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"Yellowjackets": Season One

 We wrapped up "Yellowjackets" Season One. Let's see where we're at.


The writers have great fun with Shauna, who seems to grasp her situation, but that's a lie. We're led to agree with Shauna that the Absentee Husband ("I need to do inventory") must be having an affair, and that the strange young boyfriend must have dark secrets and schemes. In fact, it's Shauna who is a villain--more often than not--and I loved discovering her missteps in the final hours. 

I also enjoyed Shauna's anger: "I don't have a bond with my daughter. I don't even like my daughter...." And it was a thrill to see Shauna coolly eviscerate her kid at the dinner table: "You think you hold all the cards here? Have you heard of mutually-assured destruction? Let's talk about the fate of your college fund, if Daddy and I get a divorce...."

I giggled through Shauna's painfully awkward "reunion brunch" with Jackie's parents. This is like something from an Anita Brookner novel: No one wants to be seated at the table in question, but the brunch must unfold, because of strange sadomasochistic urges. Jackie's mother can't keep her passive-aggression under the surface: "It must have been difficult to be friends with someone as extraordinary as Jackie....You've done the best you can." Shauna's husband responds with a surprising and romantic thought: "Shauna is brilliant. Shauna, did you actually join MENSA?" All of this is delightfully uncomfortable, and the climax is Shauna's unveiling of a bizarre birthday trinket--a "gift"--that clearly means nothing to anyone at the table.

I didn't follow all the twists this season, and some things puzzled me. Why, exactly, did the Fearsome Four choose to attend the twenty-fifth reunion? And why would the coach allow Jackie to sleep outside? But I was invested in Shauna--all the way. "How have I been? Busy....I was just dismembering my lover's corpse...."

I think I might revisit "Goodbye to All That"--a Melanie Lynskey movie from ten or ten-ish years ago--as I wait for "YJ" Season Two.

P.S. Lynskey says she based Shauna's mothering on Mama Lynskey--Melanie Lynskey's own mother. "My mother didn't enjoy the parenting experience; she often seemed overwhelmed." The artist uses the things that life hands to her!
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