sistermagpie

If not the hunger strike, I figure she'd have died in some version of what actually happened to her--that she'd die from some accident, illness or some other wilderness-related thing.

Yeah, we already knew about Shauna being in NYC so I was waiting for her to be accused, but I don't think she did it. On the contrary, the opposite makes sense, because Shauna was so angry at Lottie to begin with she'd be more likely to fight with her without killing her. I think the thing with Shauna is that in the past she's enraged, but in the present she's just always in survival mode, seeing threats everywhere that she has to take out. Lottie was a certain kind of threat, but not the kind that needed killing, because she's not telling anyone what they did. I don't think any of them want to stay, besides Misty in her way. Seems like if there was a split like that we should see it referenced in the present. That is, unless all our people wanted to leave and a bunch of redshirts wanted to stay. But that doesn't seem likely. Or interesting. I never liked the whole "warring tribes" idea and somebody living in the woods seems unbelievable and random too. I don't think Shauna was thrilled. Her expression looks like she could be, but it could also just be total shock, which goes along with her barely being able to pronounce, "Holy shit!" She suggested killing the others as potential witnesses after what Lottie did and they saw, but she didn't just jump on Hannah and kill her. Hannah would definitely be special given her more recent ties to the world and maybe even interesting facts about frogs, but I can't see why some woman who just steppe into the woods with her guide and sat on their communcation to the outside world would become a leader. She has no idea how to survive in the wilderness.

I don't think she would have done either. It was central to her character that she wouldn't/couldn't adapt to the wilderness one way or the other.

She apologized and then I picked at her until she snapped, thus proving that her apology wasn't real!

Oh, absolutely--I get why all this is just making it harder for Nat to live with, even more so, because she's struggling to do the right thing. I just meant that if the vision was metaphorical about them crossing a line by killing them and they couldn't go back, then in that context it would be the compassionate choice that made it harder, not the harsher one. Though it does apply all the more literally to Natalie that way in that case.

Definitely! Seems like it could even work on two levels--not only does he become a bridge they can't uncross, but also his death does draw the birders from home to them. Though it seems interesting that Natalie almost seems to struggle the most at reintegrating back home despite being the one to make the compassionate choice with Ben. But then, looks can be deceiving. Seems like Tai is completely subdued by Bad Tai in the present. Sammy recognizes it and Van's starting to get it too.

That was definitely what I thought. Can't be a coincidence. Unfortunate that they decided to "honor" Ben by putting his head on a platter. I love Lottie so much in the past timeline it's still hard for me to reconcile her with who she was in the present!

