Open Source Idiom posted:

Oh man, I loved The Wilds -- I think it's better than this show, sorry to say (and I like Yellowjackets!).

So keen for the second season.

Comrade Fakename posted:

It’s pretty funny that a show all about how how a group of impressionable people can hype themselves up into believing in supernatural events is inspiring the same reaction in much of its viewership.

D34THROW posted:

I actually really, really liked how we were set up to expect some crazy poo poo with Shauna and Jackie, like Shauna personally butchered Jackie like she did to Adam and/or took the first bite or some poo poo. (I'm inclined to think she handled the butcher's work in general, both human and animal). Nope, she just blames herself for Jackie dying of exposure and I can't say I blame her.

Starks posted:

Yeah they could have all had the same necklace or something instead of those stupid clothes. I still thought it was a cool reveal, seems like next season will have an actual antagonist.

I gotta scratch my head at some of the people saying the supernatural elements are ambiguous though. So far we’ve had:

• exploding teddy bear
  
• bear walking up to a crowd of people and letting itself get killed
  
• A freshly killed deer full of maggots
  
• Lottie suddenly becoming fluent in a language that she didn’t know before
  

There’s some ambiguity about Lottie’s visions and whatever’s going on with Taisa, but there’s been other stuff that has no rational explanation. I feel like some people won’t be convinced until we see a giant monster (hopefully not made of smoke).

Edit: a cool detail I missed the first time is that Lottie basically foresees Laura Lee’s death at the end of the baptism in episode 6 — “I saw fire and light” — which Laura Lee misinterprets as the Holy Spirit.

AceOfFlames posted:

There's been some interview where the creators have said "yeah, when we said we have a five season plan, it's only because Showtime requires that for every pitch* so we definitely don't aim to drag things out. We can even end the show early if we want"

* wow, what a surprise.

XboxPants posted:

This sounds closer to how I'm viewing the show. I must be the only person who doesn't care that much about the flashback scenes and just wants more of the present stuff. That's where the real character poo poo is happening, to me. Everyone's certainly free to enjoy the show as they wish, but I don't get the impression this is supposed to be about learning secrets and solving mysteries, but rather, examining how people really react in situations where you can't tell for sure what's going on. It's more about faith and madness and fear and desperately trying to cling to reality, and creating your own reality, to me.

Take the conflict between Jackie & Lottie, when they were having the fight about crazy supernatural poo poo. I don't care who was right, it's the fact that conflict was happening at all, and why, and what that meant to them as people. All the stuff previous posters have gone into about Jackie being stuck in her old "civilization" mindset, treating the argument as if she was at a slumber party and she could go sleep outside to teach her friends a lesson. That's what's most interesting to me, and none of it really hinges on whether there really are forest spirits communicating with Lottie or not. The characters function either way. The point is that LOTTIE believes it.

Or here, how about another example. Taissa's wife. She could see the poo poo Taissa is doing and going through, and think, "hey, we've had a loving marriage for 15 years and maybe I could try to understand what's going on with my wife. I do have a kid to worry about, so I'll get him somewhere safe, but I can also try to remember that Taissa has gone through incredible trauma that I don't really understand and maybe, just maybe, if I offer her some support right now, I can try to help her handle whatever is happening and even try to heal." I'll admit, even to me that sounds like a ridiculous amount of good faith to ask for from her wife..... except we were shown Jeff giving that exact kind of response to Shauna in the very same episode. And they had a kid, too. And Shauna loving MURDERED someone! But he still treated Shauna like a person, with human thoughts and feelings and needs, while Taissa's wife just wrote her off as a crazy monster, possibly even literally a monster, in her eyes.

It's an interesting contrast, to me.

Henchman of Santa posted:

The writers thought it would look cool/be more symbolic if the bear was the first thing visibly wrong. I really think that’s all.

clown shoes posted:

Whenever there is something unexplainable, it's always best to assume a wizard did it. Haven't y'all ever seen Star Trek?

Danzel Glovington posted:

Even though this show seems to portray a realistic world, they could still create tension surrounding keeping the events of the crash secret in a hyper dramatic way and have that be enough, at least for me as a viewer. I also expect they'll have an even bigger reveal, but I can still see the whole turning into Jack from Lord of the Flies and covering it up thing being the main source of tension. There are other shows where cannibal rituals are used as pivotal traumatic events for main characters in ways that I think work well, and in those the cannibalism is a by-product of even more nastiness too (like all the rituals and Lord of the Flies stuff).

