

I think that's how you pronounce it, or Minas, which are the followers, the female followers of Dionysus. And the reason that I'm most familiar with them is because one of my favorite Greek myth is Orpheus and Eurtecy. And the way that Orpheus dies is he is literally ripped to pieces by these the frenzied women who follow Dionysus. or Bacchus, if you prefer if you're a Roman. But checking out the Reddit detectives and like Googling around a bit, I didn't know that there was like a real live Dionys and mystery cult from ancient Greek where they would use intoxicants and other trans-inducing techniques like dance and music to remove inhibitions and social constraints liberating the individual to return to a natural state.

And there's this quote from a 1960s book called Delphi, which describes the cult. I mean, I don't know how one would have firsthand knowledge of an ancient Greek cult, but let's just go with it. Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain pass with head thrown back, heads thrown back and eyes glazed,

dancing to the beat of the drum, which stirred their blood in the state of ecstasis, or I'm not going to try the other Greek word. They abandoned themselves dancing wildly and calling, at that moment of intense rapture, they became identified with a god himself, they became filled with a spirit and acquired divine. powers. So, like, how does this not remind us of doom coming? And, like, that the one, like,

in the flash to this Grecian banquet, it's not just the fruit that they're consuming, but they're greedily gulping wine along with it. Yes. The cuts to the, the Greek feast start, and you think initially, oh, this is going to be a contrast in the elegant, almost like dainty consumption to the like the reality of these shots of them tearing a Jackie's flesh like a pack of wolves standing over a kill. But the Greek sequence also shifts into this like gluttony and this debauchery that's present in both sequences. Yeah, frenzy. That's a perfect word for it. And you think back to the episode name like Edible Complex, we talked about the thinking of Oedipus, this Greek myth.

And I like the idea of something we talk about often across our pods, like the self-fulfilling prophecy and what, given how central that is to Oedipus Rex, like how these connections in the episode title, a sequence like this should be top of mind for us when we're thinking about the decisions that the characters are making and what path that they're setting themselves on. And then as we already mentioned, right, Coach Ben is very freaked out and we're pretty sure he's next on the next meal, right? I mean, unless everybody else wakes up with a lot of regret, which is possible, then He's going to be on the outs, I think.

He's at least going to be very weak because they've eaten and he is not. Okay. We're running long as we always like, what's new with us? So we're going to run through our last remaining sections pretty quickly. First of all, Citizen Detective Corner. You redditors have done some great further breakdown of the intro credits. And I'm just going to mention two things that are in the intro credits that I didn't mention. One is Ben and Nat's map.

lay it out on the floor with the symbol, a large version of the symbol drawn all over the top of it. So are there things that are going to connect on the map to the larger symbol? That's interesting. The Sedecki family portrait splattered in blood. Yeah.

It's right. Shana, Jeff, and Callie splattered in blood. Is that going to, it's not great. And then last one at least, and this is something that an actor from the show posted and then deleted from their social. So if that feels like a spoiler to you, please skip ahead. But the great John Cameron Mitchell, who played Hedwig, among another, number of other things,

musical theater icon posted that he is playing a human version of Caligula. And you can see him in the opening credits, sort of his beaky profile. So this coupled with the Misty Twin Peaks homage that's in the opening credits, makes you think we're going to get like an extended Misty Fantasy sequence, which excites me. Can't wait. Thrill. Thrill. Thrill. On the melted ice is at the base of the tree beat that we talked about last week. Is this a hint about that there are others? As Mallory is so fond of thinking, there have to be. If Havi's still alive, there have to be other people.

Like, Hobby did not survive by himself. Are they under that tree and that, you know, giving a strong lost hatch vibes and that's why the snow is melted? Or is there a chemical version? We'll talk about that in a second. I, this is what I was thinking and mentioning, I can't remember if this was also something we cut last week, but with the other tree of note in last week's episode in Javi's vision, the stump tree, the hollowed out tree, like could that be a hatch-like thing? You know, Travis's vision? Yeah, these trees that have unique shapes or markings or like openings in the middle. Like it just, it does seem very, very, very hatchy. I really, I think this is true, though I thought Lottie was. at the wilderness site, so who knows? We both did. It's okay.

Next on the agenda for citizen detectives is Shauna the Antler Queen. We touched on this last week. We have seen antlers on Lonnie. That does not mean she is the Antler Queen. She's not necessarily leading the cult that is voraciously eating meat. Because if you think about it,

outside of those antlers we saw on Lonnie, Shauna is absolutely the, like, top candidate for this. She is the one who is always knife first eating, eating people, eating meat. She's in like a very fragile state as we see in this episode. I think there's something interesting to be done with Melanie Linsky as a performer because the way in which we might overlook or discount her degree of menace because Melanie Linsky has such a nice-ish demeanor to her is very like suburban mumsy. Like is there a way in which those sort of prejudices against like women might obscure us seeing like she killed someone. and will happily skin a rabbit, a garden rabbit.

