That being said, the show doesn’t shy away from the blood and gore of being stranded in the woods.
STRANDED DEEP PLANE SERIES
The entire thing is drawn out, so much so that people not gripped by the series could jump ship, and it’ll be interesting to see if the show sticks the landing or goes too far into “Lost” territory. A mysterious symbol is found at various points, both past and present, in the girls’ lives and the paranoia of classmate Lottie (Courtney Eaton) leads one to believe there might have been a reason for the cannibalism. The group eventually finds shelter in an abandoned cabin, but with it comes the fear of an otherworldly threat. This is also the plotline where the true weirdness of “Yellowjackets” comes through.
In the case of Shauna and Jackie, their relationship is so fraught with those unspoken power dynamics that exist between girls that much of the actresses’ power comes from the silent glances between them. Where the individual adult actors are such defined personalities - and Ricci and Lewis are so grandiose in their performances - the teen girls have to illustrate not just their dynamics in an ensemble but their state of becoming. Thatcher, Nelisse, Purnell, Samantha Hanratty as young Misty, and Jasmin Savoy Brown as young Taissa are all fantastic, as well as the other girls associated. Ricci is equally wonderful to watch, giving a Patrick Bateman-level turn with a smile and deep-seated psychopathy that is terrifying.īut, overall, the storyline with the teenage girls actually enduring the wilderness is superior, and that might explain why it’s parceled out so deliberately to the audience. As we see in the moments with young Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), she’s experienced heavy amounts of trauma even before the plane crash and the cracks run deep. She brings a necessary grit that you’d expect from someone who spent 19 months in the wilderness, but an inner vulnerability. Whether it’s Lewis rocking a shotgun in her first reunion with Misty, or threatening to light a man’s penis on fire, she is a panther who stalks every scene. Then there is Taissa (Tawny Cypress), who is running for public office and fears what’s happening to her young son, who claims he’s seeing a lady in a tree.Īs far as the adult storyline goes, Lynskey may be the straight man to Cypress propelling a dark conspiracy, but the fun of “Yellowjackets” is in watching Ricci and Lewis tear up the scenery and each other. Or Misty (Christina Ricci), a hospice nurse whose idea of humor is tormenting her patients. Her life feels far more normal than that of Natalie (Juliette Lewis), a hard-drinking and drugging rebel recently out of rehab. It’s obvious Shauna still internalizes the high school belief that she’s less than and her “screw it” attitude toward it all sees her engaging in a relationship with the kindhearted Adam (Peter Gadiot) who is open to letting her relive her teenage dreams. As a youth, just as adeptly played by Sophie Nelisse, Shauna is deemed the less attractive, chunky best friend to the teen queen Jackie (Ella Purnell) and it’s something Lynskey lets thrive as an adult. Lynskey’s perfected playing the disaffected woman who’s underestimated at every turn she’s also superlative at playing a woman who could easily kill you. Shauna ( Melanie Lynskey), who once had plans to attend Brown University, is a housewife with a terrible daughter and an absentee husband. And, like most high school narratives, the answer is they haven’t done a whole helluva lot. But it’d be too easy to give audiences all that at once, so the wilderness narrative runs alongside what the surviving Yellowjackets have been doing with their lives 25 years later. The opening scene, showing a young woman running in the snow only to be impaled by some sort of trap gives you a good indication of what the team does to survive those 19 months. 'House of the Dragon': Everything You Need to Know About HBO's Upcoming Series 'Saturday Night Live' Review: The Best and Worst of Simu Liu's Hosting DebutĮmmy Predictions: Best Actress in a Limited Series - More Than a Two-Horse Race 'Succession' Review: Episode 6 Paints a Scary Future, While Sins of the Past Prey on Two Patsies