This post was original made on Tumblr on February 13th, 2024. See the original here.
batrogers asked:
Are you willing to share your thoughts on the TV show Yellowjackets? I was into it for a bit, but haven't kept up and I love analysis, especially critical kinds because they're often the most interesting and I feel with your experiences you'll have some really cool angles on it. No pressure to answer if you'd rather not!
Sure! But with the caveat that I've only seen season 1, and it has been awhile.
Now then!
I love the core concept of Yellowjackets. Girls' sports team has their plane crash in the woods and no one comes to get them, and it all goes sideways and falls into the horror genre more than just pure survival? A+ concept right there.
But I don't think a single writer on that show has ever been outside a single day in their lives.
It's just a suspension of disbelief issue for me. You've only got so many SoD points you can spend when you create something, and Yellowjackets is deep into the red. Hollywood has made it pretty easy to SoD things like everyone turning on one another, random murder, people being vicious to one another, etc. etc. even though studies have proven over and over and over again that people really don't behave like that in disasters. But you've still gotta spend some points on those things anyways, because deep down people DO know they're lies even if Hollywood likes to use them all the time.
So your core premise has already cost you some SoD points, but that's fine! You still have some to spend. But that number isn't infinite, and the more outlandish your details, the more points you're going to have to spend to pull them off. Yellowjackets just spent way too many. (A wolf ripping someone's face off and she's fine with zero actual medical care? Really?)
Now part of this, too, is the structure of Yellowjackets. It is a story told by jumping between timelines/flashbacks. It plays keep away with its audience. That is a structure you have to be VERY careful with or your audience is going to get annoyed with you and tune out. It can work when done right, but if you try and do it when you've already overspent your SoD points? You're gonna run into trouble. Plus, if you don't have a strong, solid plan for the whole timeline of your show across multiple seasons--a plan you will not change--it can fall apart in a heartbeat. It is not a structure that works for open ended projects of an unknown length.
A girls' sports team having their plane crash in the wilderness and getting stuck there IS conceivable--it's literally happened in real life with that soccer team. The girls struggling to survive and some of them dying IS conceivable--again, it has happened in real life. The girls growing up into adults that struggle with the aftereffects of that crash IS conceivable. The girls starting a weird little cult is starting to tread into the realm of "eh, maybe, but it does make for a great story so it's fine." Same for them finding a very helpful little cabin full of stuff. Could happen, but less likely. Then you get into the "wait, I don't think that would EVER happen?" stuff. Would a bear really just walk up, roar at you, and then you kill it with basically no real weapon? (Do you know how hard bears are to kill? Their skin is WEIRD.) Wolves ripping people's faces off. A convenient plane that later explodes.
At the end of the day, I think the show tried to do too much in too short of an amount of time to build up the believablity for the more outlandish things, and I think it's structure--and the fact that it doesn't seem to have a solid plan all the way through for its story--just made those things worse.
Now, not all of that is the show's fault! The way TV works these days--with shorter seasons and precarious chances of renewal--played a big role. I think Yellowjackets could've been a great 3 season show with each season getting 20-22 episodes. There would've been a lot more breathing room for the character arcs, especially given how many characters there are (and some of them are doubled given they survive to grow up and be adults). I think it also could've been helped a lot if they had some outdoors/survival consultants involved. The more realistic they made the survival elements, the more they could've gotten away with the weird horror elements because they wouldn't have wasted so many SoD points on things they didn't need to waste them on. Having a more realistic wolf attack (or, even better, a cougar attack) would not have changed the overall story. Having a more realistic struggle to find food would not have changed the overall story. Having a more realistic changing of the seasons would not have changed the overall story. Etc. Etc. Etc.
So yeah. Those are my thoughts on Yellowjackets! Coulda been great, but it got kneecapped in about five different ways.
Comments