Just watched Dyatlovo. This is one of those eps that I think a lot of people love because it’s so in your face, but that makes it less interesting to me. Sort of like DMRDoES. It’s built around a situation crafted to mirror back the characters’ own conflicts, but it’s more interesting for me to try to figure out how the other stuff reflects it because it’s not a very action-packed episode. OLEG Oleg and Ruslan continue to track down the woman who’s on the take in the USSR. It’s funny watching it now, because I live in a country where the corruption is so open (and it seems like it’s like that in the Russia now as well) that it’s almost admirable that she’s even a little bit subtle about it, even if she doesn’t keep her drawer locked. Ruslan seems to really like a nice “take my wife, please” joke. He makes one to the guy in the office who’s just had to send somebody to a psych hospital for speaking an obvious truth about how things work. No wonder Oleg sees this system as needing some glasnoct. The show is specifically focusing on the whole country having to act out an agreed upon lie in order to keep running. New thing I learned in this ep: the expression “high and mighty” in Russian is “white and fluffy.” STAN Stan and Adderholt have another meeting with Sophia that seems to go on way too long for what it brings to the story. Maybe the idea is to show how most of their interactions with her are personal to show how Stan starts to feel personally responsible for her. HENRY A rare ep where Henry is the only Jennings kid we see. I remember there were a ton of predictions that him getting a tour of the FBI meant he was going to walk into the vault and recognize his parents from those sketches (which would be unlikely even if he saw them, imo) so it’s funny that he’s not allowed in. Of course he has to say the mail robot’s really cool. He’s also impressed by the room full of computer. I don’t think Henry is supposed to be all that into the FBI here, though. He thinks it’s cool in a general way, as he shows in his essay, but he doesn’t seem to want to model his whole life on Stan—I actually assume he just thought the essay would be good for his schoolwork, since his goals are now about elite academia. But I think the most important conversation they have is where Stan says how he can’t trust anyone, including his kid, and that it’s not personal. Henry says that sucks. This conversation obviously applies to Philip as well, and Henry’s got to think about it after he knows the truth. Yes, they did tell Paige, but I think Henry might even see how that would be all the more reason they weren’t in a rush to tell him. (Besides, Paige demanded it and Henry absolutely did not want to know!) ELIZABETH Meanwhile, our two leads are dealing with parenting and Natalie Grenholm. It always really strikes me in this ep how confident and blasé Elizabeth is about Henry. There’s obviously the moment where they talk about Stan wanting Henry to join the FBI. Philip says Matthew isn’t going to, and Elizabeth suggests he could change as he grew up—but that Stan isn’t getting Henry. In retrospect you can’t help but think that Stan actually will get Henry—though like I said I don’t think Henry’s planning on becoming Stan at all. But their conversation can’t help but mirror the one about Paige. Philip is saying that Matthew the person isn’t going to want to join the FBI and Elizabeth of course suggests that he could still change and, it seems, improve to the point where he would. As usual, Philip is taking the kid as they are and Elizabeth is seeing how they could be changed to what you want. Philip also then suggests that Paige xeroxed the stuff in Pastor Tim’s diary about how her parents have ruined her as an accusation to them—surely he’s right, but Elizabeth doesn’t seem to have even thought about that. Elizabeth seems even more over-confident when they talk about Henry going to school, saying that he’ll just go to school for a few months and come home, as if this will barely be any different. Now we know that attitude is going to lead to she and Henry becoming totally estranged, so it’s ominous to hear her say it now. The scene with Natalie is one of the moments I find Elizabeth really irritating, sort of like I do in DMRDoES. I keep wanting Natalie to stand up to her and tell her off. I think what bugs me is that I know Elizabeth idolizes people in WWII and I feel like she’s thrilled to get to pretend to be one by tracking down this woman. She wants her to be a collaborator and loves self-righteously slapping her and accusing her of being a monster and a traitor, so I wind up wanting Natalie to stick to her lie and tell Elizabeth she doesn’t get to tell her what the war was like since she wasn’t really there. Elizabeth even makes a point of killing her innocent husband first to make her suffer that little bit more, knowing she got him killed. It also feels like Elizabeth is saying “monsters” don’t deserve loving husbands, like she told Claudia she wasn’t loveable—seems like something Elizabeth worries about herself at times. One other thing in this scene that’s funny—especially after seeing the bloopers from it—is I can’t help but think that it would probably be more effective and natural if Elizabeth pronounced Anna’s name correctly, since the whole point is to call forth her true identity. Using the severely American pronunciation of “Anna Mikhailovna Prokopchuk” undermines the moment. It’s not like she’s being careful to be American here, since she literally says, “мы это они.” If there’s a moment to show off that native tongue, Elizabeth, this is it. No wonder she felt the need to tell Natalie they were Russian, because she’d never have known it! LOL. This is also the ep, though, where Elizabeth suggests that go back to the USSR. That’s the moment when Elizabeth puts what’s best for Philip over everything, since he’s burnt out and didn’t want to kill Natalie. People tend to rewrite this into Philip wanting to stay in the US and Elizabeth working to help him do that, but it’s this situation that is what Philip actually wants, because that’s the only way they can live honestly as themselves and not risk losing the kids. PHILIP Philip’s views on Natalie are obviously very different from Elizabeth’s. Where she assumes Natalie is the woman they’re looking for from the start, he’s less sure. But ultimately, that seems to be almost a cover for him. He focuses on being unsure that this is the right woman, but when the time comes, the real problem is that he just doesn’t want to murder this woman for how the Nazis used her. Elizabeth asks him, “You think she’s changed?” when no, she really hasn’t changed, because she wasn’t bad to begin with. The other part of Philip’s story, the parenting, seems a little more mysterious to me. We know he doesn’t want Henry to go away, but he’s decided to let him go anyway—maybe partly because he listened to Paige about it. He knows both Paige and Elizabeth think it’s fine, and he’s the only person who sees it as a loss—we’ll see that he’ll make an effort to keep his connection to Henry strong maybe because he’s so aware of it. The real interesting thing for me, though, is that song. After Philip tells Henry he can go to St. Edwards, he goes over to watch a movie and eat Mickey D’s with Tuan. The song choice for this is a total departure from the show. I think it’s the second time only that they’ve used a song in Russian, and the first time the reason was obvious, because it was America the Beautiful (with its amber waves of grain) in Russian. This song’s about WWII, and I thought maybe it was meant to be something Philip remembered from childhood. But no, because the song’s from 1968, and Philip would have been in the US by then. The song is about soldiers dying far from home on the battlefield, so is Philip meant to be feeling that way? Even if in a complicated way, like he’s thinking of his situation separating him from his kids? Philip’s thoughts while the song is playing aren’t prompted by the song, since he’s not meant to be hearing it, but they’re his father. He’s remembering the two of them playing around their little home, and they seem to be pretending to fly—which links back to Philip pretending to be a pilot as Brad, and more importantly, his earlier flashback where he was playing with a toy airplane woven out of sticks. The song is also about flying, though, because it’s about how soldiers dying on the battlefield become cranes flying overhead. Philip’s story with his father this season was about him realizing he had doubts about his profession based on his memories, and finding out he was a guard at a prison camp. That led him to wonder if his father was a good or bad person. In this scene he’s just talked to his own son, and is now sitting with a pretend son, remembering his own father being kind and loving. Obviously, there’s a deeper theme there in this ep, especially when you bring in Henry’s conversation with Stan about how some jobs mean you can’t trust your children. Henry will eventually be in a similar situation with Philip, having a lifetime of happy memories of Philip being fun and loving and supportive, but having to reconcile that with knowing Philip was actually this whole other murderous person. And that’s also reflected in Natalie’s story, as she hid her past from her husband because she wanted him to think she was a good person, and wants to protect him being punished for her past actions and lies.

