• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Yellowjackets on Showtime

9jzDKQv.jpg

Anyone else watch this? It stars Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Tawny Cypress in probably their best roles in years. It's about a girls high school soccer team getting into a plane crash and switches perspectives from their year and a half in the woods (the past), and the present where they're adults back in civilization dealing with new challenges.
I'll link the trailer but I recommend watching the show blind:


Anyways, I don't watch many TV shows because they're generally crap, but I decided to watch the Pilot episode because Yellowjackets are actually my alma mater's team and it hooked me. Unfortunately, it's a Showtime show so I was forced to wait for every new episode (sidenote: Netflix's approach of dumping all episodes at once is superior), but the finale aired yesterday so it is now bingeable and I recommend it. It's not perfect, mind you, but it's pretty good overall IMHO. It also has a killer soundtrack, both original and licensed.

That said, another disadvantage to being a Showtime show is that they're probably going to drag it on as long as they can. It was about halfway through the season when I realized that we weren't going to get many answers about the wilderness this season. I just hope they don't fuck it up like Lost and that they actually have a solid story planned out already.

Lastly, I know a lot of you are averse to woke shit, so I must warn that this show is probably like a 5 out of 10 on the Woke-o-meter.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
I am on episode 1. Very intrigued. And it blew up and is super popular on the network, I just hope it will have a nicely planned out story and not be dragged out.
 

UncleMeat

Member
Dang, I was hoping this was going to be a prequel show about the gang, The Yellow Jacket Boys.
 
Last edited:
I heard about it and it sounded really similar to Alive, which was based on the Uruguayan rugby team

MV5BOGU2ZjkzNTAtMGE0NS00N2RmLTg5YWItMDA5NjM4OWJlNWM3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg
 
Last edited:

12Goblins

Lil’ Gobbie
wife made me watch it with her. i definitely got the Lost vibes of writers just making shit up as they go along in order to try to explain the plot points they used to hook people with. I had to walk away half way through the last episode because it was so irritatingly stupid and I can already tell there will no meaningful closure or cohesion and they will milk it for 4-5 seasons until it just becomes a shameless abomination like Lost. I'm being really harsh because it's actually really well made and could have been really good but I am forced to lump this in with the other trash on tv
 
wife made me watch it with her. i definitely got the Lost vibes of writers just making shit up as they go along in order to try to explain the plot points they used to hook people with. I had to walk away half way through the last episode because it was so irritatingly stupid and I can already tell there will no meaningful closure or cohesion and they will milk it for 4-5 seasons until it just becomes a shameless abomination like Lost. I'm being really harsh because it's actually really well made and could have been really good but I am forced to lump this in with the other trash on tv
Thanks for being honest. Time is valuable and I'd hate to waste it watching something wandering about without a goal.
 

RAÏSanÏa

Member
I like how the story is told out of sequence and is developing by exploring an unknown. The characters are well defined. Jackie looked so much like Robin Tunney from the 90s movie the Craft adding to the sense of outsider witchcraft. Really looking forward to next season.
 
Does that mean there's an interracial lesbian couple?

grin smile GIF
Curb Your Enthusiasm Bingo GIF by Jason Clarke

wife made me watch it with her. i definitely got the Lost vibes of writers just making shit up as they go along in order to try to explain the plot points they used to hook people with. I had to walk away half way through the last episode because it was so irritatingly stupid and I can already tell there will no meaningful closure or cohesion and they will milk it for 4-5 seasons until it just becomes a shameless abomination like Lost. I'm being really harsh because it's actually really well made and could have been really good but I am forced to lump this in with the other trash on tv
Like I said in the OP, I also had some concerns for following seasons due to my experience with Lost, but I read an article yesterday where the showrunners stated that they have a 5-season plan - that already sounds better thought out than Lost was (where it was increasingly clear that Lindelof was pulling stuff out of his ass every week).
 

VN1X

Banned
Just watched 2 eps of this and while the tone is kind of all over the place (and the woke is... present) I am enjoying it.

Will be interesting to see where it goes. I fully expect it to fall flat on its face by the end of the season but fingers crossed that it wont.
 
Just watched 2 eps of this and while the tone is kind of all over the place (and the woke is... present) I am enjoying it.

