[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] Episode 3.3 "The Tale of Watcher's Woods"

RECAP

Betty Ann reveals that her friend Sam is--surprise!--actually Samantha. Frank and Gary are immediately smitten and attempt to flirt with her in very different but equally awkward ways. Sam then tells the audition story to end all audition stories.

Sarah is a model Trailmaker, but isn’t exactly Miss Popularity at Camp Grindlestone. Kelly, on the other hand, is a cool chick who doesn’t give a fig about Trailmaking. One night when Sarah attempts to hang with the cool kids, they scare her with the legend of Watcher’s Woods, a mysterious roaming forest ruled by a demon who chooses the forest’s victims. Most people who enter Watcher’s Woods never return, like the three campers who went missing in 1919. Only their whistles were found, and all three whistles now hang in a shrine at the camp. The next day, Kelly tries to ditch Sarah while they’re paired up for a hike, and both girls get lost. Sarah meets the Watcher in the flesh (bark?), while Kelly finds three hags in the woods who turn out to be the three lost campers. The hags trap Kelly, but agree to let her go if Sarah brings their whistles back. Sarah succeeds and the three missing campers are finally set free.

The Midnight Society unanimously accepts Sam into their ranks.

REVIEW

E: First off, I remember this being one of my favorite episodes and it doesn’t disappoint. So much fantastic, weird, creepy stuff here.

T: You got to love Betty Ann for bringing Sam out to the meeting with a bag over her head during an impending thunderstorm.

E: Ha! Really sets the mood, doesn’t it.

T: Wow, Sam’s a girl! After two weeks of Betty Ann playing the pronoun game, what a shocker… There’s some brilliant writing on this show, but Sam’s introduction to the group isn’t an example. If her name was Rudolph OK, be surprised, but Sam is a perfectly normal girl’s name, right?

E: It totally is. I feel like this was such an unfortunate ’90s thing. It’s the classic “she’s got a boy’s name and a baseball cap but when she takes it off she’s pretty with long hair” trope. We were sort of obsessed with pretty tomboys and “oh it’s a girl!” reveals. I’m not really sure why, though I suppose it’s sort of a weird corollary to the truly terrible “not like other girls” trope, which was also quite popular in the ’90s.

T: I can’t stand the boys’ reactions to Sam. Frank sleazes all over her (though I like her breaking his hand), Gary’s zombified, and Tucker calls her a “babe.”

E: All three reactions cracked me up so hard, especially Gary’s. “You’re perfect.” LOLOLOLOL. God help us. At least Gary’s reaction is genuine enough to be kind of cute? Kind of?

T: I totally forgot Sam was played by JoAnna Garcia. She’d already appeared on TV before getting cast, and she’s been working ever since.

E: I knew she looked familiar and, thanks to IMDB, I just discovered that she was Vicky Appleby on Freaks and Geeks. Remember the ep when she and Bill (played by the indelible Martin Starr) have a totally adorable conversation and then make out? That’s one of my faves.

T: So while the Midnight Society scenes are a little cringey, Sam’s story is not at all. It’s fun, it’s weird, it’s a little creepy. I’m interested to see more from her to get a feel for what her type of story is.

E: A LITTLE creepy?? Troy, there’s a wandering patch of forest that people never come back from and it’s ruled by a motherfucking demon. We’re, like, a stone’s throw away from black-eyed children here.

T: I think it’s a personal taste thing. Forests aren’t intrinsically creepy to me. What’s in haunted woods can be creepy, and I consider the hags kinda funny, kinda creepy. And now I’m sad AYAOTD? never tackled the black eyed children urban legend.

E: Given that there’s been a reboot, there’s always hope for the future.

T: And it’s a camp story. I never went to camp, but it’s something I hear a lot of normal human children do? It sure is a staple of the horror genre.

E: I both went to camp and was a camp counselor in my twenties. There’s woods (inherently creepy -- ignore Troy) and loads of unsupervised time (inherently scandalous) so of course it’s a staple of the horror genre.

T: It’s Jewel Staite as Kelly! She’s a fantastic performer who’s had a long career. Besides Firefly, she’s been a regular on Space Cases, Flash Forward, and Stargate: Atlantis, and appears in a bunch of shows. After watching this episode, it’s no surprise. And I hope she’ll be in another episode of the series (spoiler alert for season four: she will!).

