Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Yellowjackets S3E4, “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis” (written by Julia Bicknell & Terry Wesley and directed by Jennifer Morrison)
I’m generally not one to complain about “filler” episodes of TV. A great television series is great because of its characters, not its plot (though a compelling plot helps, of course), so if you want to do an episode where the Deep Space Nine crew plays baseball, I am in. I’ve even been known to lament how the streaming age tends to deprive us of TV episodes that don’t serve an overarching plot.
So, the idea of an episode of Yellowjackets that revolves around putting Ben (Steven Krueger) on trial isn’t something that I’d reject on its face. The problem is in the execution, where the conceit of the trial makes each character feel just a little bit off.
I can buy that Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) would stubbornly insist on Ben’s guilt no matter what they heard, but they’re so consistently petulant throughout the proceedings that I began to actively dislike them. There is a depth to these characters who we’ve come to know over the past two seasons, and it just didn’t feel served. They may as well have been cardboard cutouts of angry teenage girls.
Misty (Samantha Hanratty), in role for the defense, casts aspersions on other members of the group to try to create reasonable doubt, but that’s a bad plan and one she’s surely only led to by the pretense of having a trial. It is in character, though, I’ll give the writers of Yellowjackets that.
The most powerful moment of the trial comes when Ben talks about how he has, over the years, grown to truly care about the Yellowjackets team, but I was still left feeling like he didn’t explain himself enough, or do enough to offer an account of what he was doing when the cabin caught fire.
In short, if the result was always going to be a guilty verdict brought about through Shauna’s coercion, I would have preferred Yellowjackets just cut to the chase. Have Ben try to explain himself, fail, and then move on. The trial scenes were not enjoyable at all.
Now, perhaps the point will be in how the dynamics of the trial carry forward to create dissension in the group, and I expect that to be the case. Natalie’s (Sophie Thatcher) leadership has been undermined, while Shauna has made a power play that could result in her taking over. But, we don’t even know what is going to happen to Ben in light of the guilty verdict, and all of this just felt too drawn out.
Also, what’s the deal with Travis (Kevin Alves)? He seems a bit checked out and changes his vote in a really nonchalant way, but the episode itself doesn’t provide any reason for this. The title implies that he’s drunk, or rather, it says he is, but it further implies that he’ll play a pivotal role. Instead, he doesn’t even seem to matter to the story in S3E4. He’s just there, staring at what seems to be a drawing on a piece of bark.
Akilah (Nia Sondaya) appears to be ready to take over for Travis in the role of Lottie’s (Courtney Eaton) vision apprentice, which doesn’t really surprise me in light of Akilah’s experience with a talking llama (Vincent Pastore) last week.
And, Mari (Alexa Barajas) got a last name! Fan service.
In the 2021 timeline, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Jeff (Warren Kole) pick up their van from a mechanic who says no one messed with it. The brake booster just failed. I’m not sure I buy that, but I don’t fully buy how either member of the couple reacts, either.
Shauna basically doesn’t believe the mechanic and continues to blame Misty (Christina Ricci), which never made any sense. Jeff, meanwhile, thinks it’s karma for the bad things they’ve done and wants to start doing charity to improve their karma because of something he read on wikiHow. I don’t want to believe that Jeff is that stupid, but I guess Yellowjackets is leaving me no choice.
Regardless, this leads Jeff to take Shauna to volunteer where Randy (Jeff Holman) is doing community service for his DUI, and that turns out to be the retirement home where Misty works. Jeff proceeds to upstage Randy and is a big hit with the residents as he tells dad jokes.
Misty wants Shauna to apologize, Shauna won’t apologize/insists she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be sorry for, Misty fantasizes about literally stabbing Shauna in the back, and Shauna gets stuck in a walk-in freezer until Randy hears her and lets her out. Did someone trap her in there on purpose?
Maybe, but it wasn’t Misty, who left hours earlier after she got upset with Shauna, stealing a piece of paper from one of the residents along the way, which she thinks might contain a hidden message from Walter (Elijah Wood). She doesn’t find a message from Walter, but she does get a text from him, which says he’s heard about Lottie (Simone Kessell). He’s checking to see if Misty is OK.
She looks at the Citizen Detective’s message board and finds a post with an image of a dead Lottie. This is how S3E4 ends, so I am curious to see where Lottie’s death leads, but it does feel a bit out of nowhere and like Yellowjackets is playing the moment for shock value.
Earlier in the episode, we see Lottie rehearsing an apology in the mirror, so we have to wonder who she was preparing to apologize to, and if this is the person who killed her. It would not seem to be any of the characters we are familiar with, and the only clue is that Lottie appears to be in Manhattan, where she took some money out of the bank.
Van (Lauren Ambrose) and Tai (Tawny Cypress) also go to Manhattan in Yellowjackets S3E4. First, they get a deck of cards, throw the Queen of Hearts onto the sidewalk and try to see if “it” will choose a victim, because, you see, Tai is convinced that they have to kill more people to cure Van’s cancer. Makes sense.
A fellow picks up the card and they follow him to his apartment, where the door is unlocked. It very much seems that Tai wants to enter and murder this man, but Van talks her out of it. Instead, they go to Central Park, where Tai has Van buy her a pretzel and they take a carriage ride. Just like Van said she wanted back in Season 1, ‘member?
“12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis”
Overall, S3E4 does little to move Yellowjackets forward in either timeline. Ben has been found guilty, and I suppose that might mean the group will kill him, but I’m sure they’ll argue about it more first, so when it comes down to it maybe they won’t. Lottie is dead, but we’re given no context and can hardly speculate about suspects in anything like a grounded way.
No one has listened to the cassette tape someone left for Shauna Shipman in an envelope marked with the symbol, and Callie (Sarah Desjardins) still hasn’t told her mother about that threatening package. That would be easier to swallow if Callie herself was making any effort to listen to the tape, but she doesn’t appear to be.
This is, in my opinion, the worst episode of Yellowjackets yet. I hope it’s a blip and we get back on track.
See you next week.
