Yellowjackets “Doomcoming”

So, from the looks of things, the past is a lot more messed up than I might have thought, and the present has a lot fewer secrets than it might have looked.

That, essentially, is what I learned from this penultimate episode.  There’s still no hint whether or not there’s anything supernatural on hand here and not just a bunch of teenage girls making assumptions because they’re young and naive.

I mean, the present scenes told me that, well, Shauna and Jeff really are made for each other.  Both had secrets.  Both told secrets.  Neither were surprised, and they were only moderately upset at what happened.  Shauna cheated?  Well, Jeff kinda gets it.  He was the one doing the blackmail, apparently.  He’d taken out a big loan from a loan shark, and he needed to pay it back.  He figured Taissa and Natalie were his best chance to get some money because, well, he knew where Shauna’s journals were from her time lost, and yeah, he knew the combination to her safe in order to read them.

Jeff has a good line as the two hash things out in a quiet scene:  their whole relationship was built on secrets and betrayal and the like, so why should that change?  That is an interesting way to look at things.  Besides, there’s a bigger problem:  Shauna killed that Adam guy when she realized he was lying to her the whole time.  That just means she can pin the blackmail charge on him and get Taissa and Natalie’s help to hide the body.  Oh, and when those two have no idea how to take care of a corpse, that means Natalie can go ask Misty.  Something tells me that she just might know how to dispose of a body.

All that is fairly standard stuff for a show like this.  It’s good drama, quiet, and I like the fact that soft-spoken, somewhat overweight Shauna is the one who seems to get the most nookie.

But then there’s the flashback scenes, back when the girls decided to put on a homecoming dance.  Jackie knows Shauna slept with Jeff, and she’s trying to get Shauna to admit as much with some well-aimed hints.  It doesn’t work, but then something else goes wrong.  Misty thought it would be cool to slip some hallucinogenic mushrooms into something  for Coach Ben, but it got mixed into some punch that everyone drank.  Natalie recognized it and seemed to ride it out.  Coach Ben found enough courage to finally tell Misty he was gay.  Misty was off on her own.  Jackie had taken Travis off to have sex because, aside from Travis’s kid brother Javi, he’s really the only option for that sort of thing.  Not everyone can be like Van and Taissa and be happy with each other.

Side note:  Van’s scars aren’t too bad considering how much of her face seemed to have been ripped off by that wolf attack.

And that’s when all this clearly goes into bad trip territory.  Lottie has some ideas about Jackie and Travis hooking up, namely that Travis “doesn’t belong” to Jackie.

Um, what?

Oh, and all the other girls present seem to be inclined to follow her inside as they grab Travis and sexually assault him.  Jackie gets knocked into a storeroom, and no, when Lottie said Travis didn’t belong to Jackie, that wasn’t because she thought Travis belonged to Natalie.  No, Travis maybe belongs to…I am not sure.  But Travis is tripping badly and imagine girls biting his skin off.  And then Lottie orders a human sacrifice, one Shauna was all set to give until Natalie showed up and saved her sometime boyfriend.

Look, I already know Travis was going to survive all this, but Lottie is getting a lot more dangerous.  I can chalk up much of what went down to the mushrooms, but Lottie’s visions and potential fanaticism, combined with how Laura Lee convinced Lottie her visions were divine providence…

The season finale is gonna get really ugly, isn’t it?  The drug trip scenes were, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Jeff/Shauna scenes, and they were every bit as effective.

This show was a good choice for weekly coverage if it can stick the landing for the season finale.