E: Her acting is obviously a step above much of what we’ve seen on AYAOTD? Every other time this show has tried to pull off a mean cool-girl, I’m like, “Why is she cool? Why would anyone want to hang out with her?” But Jewel brings instant charisma to this character. Even when she’s being bitchy, you want to be friends with her.

T: Is Kelly’s line, “No one touches my stuff,” a callback to Cousin Beth from “Lonely Ghost?” Actually, like Beth making up “zeeb,” Kelly coins “blipped.”

E: I didn’t even catch that! Well done, Troyson, and you’re probably right. Blipped is an instant classic. We really need to bring it back. “Don’t go to that sketchy bar downtown. That’s a place where people get blipped.”

T: “Don’t go into that mall after hours, that’s where zeebs get blipped!”

E: Fuck yes!

T: Kelly hates the camp because her friends are all back home, but she’s kind of a queen bee here, too. I’d hate to be her JV camp friends.

E: I’d bet Kelly is most at home when she has someone or something to snark about, so camp is secretly her favorite place. And she treats her fellow campers with a hilarious amount of disdain.

T: Like Ian from “Midnight Ride,” Sarah’s flaw is trying too hard. I like her. A lot of her character is reacting so there’s not quite as much to discuss like the outrageousness of Kelly, but she’s a solid co-lead.

E: She’s perfectly likable, and I love that she stands up to the Watcher and eventually calls Kelly out on her bullshit.

T: I’m glad Sarah doesn’t take Kelly’s shit. Kelly says she’d never take the hags’ whistles, and Sarah’s like, “Please, girl, you just did that to me.” But how the eff long is she looking in that bush for a pheasant’s nest that doesn’t exist?

E: For real! I feel like whatever happened to Sarah in that bush could be a whole other episode.

T: Love Sylvie’s piano playing and messing up when Sarah asks about Watcher’s Woods.

E: Same! It’s such a good old-timey lead-in to the story of the 1919 campers.

T: Kelly’s storytelling is basically, “There’s an old legend about the woods that has something to do with Indians and soldiers. Moving on!” I do appreciate the detail that Camp Grindlestone was established in 1913 and the three girls went missing in 1919.

E: Oh, come on. Let’s give Kelly a bit more credit here -- her storytelling strikes the right balance between legitimately creepy legend and flippant teenage girl. There are many Johnny Explainers who pop up on this series who almost seem to break character when they explain (Brad in “Midnight Ride” comes to mind). Kelly’s not one of them. The way she tells this story gels perfectly with who she is as a character, and she provides just enough detail to scare her fellow campers and the audience. Plus she coins the term “blipped”!

T: What the flip, Kelly? She’s about to smoke, on screen! And Sarah stops her only because there’s a fire warning.

E: I was like, “Why the fuck did this just turn into a PSA?” The whole thing is shockingly casual though. There was a fair amount of “smoking is bad” stuff going on in the ’90s, but this is more like, “Cool kids smoke. So what? But, like, don’t start forest fires, kids.” Amazing. That said, I get that the writers were trying to establish the lighter, since Sarah uses it later to threaten the Watcher.

T: The titular Watcher adds nothing to the story. He looks fine, but really the story would be better served not half-explaining that there’s this demon who runs the thing and just have it be scary woods. The three hags are more than enough for the episode. They’re so much fun. I feel like maybe the Watcher was in an earlier draft more, kind of deal. Then the story evolved and was cut for time and that’s what we have left? Basically, he’s just a generic roadblock for Sarah to pass.

E: Fair point -- we don’t need to see the woods personified for this story to be scary. Plus the Watcher’s whole “You fascinate me, Sarah” vibe is a bit icky, though it seems like a possible reference to David Bowie’s Jareth in Labyrinth? And the hags are everything. I don’t think I picked up on this when I saw this episode as a kid, but there are some pretty clear literary references here. They’re like Lord of the Flies crossed with the witches from MacBeth. I love that they’ve started to absorb the magic of the woods. So rad.

T: MacBeth established three witches is the perfect number. Two would just be a boring pair, and four would be overcrowded. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who wrote, “Double double toil and trouble, we’re gonna blip ya!”

E: Fuck yes!

T: Sarah shows her heroism by threatening to start a forest fire?

E: To be fair, she doesn’t have a lot of options. Plus, if she’s burning down a supernatural forest, does it really count?

