Black Knight

It's interesting though that Melissa's reading Shauna for filth isn't what started the physical fight. It was Melissa going for Shauna's knife that did it. I wonder in a perverse way whether, as much as Shauna hates being told the truth about herself, there's also a contradictory sense of relief because she's being seen. She doesn't have to put on a big front for once. The Autostraddle recapper made a good point that Jackie would have handled the situation with the hikers more diplomatically than Shauna, though she probably couldn't have fixed all of it. But Jackie was a normie the entire time she was in the wilderness. It's what killed her (and it's why the show had to kill her off). But now there's this situation where several normies stumbled into the Yellowjackets camp and the YJs are poorly equipped to deal with this sudden coming face to face with normality after everything they've been up to. They have no normie to act as their representative and handle things. Nat is the closest and even she's a little too far gone, openly acknowledging in the hikers' hearing that they might be killed later. Jackie would have had the sense to be like, "NO, of course we're not killing anyone, that lunatic Lottie is off her meds and went rogue and the rest of us can't wait to get away from her." And making the hikers bury Edwin was all kinds of fucked up.

I gasped at the start when I realized Melissa married Hannah's daughter, and then watched the fight at the end with my hand over my mouth. Holy fuck. Hillary Swank is a great adult Melissa. A couple of interesting bookends with Shauna - she gnawed on Mari's arm in the premiere, and then really does take a bite out of Melissa's arm here. And pointing a knife at Melissa while giving vent to paranoia shows she has learned nothing from when she killed Adam while confronting him in a bout of mistaken paranoia. But that's not really surprising since she showed zero remorse or regret after realizing Adam had just been a nice guy who liked her. Christina Ricci's little bit of business when Misty straightened out the pillow was so funny I rewound it immediately. I don't think Teen Shauna can get everyone to stay no matter how crazy-eyed she goes. My guess is at least some of them still tromp off with Kodi, and he turns on them and kills a couple of them. Kodi's not dumb. He knows they would kill him once they reach the rescue point, so why would he bring them there?

Simmons is a supremely talented player who was unfortunately derailed by mental issues and physical injuries. He was Rookie of the Year and a three-time All Star, and set an absolutely blistering pace for racking up points, assists and rebounds in his early years, second only to Oscar Robertson. He had so many triple doubles that even now that he's barely played in years and hardly shoots when he does, he's still #14 all-time. In short, he was a genuine star and had he sustained that, he would have been one of the all-time greats. Bronny James doesn't have half the talent and will never come close to any of that, except maybe getting selected to All-Defensive second team a couple times if his defense gets even better and his size and health don't get in the way. His future, once his dad finally retires, is as a role player often coming off the bench - not a star. His floor is respectable but his ceiling isn't high.

There really wasn't much left in free agent QBs. The Giants will draft a QB this year and are just picking up a couple of the remaining bodies to be bridge QBs/fill out the QB room. Winston is getting backup money to be a Giant for two seasons while Wilson only has $10.5 million guaranteed to play one season, potentially doubled in incentives if he turns out to have a really surprising amount left in the tank, which is unlikely. The plan seems clear: Draft a QB, let him sit and learn from Wilson for a season while competing with Winston to be the first backup, and then the following season he takes over as primary QB while Winston is first backup and Wilson has either retired or signed with yet another team. The Titans will probably take Cam Ward, so I'm wondering if the Giants' seeming plan to take a QB who they will have mostly sit the first year means they're going to take Jaxson Dart. I can't imagine drafting Shedeur Sanders with the idea of sitting him for a year, because his father would create too much drama in the media.

I binged the whole series. Other than the odd choice to spend so much time on a long unbroken sequence of the love story between Elsyie and Bruno, which brought the show's momentum to a screeching halt just before the finale, it was all great. I really hope there's another Cordelia Cupp case. I had thought it was odd in an earlier episode when Lilly made a whole thing about not wanting to drag Elsyie into it before finally naming her, but then there was an "everyone loves Elsyie" bit and other stuff happened and I forgot all about it. But it was weird and I'm glad that ended up having an explanation - Lilly was the real murderer! For a while I personally had Jasmine down as the murderer and I thought the choice of Elsyie's son reading Murder of Roger Ackroyd was a clue in that direction. But after her motive was outed to Cordelia in a way that meant, if Jasmine was the murderer, Cordelia wouldn't have done anything to solve the case, it was just handed to her, I knew it wasn't Jasmine. I'm glad it ended up being Lilly since she was an awful person. I would also have been okay with it being Harry, since he was terrible too, but I knew it couldn't be him as he wouldn't have brought Cordelia back. I didn't really want to see any of the others go down for the murder.

