Each week Terry and Joe discuss the most recent episode of Showtime’s serialized thriller, Yellowjackets.

Spoilers follow for episode 4, ‘Bear Down’

Plot: The girls play with guns to determine who is the most responsible. Natalie untangles a lifetime of piecing together broken men. Taissa greets the rich.

TERRY

We’re four episodes in and I don’t know about you, Joe, but with each passing episode I’m getting more LOST vibes than anticipated. “Bear Down” takes us back to the fateful airplane crash, the camera panning over each of the Yellowjackets scrambling to find purchase in the falling plane. We see poor Van (Liv Hewson) scratching at the oxygen mask compartment that hasn’t deployed. And we see Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) sitting next to her father, who turns to look at her, revealing he’s missing half of his head. “I don’t know what you’re so scared of Natty, you’ve already got blood on your hands,” he tells her and the camera pans to show she’s holding a shotgun in her hands.

“He’s waiting for us.”

Then she wakes up in the creepy cabin the crew found an episode ago to see Lottie (Courtney Eaton) staring at the ladder that leads to the attic. “Bad things happened here,” she intones, picking up from her sentiment that closed last week’s episode.

The reason this feels more and more LOST-inspired for me is twofold. When Yellowjackets focuses on a member of the team, it tends to give us a traumatic flashback, like with Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown/Tawny Cypress) and her grandmother. “Bear Down” focuses on Natalie’s previous trauma, including an almost romance with Goth Kevyn (Charlie Wright as a Teen/Alex Wyndham as an adult) that’s interrupted by her abusive father tearing into the room and threatening bodily harm.

As the episode progresses, we see various sequences that lead to the specter in the airplane, sans half a head. It reminds me of the way LOST would sew together patches of the characters’ pasts and futures to show the trauma they brought to the island. If there is a supernatural element to Yellowjacket, I’m going to assume it’s feeding off the negative and traumatic energies each character brought with them to the wilderness. It seems like there’s a lot of energy to spare.

The other way this episode in particular reminded me of LOST is more specific and subtle, but ties into “Bear Down”s primary theme: daddy issues. If there’s one thing LOST really focused on (and, honestly, a lot of Damon Lindelof’s writing), it’s fathers and their fraught relationships with their children. Here we get the one-two punch of Natalie’s abusive father and Travis (Kevin Alves) talking about how terrible his own father was. At one point in the episode, he commiserates with Natalie over their parents and he tells her his father was a shit dad, that his father didn’t even like him. “Still fucks you up when they’re gone,” she replies knowingly. And they’re off to the complex daddy issues race.

I’m calling it now: at some point this season, we’re going to have an all-Travis episode that will fill in the “why” his father was such a dick in the past, potentially mixed with his relationship with Natalie in 1996 and then showing his final moments in the 2021, ending with his death (Presumably this will also expose whether it was suicide or homicide).

Honestly, more context to Travis’ character would be welcome at this point because he’s kind of a petulant child in “Bear Down,” tossing off misogynistic statements about the girls’ prowess with weapons. He’s not been the most pleasant character to be around in these handful of episodes and his desire to dig up his father to get his grandfather’s ring for Javi (Luciano Leroux) didn’t warm me to him the way I think the episode intended. If I had one complaint about the way the relationship is currently panning out between Natalie and Travis, it’d be that I don’t see what she sees in him so far...shared trauma aside.

But this is only one aspect of “Bear Down” and I’m curious about your initial thoughts, Joe. Am I off the mark with my LOST connections or are you willing to go down the hatch with me? Along with Natalie and Travis’s traumatic experiences, we also learn more about Tai’s current bid for political office and her continued wolf sightings...do you think she’s suffering from PTSD? And can we talk about Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Adam (Peter Gadiot) and their attempts to reclaim a high school experience?

JOE

I’ll definitely go down the Hatch with you Terry (I see what you did there), if only because it allows us to rehash one of the greatest TV shows of the last 20 years. I can definitely see all of your arguments - and they’re particularly difficult to avoid considering the plane and the flashback heavy structure of Yellowjackets. I’ll confess that I haven’t been making the connections myself, but that’s only because I’m so enamoured with the show that I frequently find myself getting lost (heh) while watching it.

