sistermagpie

Yes, that's one of the things that felt like a drift to me in general. In S1 Tai had this ambitious life with a family, but the wilderness was with her in the form of Dark Tai, an almost atavistic witch creature who sat in trees and ate dirt. She was like the repressed creature embodying her terror of the supernatural, fully believing and being connected to it. Now her story's more just about her loving Van (who she didn't speak to for years and it makes sense she broke up with) and Dark Tai is just Tai, but she thinks killing somebody will keep Van alive. Like what was the whole thing about Van dying to bring real Tai back and saving her or whatever when Tai's first order of business is cut open Van's corpse and take a bite out of her heart before plotting revenge on Shauna for Van's death, and Natalie's too, while she's at it?

There was three plans all going on at once. 1. Akilah, Melissa, Mari, Gen - Their plan is to manipulate the girls into a hunt for a distraction, then use it to kill Shauna (and maybe Lottie?). In the cave, Lottie makes it clear she's knows that. 2. Tai and Van - manipulate the cards to protect the two of them and give Hannah the Queen card. 3. Misty, Van, Natalie (and eventually Hannah) - give Natalie a chance to make the distress call.

TBF, both of them had other priorities, whereas being in the media is central to Trump's presidency. The guy used to spend whole mornings as president on the phone with Fox & Friends. Did this meeting do anything about the hate that's getting people trafficked endangered and killed or is this just about dinner parties?

Yeah, it just feels to me that the story is really now the Sadeki's story. In S1 they set up the characters, imo, in a way that seemed to show their teen selves making sense with their adult selves, with each having a clear way that their experience in the wilderness was affecting their adult life. Except for Misty they seemed to have a clear conflict about their wilderness self vs. civilization self. So Misty was a great character, but her arc didn't have the same kind of drama. But as the show went on it seemed like except for Shauna they just drifted into other things with only Shauna having the same conflict that she's working through in a narrative way, and her family working out what that means for them.

I feel like there's got to be another turn with Shauna. She's at her lowest point now. As awful as Shauna is in the wilderness (and I couldn't help but just think it would have been a hell of a lot easier to just kill Shauna. Wouldn't everyone want to be rid of her at this point?), this season ending with Shauna embracing her Queen self in response to Melissa telling her to forgive herself just doesn't work as an ending arc. Tai was talking about Shauna being the cause of everything, but it was Tai and Misty who are planning to kill their teammate. The only people adult Shauna has killed are people she believed were threatening them all. She's paranoid about threats to her family and others--and those other people, it turns out, actually triggered that paranoia. Especially Callie who did not kill Lottie by accident. Jeff's going to be in over his head with her too. Meanwhile, the stuff she was being accused of by Tai and Misty wasn't about her intentionally going against them, but her getting in trouble because she was paranoid about somebody after them. Then there's Walter... It does seem like the show has been wandering and is trying to use "we didn't remember" to explain things that just really don't fit with what we saw. Everyone's adult situation matched the past in S1. Now a lot of that seemed to just trail off. Yeah, I don't think she's so one note as to not care about anyone. She's closer to people than any of the others are. Right, it didn't even seem like cowadice to me so much as scrambling to make the pilot scenes work out. Yes, Van had made it clear she wasn't going to hurt her. Melissa could have run out without killing Van. It's not like she couldn't out run her. Yeah, she and Misty are still the adult characters that seem the most consistent to me. And even Misty not quite as much, but I can see the logic. I still enjoy the show, but I think I'm with peachmangosteen in seeing the writing as really creaky.

There have been people asking for that practically since the show started.

How can anyone talk about what's going on in the world with Trump, the guy who automatically responds with "I haven't heard about that" if asked about anything inconvenient or just makes up a lie that sounds good to him in the moment? All he ever knows about what's going on in the world is that he's great and anyone who disagrees should be punished. He has no interest in the world beyond that. Seems like Bill at best just wants to live in a fantasy world where our problem is people needing to get to know and appreciate Trump and his supporters.

I feel the same way. She's destructive, but not in a way that bothers me--it's compelling, and doesn't strike me as more petty or selfish than everyone else the way it seems to come across to some. She seems to personify the whole experience in some clear way.

Yes, Dorit's proved, once again, that if you annoy Sutton enough she will become annoyed. Somehow she thinks this means that any time Sutton is not annoyed, she's not being "real." I feel like she practiced that "here she comes!" bit in the mirror thinking it was going to kill. Or maybe she learned it in high school. I do hope someone points out that Dorit ended her big speech about how she has so much love in her life she doesn't need to put people down about money by putting Sutton down for living on a main road. Yeah, this isn't a woman jealous of other peoples' money.

I think Simone Kessell said that Lottie knew what Misty had done as well, so everyone may find out.

