[Editor’s note: This recap contains spoilers.]
You can’t just end an episode of television with a massive cliffhanger and then fully ignore it in the next installment—or at least, if you do, it needs to be a lot more skillfully and intentionally executed than “Them’s The Brakes,” a frustrating Yellowjackets entry that tests the limits of the Showtime series’ mystery box only to find it structurally unsound and in danger of collapsing. Oh, sure, the show gestures at the enigma of the cell phone from “Dislocation” when Shauna accuses Misty of leaving it in the bathroom for her to find, but no one’s buying that, right? Misty might have cut Shauna’s brakes (that kind of “trick” is certainly more on-brand for her), but I’m not sure I believe that, either. That’s the problem with this episode: Not only is the plot unbelievable, but the show treats the audience like we’re dumb. We’re not, but this show might be.
If there’s one thing that Yellowjackets unambiguously wants the audience to believe, it’s that Mari is not very smart. The first two episodes of season three drove that point home through dialogue (Melissa calls her dumb) and actions (Mari holds up a backward “L” on her forehead when she calls Shauna a loser). “Them’s The Brakes” picks up that thread again, opening with Mari singing Right Said Fred’s himbo anthem “I’m Too Sexy.” (She changes the lyrics to “I’m too sexy for this cave,” since Ben is still holding her hostage.) She tries to flirt with Ben to get him to let her go, but she either forgets or doesn’t care that he’s gay. He thwarts her flattery attempt, so she sprays him with bear mace. She ends up covered in it, too, though, and Ben calls her a “fucking idiot” as they both scream in pain. If the payoff of all this denigration ends up being a hokey triumphant moment when Mari has an insight that no one else picks up on, I’m going to be mad. If there’s no payoff and the show has simply decided to bully Mari for no reason, I’m also going to be mad. Maybe that’s a sign that this isn’t good characterization.
Ben quickly forgives her for the pepper spray and Steven Krueger gets a mini-monologue as he laments how he found himself in this position, which he sells with some beautiful acting. Mari’s response, however, is baffling. It’s not Alexa Barajas’ fault, though: It seems like the show stitched together two unrelated conversations in the editing room. After telling Ben a story about her four-year-old cousin who died of brain cancer, Mari says, “I think maybe there are two versions of reality. Most of the time, the other one, the bad one, is just hiding or waiting, but it’s all real. Nobody’s looking for you, you know? Most people think you’re dead. I could tell them that I fell and I hurt my knee. That I got turned around in the dark and it took me a few days to find my way back. I wouldn’t even mention you.”
How does “the team thinks you’re dead so you should let me go” follow from “there are two versions of reality and one of them is evil”? The first half of her response addresses whether there’s an actual supernatural entity or it’s all a collective delusion, but then it takes a hard left turn into a plea for freedom. This isn’t Mari being dumb; this is the show making an unforced error and losing the plot.
Later, Ben lets Mari go. He doesn’t explain why, but it feels authentic to his character. He is, ultimately, not the kind of person who would keep a teenage girl hostage even if letting her go risks his safety. He cares for these girls, even if he’s now afraid of them. Once Mari gets back to camp, she tries to cover up what happened, but her story breaks down quickly. Shauna insists they capture Ben, so Mari leads the team back to the cave. She has a moment of self-doubt when she doesn’t recognize her surroundings and isn’t sure she’ll be able to find her way back to where Ben kept her, but after encouragement from Shauna, she successfully retraces her steps. If that’s supposed to be the resolution to the “Mari is dumb” thing, the show doesn’t do a good job of communicating it.
When they reach the cave, it splits into two tunnels, and one is blocked by stones. While most of the team stays behind to tear down the wall, Shauna, Van, and Akilah head down a side tunnel. They emerge in a cavern filled with poisonous gas, and the audience is treated to three different fever dreams, all of which are exhausting and one of which involves a talking llama. Ben ends up rescuing Shauna, Van, and Akilah, and Nat points a shotgun in his face for his trouble.
In the present timeline, Van tells Taissa that her terminal cancer has stopped metastasizing and might even be in partial remission. In response, Taissa finally tells Van that their waiter died while chasing them down and follows that up with, “You’re thinking it, too…first Natalie, then this guy. It’s been a long time, but it could be happening again. The waiter was the sacrifice and…and your new prognosis…well, that’s the gift. Please, Van. Just give in to the possibility. We hear the Wilderness and It hears us.” Initially, this sounds like a ludicrous thing for Tai to say since she’s always been one of the biggest skeptics in the group. But what if this is the Other One, or the Bad One, the side of her that terrorizes her own child by hanging out in a tree outside his window and eating dirt? Whoever or whatever that is is a much more believable advocate for the Wilderness as an entity than Tai, and Tawny Cypress’ subtle mannerism shifts as she talks to Van lend ambiguity to the conversation. Van looks a little disturbed when Tai starts chanting about hearing the Wilderness, but the scene ends there and we don’t get to see her full reaction.