I wanna talk about The 100, and the Netflix Snowpiercer.

The 100 had wildly differing main plots per season and one of them was about the planet becoming uninhabitable by radiation and everyone hiding in a bunker, hence the need for cannibalism. In this case the leader ordered people to fight to the death and ordered the entire population to eat the losers. It drove several characters to hunger strikes and suicides, and fully changed the leader in question. The cannibal situation changed the toughest (emotionally and physically) character into becoming a total mess that was pretty much useless in future seasons until she overcame this issue. The show might be pretty hokey and disjointed from season to season, but this was a neat way to tie into the season 1 premise that also had resource shortages and it developed a character really well imho.

In Snowpiercer they reference the people that hopped the train without a ticket resorting to cannibal cults as having happened before the show's setting as sort of a defining part of history that unites those members of the train, who as of the first episode, have vowed to never do it again and internally criminalize it. The richer villainous people refer to it jokingly to taunt them, even if some don't know or believe that it even happened, it's like a rumour the rich part of the train uses to disparage the poor. So in that world it isn't treated as completely abhorrent and life ruining to those that had to resort to it, but more of a pivotal aspect to the world building.

Rarity posted:

The island wasn't purgatory though

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:

I enjoyed the LOST experience once I sat with it years after the finale. The long game was revealed, they really went out of the way to explain some of the bigger mysteries. I don't get the hate, because I had a good time with it

I AM GRANDO posted:

Usually there would be no point in making supernatural stuff ambiguous if you weren’t going to leave the possibility open. Otherwise it’s hard to justify the time spent on it in the first place.

There is a convincing natural explanation for everything, but Jackie’s fur trapper death dream just being her imagining what he might have looked like is not as interesting as there maybe being a ghost of the dead fur trapper loving with people as they have death dreams.. At least it’s not absent other factors.

I can’t think of a show that teased supernatural stuff and didn’t deliver, unless in the context of having a big reveal that somebody was delusional or being misled, or something else at least as interesting as the possibility of the supernatural. That could be the case here, though.

Open Source Idiom posted:

Cinematic time isn't concomitant with real time.

E: even in the scene posted, the girls jump about half a k down the track between cuts.

Rappaport posted:

As mentioned above, there was also the actual, living bear that just walked up to the girls and laid down in order to be brutally merked. Of course the (real, living) bear could have been high on shrooms or something.

I really hope the show doesn't try to make some kind of awful CGI Nyarlathotep in the later seasons, just keep messing with our heads please

fullroundaction posted:

Thanks for the recaps! I made the mistake of starting a LOST rewatch podcast during last season’s break and my brain wants to keep remixing the two shows together.

Medullah posted:

Disposable Scud posted:

I'm dropping it at this point. I was getting a nagging feeling I was watching trash now and its tipped over. It's not even the mystery box stuff either. This show is Ryan Murphy-tier.

meanolmrcloud posted:

Sooo as parents to a 2 month old baby, this is probably an episode we should skip? violence involving children hits different now

Laterite posted:

they're desperate enough to revive both Weeds and Nurse Jackie, so, yeah, pretty dire.

fullroundaction posted:

In the last episode they used a real phone number that you can call and text, and if you do you'll get a really creepy voicemail, some mystery texts, and go down a whole ARG rabbit hole with websites and all of the normal things that you'd expect.

I get not WANTING it to be a mystery box show, but I think you have to do a lot of gymnastics conclude it's not.

Unrelated: In this episode after Javi dies, and Van goes "the wilderness chose!" or whatever and it snap cuts to Lotte in bed, seemingly receiving the knowledge of what has occurred .... are we supposed to keep going "yeah, no way to know if this is supernatural or there's a rational explanation for everything!" or can we finally start doing straight readings of what the show is plainly presenting to us?

Tagra posted:

This is genuinely an interesting discussion question. He is so horrified by the cannibalism that he......... murders everyone?

And they haven't even actually murdered someone for food yet (wellllllll... unless you count dragging feet to pull Javi out of the ice)