I'm liking S3, but I think an issue the show has is that Shauna is the only character who seems to really gel all together. You can see the specific trauma she has and how she deals with it, so she's full of rage, but also self-loathing and guilty about it, she pushes people she cares about away and won't get close to them, but is also fiercely protective of them. But with other characters the stuff we get doesn't really hang together for me. Like Van had all those NDEs and was Lottie's first disciple, but her death doesn't seem to give that a shape at all. Same with Tai and Bad Tai. And certainly Natalie.

I don't think she would need to kill her to be free of her. They're her family and they know who she is, that she's crazy. It's not easy to deal with, and it would be good if the point of Shaunas arc was to rectify that. But if she doesn't, they can just not let her drag them into her shit, just like hotel. It's lonely being a family with Shauna because Shauna herself is lonely all the time, pushing away anybody she could be close to even while wanting to protect them. Yeah, seems obvious that the whole point is that it's not stupid of Travis to wonder if the Wilderness prevented Lottie from falling into the pit while at the same time there's obviously physical reasons why it didn't collapse. Melissa is the one who killed Van, did she leave the knife with her fingerprints etc.? This is one murder they didn't actually commit. It was funny, I thought, when Melissa suggested that Shauna acted psycho with Adam when she really didn't. She really did think he was blackmailing them and killed him instinctually in a sort of self-defense. Did Melissa have any reason to kill Van besides saying it was what It wanted? I'm intrigued about what Misty saw on Walter's phone. Seems like he's a real suspect for Lottie's murder, maybe for Misty-type reasons. Callie seems to have something weird going on to, but I don't like the idea that she might have killed her. Although it might have been an accident. I admit, I don't really get why it was a good idea for Hannah to kill Kodi, their only way to get home. I also wind up thinking the others can't really just be too afraid to disobey Shauna openly. Seems like they've got to have some reasons for just not liking the idea of those 3 not wanting to go. Shauna's a nightmare, but I was really happy at Misty going back to not thinking she did it, reducing Misty's anger to just locking her in the freezer in revenge for Shauna being an asshole. Oh, and I forgot. How did they possibly have Van say that she and Tai were "down at the shore?" You're from New Jersey, Van. You were DOWN THE SHORE!

Also, the authorities and people back home failed these kids by not finding them, so they're starting off as heroes who survived despite being forgotten and written off for dead by their families. That's even more reason for people to think twice about judging how they might have survived. That inclues relatives who are thinking of demanding remains of people who potentially died over a year ago. Except for Crystal whose body disappeared, all these people got some version of ceremony of honor in death.

Oh, I disagree. Yes, the three of them are the ones we can most obviously see as preferring the wilderness, but to me it felt like it was the opposite, that their reasons for wanting to stay were the misdirect and the real issue is that something feels wrong. Plus, that gives a little more of a tip to the intuitive/supernatural side when we've been getting rational explanations. Akilah basically also got a "something's not right" vibe with her vision. Remember, whatever Travis is saying here about making stuff up, he seems to have believed something as an adult. Yeah, I think Melissa's hardly one to talk about wanting to blow up her life when she decided to send that tape to Shauna. She's absolutely right about everything she was saying about Shauna, but she has the advantage of surprise here. She's living in an even flimsier house of cards than Shauna is. I'm fine with her getting knocked down a peg or two as well. Shauna makes her look sane by comparison, but come on. Melissa married the daughter of a woman she had hand in killing and, unlike Shauna, her perfect family doesn't know who she really is. The woman's still wearing her backwards baseball cap. She hasn't moved on. Besides Misty, Shauna might be the one who's closest to integrated! I agree with whoever said she's almost relieved to be "seen" as clearly as Melissa saw her here. (Has Melissa worked out why she was so attracted to Shauna at her most violent back when they were teens?) Seems like that would go against Shauna's wishes to stay, wouldn't it? I assumed she meant that the other girls were all Varsity and friends. They were closer when they first got back since they were all at Shauna's wedding too. Yeah, that's the thing, whenever anybody says anything about how Jackie would have done anything is that Jackie's literally defined by not being able to do those things. But I loved Hannah asking if Melissa was the captain with Shauna standing right there. As much as Shauna creates her own problems, one of the ways she creates problems is by not accepting being the second place person she was born to be. I think sometimes we don't appreciate how much Jeff and Shauna are alike. They both have some kind of longing for wildness and chaos. They both believed Jackie was slumming with them, that everyone saw her as the special one and them as the ordinary nobodys that she'd move beyond. They both chose an affair behind her back. And as we see in this ep, Jeff is kind of galvinized by his crazy wife who keeps his life from being ordinary. He's a better businessman when she's being crazy nearby.

The mere fact that she's still wearing that hat in her 40s shows she hasn't moved on...

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.