According to a recent study from UCLA, in 2023, grades K-12, there were 5 trans athletes competing on girls' teams in the US. But trans people are an attractive target since there's so few of them a lot of people don't think it's important to protect them, but they're the tip of the spear for a much bigger fight for rigid gender roles and misogyny.

The way she is this season definitely gives imaginary friends vibes, but she was introduced by talking to Gen and Crystal last season. Akilah's always been pretty present--last season she had her story with her dead mouse. My question about her is why she's not longer friends with Mari. In the first season they were always a pair and they seemed to still be a pair in S2. (They were even shown meeting on the plane.) Mari was a follower of Lottie so it seems odd she's not involved with Akilah's story at all suddenly.

I was really worried there that they might be setting up Ben to be killed before Cave Team 3 could save him! I, too, thought maybe Ben's bridge was metaphorical, keeping them from "going back" after they crossed a moral event horizon. Interesting that it seems like Shauna and Melissa are just taking personal revenge on Ben, but it turns out the group was aware of it and basically ordered it. As if Ben wasn't already disabled enough. What a terrible thing to do to him! It does feel like there's more of a disconnect between the adult characters are the kids. I understand the kids better. But I like the surprising moments, like Shauna being stung by the fact that she hasn't been a friend to Misty, and Walter seeming surprised that Misty really does hate him for treating Lottie's death like a game (and partnering with Shauna). So I'm interested in Walter and Shauna as a team--that makes for a good pairing given Misty in the center. I like him interacting with her more than Misty. I'm hoping Shauna's going through a phase this season that will be sort of a fever breaking by the end. It would make sense for her to rage for a while and then move on to something else, because adult Shauna really does seem to struggle to connect underneath the cold exterior. Wonder if Lottie's dad killed her or something.

Seems to me like it's just projecting hurt and anger. I feel like the idea of her starting the fire seems like a twist for twist's sake, but all her behavior says she's not behaving rationally and just lashing out at everyone she can. I assume there's a parallel between Misty focusing most on Shauna potentially starting the fire (which is believably because of her being this way) and everyone presumably suspecting Shauna of killing Lottie, someone she was also angry at who then ended up dead after she was in New York. Plus Shauna's already got to be ramping up to be paranoid and defensive again given what people are doing to her. She refused to admit to Misty she was wrong about her brakes as well. It seems like Shauna's experiences have led her to believe she only has two choices: invisible nothing or furious Valkyrie. The only time she seems to feel like she has any power is when she's raging and violent. When she's just stewing she feels invisible and weak--and sort of makes herself that, like with Jackie and in her life now. I did love Misty casually telling her why she thought rice pudding duty would be terrible for her and Shauna's unexpectedly not finding it terrible, and how it all centered on Shauna doing food prep, a job with whom she has a complicated relationship!

I thought Jen voted because she was afraid of Shauna, but Lottie, Travis and Akilah changed their votes because The Wilderness gave them a sign. Not just conscience, which is interesting. Because she also seems to goad her by calling her a loser. Like in this ep she basically told her she was pathetic for not doing something about whoever was trying to hurt her, which was maybe meant to make us think that she hunted down Lottie and killed her too. But most of what Jackie was doing was putting her down in that scene.

I think it's the opposite. She sounds 100% Londoner to me--she just talks very fast and her specific local accent is strong.

But didn't they reveal the mystery in the very first scene of the pilot?