The scientists were appropriately geared and provisioned, and crucially, led by an experienced outdoorsman who knows the terrain. Like I said, a couple of people going with Kodiak, if he's willing to guide them, could work, especially if they took the scientists' gear for themselves so that they're not trying to tramp along in footwear that isn't suited for hard hiking to begin with and is no doubt extremely beat up after a year plus in the woods. Why did the scientists hire Kodiak to guide them? Because they knew it would be foolish to try to do it on their own.

It still looks weird to me after a season, although I didn't watch that many games. But today's kickers just have too strong of legs for the old format to be viable anymore.

I wouldn't categorize it as easy to hump out of there. They don't have appropriate gear nor do they have enough provisions for the greater caloric requirements necessitated by hiking through difficult terrain, so they'd have to try to hunt and gather along the way. And that terrain means that 100 miles isn't necessarily 100 miles, either, because the odds that they could proceed in essentially a straight line without ever having to detour miles around are very low. Injuries can also be expected. What maybe might make more sense is to just send a couple of people out while the rest of the group stays behind, which is what the soccer team in the Andes did. It really comes down to Kodiak, I guess, which Travis and Akilah seem to have realized. He has the experience and the gear, and enough knowledge of the area that he can chart the shortest route - which still may be quite a bit more than 100 miles. Have two YJs take the scientists' gear and provisions and accompany Kodiak, and now you're talking about good odds of getting out, as long as all three can avoid serious injury. But I wonder if Travis and Akilah are even planning on going back to the YJ camp. Travis's question to Kodiak was rather ambiguous in that regard. The two of them may want to just bug out now with Kodiak. I wouldn't want to risk taking him back to camp, where he's likelier to end up with an axe in his skull than being allowed to act as a guide.

Shauna indeed got a sick thrill out of Lottie axing Edwin and is hostile in general. But she also is the one who proposes the (batshit) plan that if they kill the whole group, someone will come looking for them and the YJs will finally be found and get to go home. "No witnesses." So I think she wants to go home as much as any of the other girls except maybe Lottie do. And even Lottie I don't think can be taken as definitely wanting to stay in the wilderness. Remember, she rushed back from the cave to save Ben when Akilah's vision convinced her Ben was their bridge home. Her killing Edwin really may just be as simple as her believing he doesn't belong there, as opposed to a grander plan to keep the whole group in the wilderness forever. Granted, a lot of time has passed between when she saved Ben and the day Ben died, so maybe she did shift. As Van said in the premiere, "Unclear." Misty saying Ben died of natural causes was funny. No, it wasn't going to work, but I give her credit for at least trying to come up with a story to salvage the situation instead of going straight to axe murder. None of the others could do even that much. BTW, I have a friend who lives in Virginia and makes regular trips up to NJ/NY. It's not really a big deal.

The NFL is considering tweaks to the new kick-off format. Interesting info from the linked article: The league made the changes last season because the season before that had the lowest rate of kickoff returns in league history, including zero in the Super Bowl. The new kickoff resulted in the second lowest return rate, but did result in more longer returns since 2016 and the most TDs since 2021. So things are going in the right direction with the new format, it just needs a bit of fine-tuning.

I wonder if that may have been a miscalculation on Lottie's part, if so - similar to Misty, who was so happy to be appreciated by Van early on, and has fallen to the bottom of the social order again. Several of the girls made it clear in this episode that they think Lottie is crazy. There have always been those who don't believe, but they've been careful up to now about how they express that, not showing outward hostility towards Lottie. And in choosing to save Kodi, Travis and Akilah are also breaking away from Lottie. There are intriguing possibilities for that tape, for sure. We were told that Gen and Melissa grew close to Hannah, so she could have told one of them. Even if Gen and Melissa are both dead now, the tape still could have passed from one of them to another person. And there is my favorite theory, that someone was left behind in the woods. That person could have been holding onto the tape, and finally decided after nearly 25 years that it was time to leave. Maybe they looked up Hannah's daughter and told her the truth about what happened to her mother. It would answer the question that was raised in this episode, of why is this only happening 25 years later?

