At this point, Yellowjackets must have some degree of self-awareness, because there’s no other way it could use dorky Steve Urkel’s transformation into smooth-talking Stefan Urquelle on Family Matters as a metaphor for either a malevolent Wilderness entity taking over Taissa’s body or the emergence of a subconscious side of herself (the show is still playing both sides of that fence with Tai, though it does so much more successfully here than in “Them’s The Brakes”) without understanding how absolutely ludicrous that comparison is. It’s not what one would call traditionally “good” writing, but you have to admire the show for taking a swing. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that Yellowjackets is rapidly moving from prestige TV to full-on camp, and if “Did Tai Do That?” is any indication, it’s a surprisingly viable pivot.
Setting aside the pun, the episode’s title raises several important questions. The first and most obvious is: Did Tai kill Lottie? She certainly had the time, as Van points out after Misty informs them (and Shauna, begrudgingly) about Lottie’s death. What was Tai doing for a whole hour between abandoning their “follow some random guy and maybe murder him” plot and meeting up with Van again in Central Park? “It’s like a 15-minute train ride, tops,” Van says. Taissa brushes off the accusation, saying that she needed time to get cash, scope out the park, and hire a carriage. Van doesn’t push the issue, though she looks conflicted. But there’s a more interesting interpretation of the episode title, too: the question of who—or what—is in control, of whether it’s Tai or the Other One guiding her actions at any given moment, and whether that truly matters when it comes to culpability.
That question comes to the forefront in the wilderness, as the group prepares to kill Coach Scott. They decide to execute him via firing squad (one person with a rifle doesn’t constitute a firing squad, but this is one of those too-frequent moments in Yellowjackets when you have to set aside any desire for real-world accuracy or at least specificity of language and just move on) and they draw cards to determine who will pull the trigger. Taissa loses the draw and heads off into the woods with Van to practice shooting. When Tai expresses doubt about whether she can kill Ben, Van suggests trying to get the Other One—the “evil” version of Taissa that comes out when she sleepwalks—to take control and have the Other One shoot Ben instead of Tai. It’s like when Urkel drinks the Cool Juice to become Stefan Urquelle, Van explains. Luckily, Liv Hewson is charismatic enough to pull that explanation off with just the right balance of cheekiness and sincerity. The whole Urkel thing, both here and in the episode title, wouldn’t have worked if its foundation had been laid by a less talented actor.
The only problem with Van’s idea is that they don’t have a Cool Juice equivalent; they don’t know how to make the Other One take over. They try a few things (having sex, killing a rabbit, and being extra present during the process), but by the time the execution rolls around, Tai is still in control and getting increasingly worried about what she’s going to do. Just as Tai is about to shoot Ben, she goes from crying and shaking to calm and collected. “It’ll be all right,” Tai tells Van, except it’s not Tai—it’s the Other One. And then she pulls the trigger.
Lottie and Travis rush in at the last second, putting themselves in danger to save Ben. While Tai and Van were preparing for the execution, Lottie and Travis were busy accompanying Akilah back to Ben’s cave. Akilah had been more troubled by the gas-induced hallucination she experienced when the group went to capture Ben than Van and Shauna had been by theirs, and she went to Lottie, the group’s resident spiritual leader, for advice. Lottie convinced her it wasn’t a dream; it was a vision, the Wilderness trying to tell her something. I don’t think Akilah fully buys that, given her hesitance to go through with Lottie’s plan of returning to the gas-filled cave and inducing another hallucination, but she’s troubled enough by what she experienced that she’s willing to give it another go if it’ll help her gain some clarity.
Travis is worried about Lottie’s plan, too. He tries to convince Lottie that they need to stop Akilah before she gets too far into the cave. But Lottie refuses to budge, and they wait until they get the signal that Akilah has passed out. They rescue her, but for a moment it looks like she’s not going to wake up.
We’ve seen how relentless Lottie can be with herself and others in the pursuit of a greater understanding. And we learn in this episode, too, that she had been staying with her father for weeks before she showed up on Shauna’s doorstep, claiming she’d just gotten out of the hospital and had nowhere else to go. Everything she told Shauna was a lie, but to what end? Seeing Lottie’s past fixations on Travis and Akilah makes me question even more why she was so interested in Callie, what happened between the two of them before Shauna kicked her out, and why she turned up dead so soon after that.
When Akilah does open her eyes, though, she tells Lottie and Travis that she had a vision of Ben stretching his body across an otherwise impassable canyon: On one side, where she was trapped, is the wilderness. On the other side are the twinkling lights of a city. Akilah takes this to mean that Ben is their bridge home and they need him to stay alive, and Lottie runs with it. That’s why she and Travis stop the execution. Even though she’s not the group’s official leader, she’s still got enough sway to convince them to spare his life.