You know what I mean? Like, Sean is scary. Very scary. I like what you said last week about, you know, the idea of the mantle moving over time from character to character. I think that's really interesting. Oh, we got a needle from Jacob who says, when Misty has to go to water, get the water. Mari, just being great, says, you drew the four, Misty, you have to get the water, right? And so this idea of the playing cards, and we saw the queen's, the queen cards.

in the opening credits, though in that deck of cards, allegedly there are no queens. We learned that in season one. There are no queens in that deck of cards. So one of our listeners, Jacob wrote in with this idea of, like, is drawing cards going to be a way in which we figure out who is going to be eaten, right? Sorry, you drew the short straw and I have to get eaten. It's only fair type of thing.

We'll give you a head start. Mari? I think if that's the decision the group comes to, I go form a new society rather than agreeing. That's just me. And then theory on the symbol, I've seen this, I've seen this all over the place on Reddit. We got an email from Lily about this, that the symbol we're seeing everywhere is closely related to the alchemical slash out of use symbol used to depict the presence of a certain mineral that's known to one, turn water red, two, kill wildlife, and three, cause hallucinations. The theory goes that it's somehow in the water supply and poisoning the girl slowly, causing them to, well, you know, warring cannibalistic or not clans. We got other emails about mercury poisoning, iron deposits, because there was that broken compass moment in season one.

How do you feel about like a chemical answer, a slowly poisoning of something answer to all this mental disagree we're seeing? I'm intrigued by this, I think. I don't know that the show has given us this vibe very much, that this is like the likely path we're on. I think it just feels so, so rooted in the supernatural right now that anything other than that would be a surprise. But I do, I do like this. I mean, certainly the Red Water put a very prominent role in a key stretch in season one. So this is interesting. This could be something.

I'm still like, why did the, you know, 600 miles off course or not, why did the black box that was active until Misty destroyed it not sent a signal? so maybe some sort of like mineral blockage of that signal would be an interesting explanation for that. Needle drop. You only have two options this week. Got to be the radio head or massive attack. Yeah. Okay.

The lyrics in the radio head songs say, and either way you turn, I'll be there, open up your skull, I'll be there. It's good. To eat it. All right. Last but not least,

this is that we have to go back, Lost Corner. And I'll keep its nose. nappy. I think I'm just going to stick to, we've got a bunch of stuff here, but we can come back next week and talk about it. I'm just going to stick to this interesting email from Reagan who was talking about. I mentioned Nikki and Paolo as these characters who show up later in the run of the show compared to Crystal who shows up and to other girls. I said it was season two.

It's actually season three. Thank you for that correction. Reagan, it's almost like I didn't do a whole podcast about loss. Thank you for that. But, um, Rie makes some interesting points about unfurling of timelines and how we're unfurling plot details in terms of mystery box.

Lost is, Mallory and I think it's a perfect show, but some people don't like the way that Lost handled its mystery box elements. So maybe Yellow Jackets is doing things differently, um, because they don't want comparisons to loss too bad, sorry, or, um,

again, because they're going to have so, like, far fewer episodes to work with. But, um, Regan wrote, with such a small,

core cast compared to Lost, do you think Yellow Jackets had to expand the cast immediately, or is this one signifier of how two shows will ultimately branch out? Below is roughly the series timeline comparisons we have so far. Number one, the first time we know someone makes it off the island, there are lost spoilers here, just so you know. In Yellow Jackets, it's season one episode one, we know. That's the premise of the show. And Lost, it doesn't come out until Season 3 episode 23, the 72nd episode of the series.

And if this is like, they're doing 10 episodes for five seasons, Yellow Jacket is going to have 50 episodes total, you know, like compared to Lost, right? First time the Survivors are tried out in front of cameras in Yellow Jacket says season two episode one and lost season four episode 12, the 84th episode of the series. Then expansion of the cast, a.k. Nicky and Palo or Crystal is in Yellow Jacket, season two, episode one, and lost season three, episode three. And then the timeline until rescue. Yellow Jacket says 19 months in the woods and Lost has 108 days, only 3.4.

months on the island. So that's so interesting to me that they have far fewer episodes to cover much more time in the wilderness compared to lost. I don't know. That's just kind of interesting to me. Yeah. Well, like you said, already seven months in. I'm missing those two months that we skipped. Gotta be honest. Wish we'd seen all of what transpired. Vance change of heart, etc., etc. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for us on Yellow Jackets this week. BuzzBubs, baby. We'll be back next week. Hobbes and Dragons at G-mail.com with all of your citizen detective theories. We love them all.

Thank you so much. Thank you, as always, to Carlos Sherbroke for his production work on this episode. Stay tuned in the feed for succession, et cetera. Until next time, Mallory is not purple. It is fucking heliotrope. Get it right. Bye-bye.