T: Kelly reaching into the bucket of rats has a great Indiana Jones, “Why does it have to be snakes?” vibe.

E: Totally does! But can I admit that I don’t understand people being afraid of rodents? They’re so damn cute. Also, those are clearly mice, not rats.

T: I like the ambiguity of the three Trailmakers in the old timey car “going home.” Are they ghosts? Did they return to their time? Are they in the ’90s? Is the chauffeur the Watcher? Is it maybe a little ominous?

E: I had the same thought about the chauffeur! So many questions and I like that they go unanswered. The “I’ve Gone Home” trail signs that appear after the hags blow their whistles are pretty touching, but the meaning is open to interpretation.

E: I have no idea whether Terry Miles or Jeff VanderMeer were fans of AYAOTD? (though Terry is Canadian, so there’s that), but the core concept of this episode has some striking similarities to the Southern Reach Trilogy and the Tanis podcast. Is there some preexisting myth/legend that serves as the basis for all three that I’m not aware of?

T: As a matter of fact, sort of. A Watcher in the Woods, a supernatural mystery book from 1976, is about a family who buys a creepy old house in the woods from an old woman whose daughter vanished fifty years ago. The Watcher is a mysterious entity out in the woods. More people might be familiar with the 1980 Disney adaptation The Watcher in the Woods starring Bette Davis and Kyle Richards. I’m unfamiliar with them, but besides the title, there’s several parallels.

E: Oooooohhh, the wood...er, plot...thickens. The Bard would be impressed!

QUEER OR NOT?

T: I appreciate the girl power strength of this one, but nothing really queer leaps out at me. You’re much better at female gender queerness than I am though, so did you notice anything?

E: The three lost campers have spent so much of their lives together that they probably fall somewhere on the lesbian continuum. And I love that one of them is still wearing a bow in her hair even as she’s preparing to mutilate Sarah and Kelly. Too funny. And speaking of bows, can we take a second to marvel over the fact that the three campers are actually named Boss Hag, Headband Hag, and Bow Hag? How is this not a more popular group costume for Halloween? Why haven’t hugely successful rock bands been named after these characters?

T: Actually, they’re credited as Boss Hag, Hump Hag, and Fat Hag, but fans have rechristened two of them to be more accurate. That’s one of those things where they’re described in the script, but then costume and make-up go a different direction. For the better.

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: The main cabin has flags for Miami Beach, Florida, and Nubble Lighthouse and Saco, which are both in Maine. I get a solid Maine vibe from the setting. And coincidentally, Saco is where I have a bunch of family so I’ve been there a hundred times.

E: My god, your attention to detail is on point. I didn’t notice a single one of the flags, but I agree that it seems like a classic New England summer camp.

T: The Boss Hag is played by Sheena Larkin, who played Nanny back in “The Tale of the Lonely Ghost.” She has a great presence here, just the complete opposite of Nanny. And the Watcher, Tom Rack, played the security guard and sheriff from “Pinball Wizard.”

E: Fun!

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: OK, well there’s still summer camps, so I’d keep the setting. But we have things like GPS maps and we don’t have kids smoke on TV! I’ll never get over that. Also, the whole Watcher character doesn’t work. Either lean into it and turn him into a proper character, or eliminate him. The woods don’t need a personification, they should just be evil.

E: Fully agree that getting rid of the Watcher would be a wise move. Would the woods still be called Watcher’s Woods, even if we never see the Watcher? Also, if two campers went missing overnight, they wouldn’t just be greeted by their fellow campers the next morning with a “Hey, where were you guys?” Nowadays, a whole rescue team would be called in because lawsuits. You could potentially have some fun with that, like Sarah and Kelly can hear the rescue team but the woods keep changing before they can reach them?

T: Yassss! Nickelodeon, will you please hire us to write for the new series already? Jeez.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: The stuff I like in this episode, I really like. The stuff that doesn’t work for me, isn’t that bad (excluding the Midnight Society cringe). I’m going to give this one 9.1 OUT OF 10 CAMPFIRES. Welcome to the Midnight Society, Sam!

E: I get your point about the Watcher, but I love soooo many things here. A wandering forest. Lord of the Flies-meets-MacBeth hags. Jewel Saite. Plus, this is an episode that stuck with me and the rewatch doesn’t disappoint. I’m going to give it the first perfect score of season three. 10 OUT OF 10 CAMPFIRES.