Fucking Lottie. I'm very torn now between Hannah's daughter and Jeff for her killer. I do think it's Hannah's daughter that she was rehearsing apologies in the mirror for. Up to now, I hadn't found anyone who fit that, even though Lisa showed up - I just didn't really see Lisa as someone Lottie would be rehearsing for. I have a feeling Kodi takes out more than one or two of the YJs on his way out. I love how this show will come up with such a mundane explanation for something intensely creepy. The screaming was frogs! The Arctic Banshee Frog! Hahaha! The Yellowjackets are living only a few miles away from the plane, and Callie said the group of three went missing 100 miles away from where the plane was found. By foot, the YJs are not close to civilization, especially when you consider the terrain. I don't think they can feasibly walk out, especially not now that they're close to winter.

I don't feel like Tai (when not Alterna-Tai) and Van are yet at the point where they're just fine having the eating of more people built into the survival plan as a given. I think they would both like to avoid it. Otherwise, there's really not any reason for Van to be expressing some apprehension about winter. Any moral qualms they might still have aside, they have to participate in any card draw too. Ben was already dead. I do think at this point in their survival, they all accept they must make full use of every resource they have. It isn't cold enough for them to stash Ben's body to see if they actually need it later, so it's either eat him now or waste that resource. Food Conservation 101: Eat the perishables first. And again I think that mostly points to that apart from maybe Shauna and Melissa they don't really want to have to do another card draw and hunt. Eating Ben buys them additional days before the point they've slaughtered all their animals and must do a card draw, and it's not remotely a hard call to eat this dead body now to hopefully avoid killing someone later.

Thanks for doing that research so we didn't have to! The other thing to consider is that at this point, because of the lines they have already crossed, they are probably a lot less willing to endure much hunger before calling a hunt. These are teenagers, their brains aren't fully developed and they're still much more prone to instant gratification than adults. I'm sure there will be those, like Nat, who would prefer to ration and go hungry as much as possible in order to minimize hunts, but there will be others, like Shauna most likely, who will be all for keeping bellies pleasantly full. Shauna had that crack in the premiere of "We should have eaten that bitch first," and while in that moment the joke shouldn't be taken over-seriously, it's still a hint of Shauna looking ahead and anticipating more people will need to be eaten. Different from Tai, who seems to holding onto an idea that they can avoid this if they prepare well enough for a second winter.

This is the funniest thing I've read all day. The Marlins plan to argue that they're not in violation of the CBA regarding their low payroll spending while pocketing tons of revenue-sharing money because they're putting in the second-biggest weight training facility in MLB for their players.

It being the compassionate choice doesn't make it any easier for her. She shoved a knife into a human being's heart to kill him. Out of all the remaining people she was probably the least emotionally and psychologically able to cope with such an act. Between that and watching Javi drown (and of course the earlier trauma with her father), I totally see now why Adult Nat was the way she was. Some of her light died with Javi, the rest of it died with Ben. Ben held one, so I don't believe so. The show probably just needed to use the kind of goat that could work safely with the actors. It can be hand-waved as possibly the guy who built the cabin brought a couple of goats with him and after his death they went into the woods and bred more goats.

If one interprets Akilah's vision of Ben as a bridge to mean that if the girls kill him, they'd be crossing a line that would make it impossible for them to truly go home - similar to what Shauna wrote in her journal in the season premiere - then the hikers seeing his decapitated head is a fulfillment of that.

I don't know if this means anything at all, but I just remembered how in that scene of the survivors walking to the plane to be taken home, Lottie stops and screams. A possible connection to her screaming in this episode?