Let’s tackle some of these 2021 scenes, shall we? In the present, it’s basically a three way date night as Natalie and Kevyn make a stab at dinner (while Christina Ricci’s Misty shadows them with a dinner date from the home!), Shauna and Adam act like teenagers over the protest of ghost Jackie (Ella Purnell) and Taissa tries to woo a wealthy benefactor to prop up her flailing political campaign.

I really liked these three variations of the same concept and how they’re all haunted by the past. As soon as Tai’s wife mentioned she hadn’t eaten and we see her downing those glasses of champagne, I feared the worst, but Taissa proves that she’s just as expert at keeping her trap shut as the other women. There was something really gratifying seeing her try to butter up the self-declared feminist millionaire...but only up to the point when the woman thought her money entitled her to know Tai’s secret history.

The glimpse of the wolf is an intriguing moment, though. Considering the alcohol intake on an empty stomach, it’s pretty easy to dismiss as a mere hallucination, but it’s telling that she sees the wolf immediately after accidentally consuming a meat canape (I couldn’t recall if we knew she was vegetarian before this moment, but yeah...that checks out). All of this wolf talk & imagery is heavy foreshadowing, so I fear for the girls in ‘96 with winter on the horizon.

As for Shauna, this is a pretty fun episode for her. She’s 100% committed to this affair with Adam (love that it’s under the guise of book club) and the begging for alcohol from a twenty-something allows Melanie Lynskey to once again flex her comedic chops. She and Ricci are easily the MVPs when it comes to introducing levity into an otherwise heavy show. I also really enjoy the chemistry between Lynskey and Gadiot; it’s fun and flirty in a way that shows about suburban, middle age adults often struggle to accurately capture.

But also: that warning by Jackie sure plays like confirmation that a) she’s dead and b) Shauna is at least partially responsible (or at least feels responsible).

And then there’s Natalie. Admittedly the dead dad stuff didn’t hit super hard for me, up to and including Yellowjackets’ attempt to subvert expectations by making her dad’s shotgun death an accident. There’s a mild discomfort about how all of Natalie’s storyline is based around her relationship to men; perhaps it’s just that I want Lewis to get more to do like Ricci and Lynskey? So far Lewis and Cypress definitely have gotten less to do (caveat: I do cherish every.single.interaction between Nat and Misty in 2021 because every barbed or cheery response is a goddamn delight).

Aside from that, though, fewer percolating mysteries and teases this episode, Terry. What did you make of the Jackie/Van situation with the newly discovered plane? Is Teen Misty (Samantha Hanratty) getting too comfortable with Coach Scott (Steven Krueger)? And is there something more to “reporter” Jessica Roberts (Rekha Sharma)?

TERRY

I’m glad you brought up Tai’s accidental meat ingestion because this scene also confirms a question I’ve had from the first episode, Joe: how much do people know about their 19 months stint in the wilderness?

While Tai is waiting for a chance to talk to the woman benefactor, she’s cornered by a couple people who want to know more about her time in the woods. But they specifically seem to imply that it’s general knowledge that they resorted to cannibalism. Maybe it’s general knowledge in the way that hearsay is often spread without any fact or confirmation, but the interaction, to me, reads as if it’s common knowledge. Which makes me wonder more just what the women are hiding from that period in 1996-1997. If people know they resorted to cannibalism, what could be so horrendous that they’re hiding? Is it just the way the group splintered and fought each other? Or is it something else? Like maybe something supernatural?

We didn’t get much more on the supernatural front, except for the plane discovery you mentioned above. The women attribute the plane to the same guy who was holed up in the creepy cabin and apparently killed himself. This episode gives us a tiny bit more information on the mysterious man, with Coach Scott saying that he was a doomsday prepper with a ton of ammo. And as the girls are exploring the downed plane, Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) inadvertently starts it and nearly kills Van. This gives Jackie the opportunity to save her and maybe make them equal (jury’s out whether Van considers it tit for tat, though...she’s a master of those “if looks could kill” looks). And Lottie, our dependable speaker of spooky shit, says the plane didn’t want him to leave, once again suggesting that something otherworldly is going on in the woods.