At the very least, Tai’s statement hasn’t made Van totally freak out, because we return to them goofing around and watching Pee-wee’s Playhouse later in the evening. Domestic bliss is a good look on them, and it’s a shame the show never lets them enjoy it. Since they’re watching a homemade tape, it still has all the vintage commercials, and an ad for Ozzie’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor catches Tai’s attention. It features a figure that’s been haunting Tai since she was a child: the Man With No Eyes. In the commercial, he turns toward the camera and his eyes grow cartoonishly big as the voiceover says, “Our flavors will make your eyes pop!” “Holy shit, I must’ve seen that ad when I was little, and the man and no eyes and then my grandmother died, and I…” Taissa says.
It’s underwhelming, as far as reveals go. He’s not death incarnate, as showrunner Ashley Lyle once said; he’s just a trauma response. And, okay, like, that sucks, both for Taissa and for the audience—it’s just one more example of the show dropping the ball when it comes to providing satisfying answers—but that should be the end of it. Mystery solved, work the rest out in therapy, Tai. Instead, Taissa looks up the address for Ozzie’s, finds that it’s shut down, and drags Van out to the abandoned building anyway, claiming, “This has to mean something.” When they get there, a coyote with a rabbit in its mouth runs by and pauses to look at them. Tai asks the coyote, “What do you want?” “We know what It wants. It wants more,” Van responds. We just established that the Man With No Eyes is definitively not connected to the Wilderness, yet the show is still trying to act like there’s some semblance of doubt. There isn’t; the writers are just hoping we won’t notice Yellowjackets is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Shauna and Misty’s present-day storylines intersect this week, giving us some rare one-on-one time between the two characters. Shauna needs to know what happened between Lottie and Callie, so she meets up with Misty and they nearly get into a car accident when the brakes on Shauna’s car stop working. Once they stop, Shauna explodes on Misty and kicks her out of the car. Shauna seems to think that Misty’s nonchalant reaction to the near-accident is evidence that Misty messed with the car and probably left the cell phone for her to find, too, but I don’t think that’s true. We’ve seen that Misty reacts to emergency situations with an almost chilling sense of calm. She is at her most logical, rational, and competent when most other people would be screaming, crying, or dissociating. Her reaction here is consistent with her past behavior (though it’s hard to blame Shauna for not realizing that, especially after such a frightening experience).
When Shauna gets home, she finds Lottie and Callie cooking dinner. They’d clandestinely spent the day together, shoplifting and having bizarre conversations about how Callie sees herself and how Lottie thinks Callie is different than most other people. Shauna notices Callie is wearing Jackie’s heart-shaped necklace and angrily turns on Lottie, leading to yet another cryptic exchange:
Shauna: “How do you even have it? And you give it to my daughter?”
Lottie: “It feels right, Shauna. I mean, don’t you feel it, too?”
Shauna: “No. I don’t ‘feel it.’ The only thing I feel is that I should’ve never let you stay here because you’re as fucked up as ever.”
Shauna screams at Lottie to leave, and she does, but before she goes, she tosses the audience one last breadcrumb. “It never meant what you thought it meant,” she says to Shauna. Shauna’s response is just “Get the fuck out of my house!” Fair enough, but I’m getting tired of this show, and this episode in particular, trying to revisit season one’s supernatural-tinged mystery without acknowledging that the dynamics that made it work the first time around have fundamentally and irrevocably shifted. In the final episode of season two, Shauna says to Lottie, “You know there’s no ‘It,’ right? It was just us,” and Lottie responds, “Is there a difference?” That is the ultimate answer to the series’ initial mystery. So why are we still pretending that “Is there something supernatural going on here?” is a relevant question when the series has explicitly told us that it doesn’t matter? The first two episodes of season three worked because they largely avoided toying with the audience about the cause of what happened in the woods and focused instead on just what happened in the woods. It’s not the series we were promised, but it’s the best we could have hoped for after that season-two conversation suddenly and completely stopped the show’s momentum. “Them’s The Brakes” pulls the emergency brake—but instead of preventing the show from tumbling off a cliff, it stops the show from continuing down a promising new path and forces it back onto a dead-end track.
Stray observations
- • The phone number for Ozzie’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor is 732-858-5242. Since it doesn’t start with 555, I figured it was an Easter egg connected to a real number, so I dialed it and got a fun/creepy voicemail recording for Ozzie’s. I won’t spoil it, but you should give it a ring.
- • Other things Mari is too sexy for, according to her song: this rope, these rocks, to be murdered.
- • Insult of the week goes to Mari, with “‘Gym teacher’ is Latin for ‘pervert failure.’”
- • I want an episode of all the interrupted conversations we don’t get to see. Yellowjackets has leaned too heavily on that device this season, and we’re only three episodes in.
- • I think Misty mumbles, “Oh, my Lord & Taylor” after the near-accident with Shauna.
- • I was firmly on Misty’s side when she told Shauna, “You are the worst friend, not the best! And you are not what I deserve!” Get her, Misty.