So now there's serious talk that the Vikings may end up with Rodgers. I'm sure he'd rather go there over the Giants or Steelers, but if the Vikings sign him they are even bigger idiots than the Giants and Steelers. The latter two teams do not have their franchise QB already on the roster and they are not in contention for a Super Bowl next season (with or without Rodgers), so while it would still be dumb to bring him on, at least it wouldn't interfere with their franchise QB's development or muck up team chemistry during a potential Super Bowl run.

Weirdly, I think we saw a bit of the old Shauna in her scene with Natalie and Ben's body. When she assigned that task to Nat, she was gloating then, but once it actually came time for Nat to do it, Shauna was actually kind and helpful, in a warped way. I've seen that theory but no, I don't think pit girl is that woman. I also think all the C-tier people in the group are goners - meaning Gen and a couple others whose names I don't even remember. The ones who were all sitting around Shauna at the end. The B-tier at this point consists of Melissa, Mari and Akilah. I don't think they will all make it out. I'm still hoping that even though Ben is definitely dead, the chance that they left someone behind in the woods isn't dead too, and if so that would be one of these three girls.

I don't think Van's statement can be taken to mean no new survivors. Misty wasn't in the car with them, and it's highly unlikely that Misty knows nothing about and was not involved in whatever happened. So Van's "us" is already more than just the people who were in the car, and can be taken to mean all of the survivors.

As much as it felt like unnecessary sadism, I assume Shauna pointed out that Ben was able to travel through the wilderness before on his one leg, that there is plenty of wood around that can serve as a crutch, and that they didn't have any chains or handcuffs and it's pretty easy to imagine Ben getting out of rope knots. Perhaps left unsaid was that some of the group could not be trusted not to help Ben, thus ruling out the option of having him guarded. Slashing his Achilles solved all those problems neatly, hence Nat's agreement to it. On another subject, I keep going over Jeff's reaction to hearing Lottie is dead. I can't decide if Warren Kole just played the scene over-broadly, or if Jeff played his reaction over-broadly. He's on my suspect list now for Lottie's death. I was glad to see Adult Tai get real for a moment and acknowledge that she's lost her family and her career. What she said when she woke up later on made me wonder if Other Tai is actually in control basically 24/7 at this point and Tai is trapped and desperate to regain control. It would explain so much about Adult Tai this season.

The tubing would easily have been found in the airplane. I didn't get a good look at the funnel, probably because I was too busy cringing... They did have authorization. Remember, nobody came running even though Ben was shouting (even before they cut his tendon), and when Shauna and Melissa went back to the group after, Natalie told Shauna she didn't have to enjoy it so much. I wonder if Misty has enough self-awareness to recognize that Ben would not have died if she hadn't destroyed the flight recorder. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Misty should start with herself.

Yeah. The first part of that moment between Mari and Nat was saying that what Nat did for Ben was wonderful - she didn't complete the sentence, but that's what she was getting at. In terms of the group it was a mistake: Nat lost her leadership and she's lucky Shauna was satisfied with making her carve up Ben, what with Tai wanting another trial, Misty out for blood, and the girls acting as if Nat had singlehandedly ruined their chances of going home. Mari was just acknowledging both these things.

I don't have time to post fully right now, but I gasped at the end. I was expecting the episode to just close out on the chilling image of the girls adding singing and dancing to their cannibalism ritual - they're a long way from the night they had to dissociate into a fantasy banquet in order to eat Jackie - and then the hikers appear! RIP Ben. Steven Kreuger and Sophie Thatcher have been MVPs this season. I really liked the moment between Mari and Natalie. I noticed all of Shauna's sycophants who she was eating with are from the C-tier of the group, aside from Melissa who was C-tier up to this season and has been promoted to B-tier. That's interesting because it suggests Shauna's power base isn't solid. But maybe no one's can said to be solid when it's apparently entirely up to Lottie who's going to be leader at any time. I like that the Yellowjackets previouslies didn't do the thing I find so annoying with TV shows, that of including a clip of whatever character we haven't seen in a while who is going to make a surprise appearance in the episode, thus ruining the surprise. Hi Lisa! I found her information about Tai interesting. I had ruled her out because Lottie just hung up on her that day, clearly having no use for her. I guess Tai went looking for Lottie, maybe to try to get insight into what is needed to heal Van?