As for Teen Misty and Coach Scott, I suggested last episode that Misty will eventually kill Coach, either from retribution or as a mercy killing. Her actions in “Bear Down” lean more towards the retribution angle, as she becomes more abusive towards him, tripping the poor man. “Oh, are you okay? You need to be more careful,” she tells him in a performance that feels ripped straight from Misery.

The look on his face, though, tells me that he knows it isn’t an accident. And it’s probably tied to the way the girls tease Misty earlier in the episode, asking if it’s time for Coach’s spongebath. We’ve seen that Misty needs to be in control, from cutting off his leg and cauterizing it to smashing the plane’s recorder. So if Coach’s presence is minimizing whatever sense of control she does have...well, he’s gotta go.

Let’s end at the meat of the episode, though, Joe. Did the way Coach showed the women how to hunt and bleed out the deer bring you back to the opening of the first episode? What did you think about Nat and Travis bonding over his nickname and hunting? And do you have any thoughts or hopes about what’s going to happen in the next episode?

JOE

I’m intrigued about how much the public knows about the group’s cannibalism, as well. Based off Sammi’s playground battle, I took it that it’s generally well known that the girls resorted to cannibalism, but perhaps not murder? I’m thinking back to Alive where they definitely eat the dead, but they’re people who were already dead from the crash. As the first episode made clear, that’s obviously not the case for Yellowjackets.

We’re definitely getting some insight into what each person brings to the table in an emergency situation - from Nat and Travis’ gun handling to the junior girl’s semi-ability to pick out edible plants.

You’re right that Misty likes to be in control, but she’s also trying to fit in. It seems to me that she’s misinterpreting the gentle ribbing by the other girls about Coach as something that threatens her inclusion in the group. It would be so unfortunate if Coach ends up on the wrong side of something because Misty misunderstands a joke.

I’ll confess that I was surprised that Shauna volunteers to learn how to prepare the deer carcass. We know what she’s capable of in 2021 from the way she handled the rabbit back in episode two, but it’s unclear what Shauna’s role is in ‘96. Perhaps this is another clue about how she survives.

While I agree with you that the supernatural elements took a backseat in this episode, there are a lot of little teases. You mentioned Lottie’s vibe about the plane, and she also catches sight of the marking on a tree, so it’s pretty evident that Lottie is the most in tune to whatever is going on in the woods (I also think she might as well change into a Red Shirt because something tells me those skills are going to mark her for death).

As for Nat and Travis, this is a decent step in establishing their relationship a bit more, but as you mentioned above, it’s not entirely clear why Nat would find his misogyny so appealing. I chalked it up to teen girls’ taste in men, aka Bad Boy syndrome. With that said, his knee-jerk reaction to the Flex nickname does allow him to open up and be vulnerable, even if it’s over something as silly as a joke about the ability to self-fellate (another extremely teen response and one tinged with a touch of homophobia). If I had a dollar for every boy who tried to “flex” on themselves in their youth, I’d be able to retire tomorrow.

So where do we go from here? We’re reaching the part of the season where shows tend to spin their wheels as they recalibrate between plot and character and that’s very evident in “Bear Down”. We chatted offline that this is arguably the slightest of the episodes we’ve seen so far and while I’m still totally on board with what Yellowjackets is doing, some of these storylines are bogging the show down (Tai in 2021, in particular).

I’m hopeful that Natalie using Kevyn to access Travis’ autopsy report will get things cooking in the present, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for an in-person meeting between Misty and Shauna. Apart from that, however, I have no clue where we’re headed in 1996; my best guess is that someone is going to die soon (my guess: Lottie, Coach or an accidental poisoning).

We’ll find out when we return to QueerHorrorMovies next week for episode 5, “Blood Hive.”