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?

I thought that too! But I figure since everyone takes it as a given that Brad doesn't want kids, we must be meant to understand that this is something Brad has said offscreen.

I've never really understood this show being described as a mystery box show. The characters all know what happened--whether or not there was/is anything supernatural isn't a solveable mystey, it's just more character stuff. They told us from the start where this was going.

Me too! It's the necklace they give to the sacrifice. Lottie's making a point of trying to claim Callie for her latest whatever her plan is. Also, remember how Lottie was about Shauna's baby when she was pregnant. Shauna's got good reason to be defensive. I can't relate. I've never really thought about whether they're likeable, but I don't need them to be. Nat being the one closest to having a normal sense ot justice doesn't make me like her more than anyone else (she wasn't my favorite in the adult timeline either) and Coach Ben not wanting to eat Jackie's roasted by the wilderness body doesn't make me root for him one way or the other either. I definitely did wonder if Walter was the one to cut Shauna's breaks and wonder if whoever did it had plans for MIsty as well. But I don't really get why the others are so bad at just politely being with Misty when they have to be with her. Are they always just worried she's going to do something to them? Though Misty kind of made it harder for herself by not admitting Callie slipped her a Mickey. I've always gotten the impression that the whole point of the Wilderness stuff is that it could be supernatural or not, like any spiritual stuff like that. Everyone hasn't so far been experiencing hallucinations like the one in the cave, so doens't seem like the gas is everywhere. It's not like it explains most of the stuff they've done or have experienced. You'd think Mari would have had enough time on the walk back to come up with a story for what happened to her that didn't fall apart at the first obvious question. Even her Coach rumors were more well thought out!

Btw, according to a hunter, the capes are deerskin.

I think what's interesting about those characters' fate to me is that you can't help but speculate how things would have been different if they hadn't died, because they were both defined in different ways by being against the society that eventually appeared. But the reason they're not there is that they both wound up killing themselves for reasons because of those things instead! It does make it interesting how Laura Lee wasn't included in the Summer Solstice ceremony. The bodies being there does seem like a good reason for it, but Laura Lee's death was such a tramatic moment, especially for Lottie, it still seems like an interesting choice!

And I think the show even suggests that more than another show might! Oh, I agree. But that's why I'm not saying that Laura Lee or her religion was actually bad--it's almost the opposite, imo, that the show isn't interested in morality as a theme. They're more interested in people's other motivations, and Laura Lee is usually connected to magical thinking than anything else--it seems like she hasn't throught through everything morally a lot (as evidenced by her fears about the plane crash). So it's better than she's not portrayed as a villain or someone with a hurtful or hateful religion. Her interpretation of signs to mean that she could fly the plane safely wasn't mean or kind, it was just the way she interpreted God as saying to her--and it was also pretty fanatical, even if it wasn't dark or violent. Basically, I'm just saying that Laura Lee did seem like a kind person, and that was part of who she was, but the show was more interested in how she interacted with her religion than the fact that she was nice, because the show is more interested in other impulses. I'm going to give them a chance to explain where that stuff comes from, just because I'm hoping the costume department through it through at least in some way, like they did with the opening scene of the series. Before S2 a lot of people complained about them all having winter clothing in pictures and they weren't. Seems like they must have had some fun coming up with what they're wearing.

What's interesting though, too, is that Laura Lee mostly influenced everything by being religious, and her version of Christianity isn't that far removed from the Wilderness Cult: In the flashback to camp, she thanks a lifeguard for pulling her out of a pool and he says that he didn't save her, God did. Thus taking a totally natural occurance (the lifeguard did save her) and sugesting it was supernatural. She saw signs in things like birds landing nearby meaning God would protect her if she flew a plane. (She also insists on group prayers before games and scrimmages.) Maybe most obviously, the Wilderness Cult believes that if they sacrifice and give It what it wants, It will reward them with what they need to survive. Laura Lee, in the second episode, reveals that she believs her God caused a plane crash because Laura Lee called her piano teacher a rude name--in her head. Like if she didn't stick precisely to the correct behavior, God would punish her. It's hard to imagine Laura Lee taking part in any of the cannibalism or murder, but it would be a God vs. God situation--remember her smacking Lottie with her Bible back at the seance. So while things would have played differently if she was alive, the reality is that she died early, and before she did she introduced a lot of the spiritual ideas playing out in the Cult.

Sure, it's not like he ever wanted any of the girls to die or have bad things happen to them. When he called them monsters I don't think he was meaning anything other than them being teenaged girls. (Iirc, the whole idea is in the context of him choosing to stay in the job rather than live with his boyfriend.) I think the show intetionally chose a story about an assistant coach who was sort of between the adult coach and the kids instead of a former respected or loved authority figure who falls from grace. Their interactions always seem to reflect that.

The point isn't that Ben should have brought supplies to the girls--obviously I get why he's just staying away from them now and considering them a danger to to him. But in a meta sense, we've got a bunch of mostly girl protagonists who are being shown surviving in the wilderness with at least some practical and psychological logic, showing them learning to build shelters and raise animals etc. and thinking communally, with Shauna's personal grievances threatening everyone. I'm not looking for a male authority figure representing a civilizing influence to show how the girls are morally inferior on their own. Losing his leg is enough trauma to cut him more slack than anybody else in the crash, and he had Misty on top of that, but it's not like he was established as caring about the girls even before they left. When he spent much of last season hiding in a fantasy world we saw he considered them monsters he resented having to deal with even before the crash, because he chose that job for self-protection over a scarier life that included connection to his boyfriend. Obviously compared to a bunch of murdering cannibals he's better, but that doens't make him somebody I can root for all that much. I'm fine with him living in his big womb cave with his boxes of food and potential cave friend and Natalie's protection, but his being freaked out by the girls doesn't make him a moral symbol. Hiding is just his thing.

Yeah, that definitely seemed like a possibility to me too. Especially since Tai just showed up at her door--that would seem like a sign to Van.