A house divided against itself cannot stand. Since its inception, the existence ofYellowjackets‘ dual timelines has been its biggest weakness. Though the stunt casting of beloved actors who cut their teeth as troubled teens in the ’90s covered it up for a time, the present-day material, following the lives of the castaways as adults back in civilization, has been dead weight since at least its first zany murder mix-up. As time has passed and we’ve seen the situation for the teenagers grow more dire, it’s been increasingly difficult to square the grim-faced cannibal killers of the past with the whoopsie-daisy-we-killed-someone-again shenanigans of their adult selves. The teenage material remained strong, at least, but the adult stuff has been on the verge of collapsing under its own absurdity for some time.
This week on Yellowjackets, the collapse finally comes, and it tears the whole thing down with it. Having painted themselves into a corner with the adults — Shauna, our heroine, begins this episode in the process of forcing her long-lost ex-girlfriend to eat a part of her own arm at knifepoint — the writers seem to have, at long last, given up. Across the board, from the 2020s to the 1990s, they’ve come up with a single solution to their problems: Make everyone, adult or teen, a whacked-out murderer. But rather than create the much-needed sense of psychological continuity between kids and grown-ups that the show has lacked for so long, this only drags the messy, half-assed feeling of the present-day story to the previously strong flashbacks.
The result is an ugly thing to witness. It’s a show falling apart before your eyes.
I reviewed this week’s dire Yellowjackets for Pop Heist.
Tags: horror, pop heist, TV, TV reviews, yellowjackets