This season as a whole seems to be arguing more heavily for the Wilderness as a genuine supernatural entity, which occasionally puts the show in danger of coming into conflict with itself. Back in season one, Taissa told Shauna that she paid for Nat’s latest rehab stint because they wouldn’t be there without Nat. It’s an ambiguous statement with several possible interpretations, but one of the more common readings is that Tai meant Nat was the reason they were rescued. There are ways to reconcile Akilah’s vision about Ben and Tai’s statement about Nat—they could just clarify that Tai meant something else, if that’s the route they choose to take—but choosing a definitive side in the supernatural-vs.-collective-delusion argument undercuts Lottie’s stance that there’s no difference between It being real and It being something they invented. Thematically, at least, the portion of “Did Tai Do That?” that takes place in the past isn’t especially successful, though the actual plot beats remain compelling. Melissa and Shauna share a nice moment when Shauna asks Melissa what she likes about her and a less-nice moment when they later cut Ben’s Achilles tendon to make sure he can’t escape after the group agrees to spare his life. They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves as they menace him, though.
There’s another moment in the present when the question of which side of Tai is in control pops up, though it’s much subtler than her textual attempt to engage with the Other One in the past. Tai’s young son, Sammy, who’s been living with her estranged wife, Simone, asks to see Tai, but their visit ends almost immediately after she approaches him. “Are you not my mommy anymore?” he asks. In confusion, Tai responds, “I’ll always be your mommy, no matter what.” After that, Sammy runs back to Simone and they leave. It’s possible this is just Sammy expressing that he’s having difficulty understanding his moms’ separation, but we know that he has an almost preternatural ability to identify when the Other One—or the Bad One, as he calls her—is in control. I’ve questioned whether the Other One has been in control at a few other points in the present timeline this season and now I’m really starting to question everything Tai has done recently. It feels like Tai—or the Other One—being responsible for Lottie’s death is a pretty obvious misdirect, but there’s definitely something different about her this season, and it’s not just falling in love with Van again.
“Did Tai Do That?” is most successful when it leans into Yellowjackets’ sillier tendencies, which is a good chunk of the present timeline. Walter, driving an incredibly conspicuous white Mustang with a license plate that reads “NOTWLTER,” tails Shauna so aggressively that she barely even has to tap the brakes to get him to rear-end her car. (Just how much more abuse can her poor minivan take?) He’s appointed himself lead Citizen Detective in the Lottie Matthews case, and Shauna is at the top of his suspect list. After she successfully dodges his accusations, though, he proposes that they work together on the case instead, and she agrees. I don’t think Shauna actually cares about what happened to Lottie; she’s probably just hoping to find something she can rightfully blame Misty for after it turned out Misty wasn’t responsible for sabotaging her car or locking her in the freezer. She needs to find some way to justify her largely misplaced anger, even if that means investigating the death of a woman who, let’s be honest, she’s probably glad won’t be able to show up unannounced on her doorstep ever again.
Walter and Shauna’s investigation puts them on a collision course with Misty, who’s heading up her own inquiry into Lottie’s death. Her investigation takes her to the scene of the crime, which turns out to be the apartment building where Lottie’s father, who now has memory problems, lives. She schemes her way into his apartment by pretending to be a neighbor looking for a lost package, but Walter and Shauna have beaten her to the punch: They’re already inside, dressed like Mario if he worked for the Geek Squad, posing as technicians working on Mr. Matthews’ internet connection. The way they trade barbs, undermine each other, and dance around the edges of Mr. Matthews’ memory issues to keep from getting kicked out is well-choreographed and frequently hilarious. It’s the best segment of the episode, and Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey, and Elijah Wood are all clearly having a ball with it.
The dueling investigators each uncover important clues: Misty recovers a bank receipt for a withdrawal of $50,000, and Walter finds Lottie’s cell phone, which was absent from her personal effects at the morgue. Walter offers to share the information from the phone with Misty, but she’s still too mad at him for correctly pointing out that her “friends” frequently treat her like trash. And while it’s true that this is a conclusion Misty needs to come to on her own before she can forgive Walter and this is obviously going to be a journey for her, I’m impatient for these two weirdos to get back together. Their chaotic chemistry is just too good to keep them apart.
While Shauna is looking around Lottie’s bedroom, Mr. Matthews mistakes her for Lottie. Rather than correcting him, Shauna goes along with it, responding to him as if she actually is Lottie. They share a tender moment as he talks about his struggle to understand and accept her mental illness. “Sometimes it’s hard to show love the way we want to,” Shauna responds. I wonder how Shauna would express her love, and to whom she would express it, if she knew how. Maybe she’ll figure it out one day—and maybe Yellowjackets will figure out how to better express its ideas, too.
Stray observations
- • I had assumed Van’s comment about the King Of Hearts being the “Suicide King” was just the show writers trying to sound edgy with a nonsense phrase, but nope, it’s a real thing.
- • Steven Krueger continues his acting MVP streak with another stellar performance this week. His goodbye scene with Misty and the moment when he begs for his life just before his near-execution are both beautifully done.
- • Taissa’s “What the fuck, Lottie?” after Lottie knocks the gun out of her hand is a nice mirror to season one’s “Saints,” when Lottie asked Tai if was outside eating dirt the night before and Tai responds, “The actual fuck? No!”