Will be interesting to see where it goes. I fully expect it to fall flat on its face by the end of the season but fingers crossed that it wont.
I don't think it does at all. Enjoyed it thoroughly.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Just finished it, was pretty good.
There’s a few things they glossed over which I gather they will answer later:
-Shauna’s daughter is a teenager, yet the crash, when she first became pregnant was 25 years earlier

-The woman Misty locked up was working for Taissa, I’m pretty sure she even said as much to Misty but it remained very much on the down-low

-And of course who got eaten in the first episode!
 
Last edited:

clarky

Gold Member
Yeah this was surprisingly good. The premise sounded terrible, standard teen shite you get on say CW these days, but like i said me and the wife enjoyed it a lot.
 

NickFire

Member
I was interested, and finally binged it all at once. It was really good, and if they filmed season 1 with a solid plan for the series then it's got masterpiece potential IMO.

The season finale answered enough / did not answer enough to give me confidence they do have a plan in place. I think they left renewal decisions until after it started airing, so that concerns me about their roadmap a little. But they brought in a really good cast, with a lot of well knowns, so I'm not really that concerned.

Also, I never got woke vibes for even a second. Before watching the thought crossed my mind as to whether this would be Lord of the Flies with genders reversed, but the show is nothing close to that. It does have obviously similar plot points with Lord of the Flies and the movie Alive, but rest assured the similarities are only in the broadest possible strokes. It's no copycat, reimaging, etc. And honestly, those broad strokes could apply to any movie where a group is lost in the woods or, let's just say, facing dwindling food supplies.
 

Rawker

Member
Watched a few episodes so far and I'm willing to watch the rest of the season. Im mixed on my impressions as some parts seem decent and thought out, while seemingly import subjects seem glossed over or outright forgotten.

I'm a sucker for Lord of the flies, cube, etc where survival isn't merely about the elements so I'll take from the show what I enjoy and look past the fluff.
 
Last edited:

Lunarorbit

Member
I'm not gonna read any the comments in case of accidental spoilers but this show is awesome. I think I have 2 episodes left. If you have showtime watch it
 

RaduN

Member
Watched it last week.

Shitty would be the word to describe it.
Exceptionally badly written characters, mediocre acting (the fat brunette and drug addict ones are some of the worst/forced/cringy in recent memory...even Supernatural had more competent acting than this) and abysmal directing (there's no need to fix your glasses in "every-single-scene" glasses girl, we get it, you wear fucking glasses).


It's very obvious they are trying incredibly hard to copy Lost, but with teenager drama and highschool problems.
They cant even do this though, they don't have the creative juice.
For all its faults, Lost had some of the best written characters in television. This is just something made of scraps, with some sort of intended shock value, like most shows are today.
 
Just finished it, was pretty good.
There’s a few things they glossed over which I gather they will answer later:
-Shauna’s daughter is a teenager, yet the crash, when she first became pregnant was 25 years earlier

-The woman Misty locked up was working for Taissa, I’m pretty sure she even said as much to Misty but it remained very much on the down-low

-And of course who got eaten in the first episode!
You're right I knew there was something off about Shauna's daughter lmao. I don't think the baby made it out of the jungle.

Also, contrary to the post above I thought the acting was really really good, specially the teen bunch. Juliette Lewis was... well... Juliette Lewis.
 
Last edited:

DeaDPo0L84

Member
Me and my wife binge watched the show, overall really enjoyed it. I feel like it didn't quite stick the landing (airplane pun) but with there being a second season coming it gives them a chance to flesh out some of the story lines.
 

RaduN

Member
So is there teenage drama in this show or not? Do the characters make stupid decisions?
In terms of drama, it's about who cheats on who and who's gay with who.
Also these so called "world level athletes" look like they eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at McD's, and with copious deserts too.
 

VN1X

Banned
Up to episode 7 now and kind of starting to lose patience with it. It's just so glib and uneventful. Every episode feels like the one before it and most of the characters are just plain annoying or unlikeable. There's no charm or hook, not that I've found anyway.

I'll finish it but unless it somehow gets really good with the remaining few episodes I'll likely ditch this.

Also I'm pretty sure there's a studio mandate to at least have 3 mentions of race per episode lol. Unbelievable.
 
Top Bottom