‘Yellowjackets’: All Knaves, No Knights
The reason this show works is because every character is an unreliable narrator in the best sense of the term.
Everyone thinks they love an unreliable narrator until they live with one, and everyone thinks creating an unreliable narrator is easy until they try to write one1. The main mistake people make when writing unreliable narrators is fundamental: They go all unreliable, all the time, imagining that “unreliable narrator” isn’t just a useful descriptor, but rather a mental condition which prevents the character from ever telling the truth2.
An effective unreliable narrator is actually reliable most of the time. That’s why the trick works. They withhold one key piece of information from you, or twist one fact to their purposes, but with the rest of their time on the page or screen they more or less tell you the truth about as much as anyone in this sad world does, which is to say not very often. Consider: In the classic uber-unreliable narrator story The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agath Christie (SPOILERS ON A NEARLY 100-YEAR OLD NOVEL), Dr. James Sheppard is actually pretty reliable about most things as he tells the story. He only obscures the details that would give him away.
Yellowjackets gets this. Which is remarkable, really, because it’s not only an obvious descendant of Lost but also a grim, dark story that could have easily veered into shock for shock’s sake3. What’s also remarkable is how Yellowjackets uses the unreliable narrator: Every single character on the show is unreliable. Every. Single. One.
Women = Terrifying
Spoilers follow. If you’re unfamiliar with Yellowjackets, you’re missing out on some good, clean, nasty fun. It’s the story of a champion high school girls soccer team in the 1990s whose plane crashes in the wilderness, killing all but one adult chaperon, and stranding them for 19 months to learn how to survive nature and each other4. In the present-day, it appears only a handful of the girls (and one boy) survived, although we can’t be certain how many, because the show is also unreliable. It’s pretty clear that some seriously fucked-up shit happened in those 19 months, and all the survivors are dealing with varying levels of thermonuclear PTSD while also working hard to keep secrets.
It’s great! And also grim and violent and only a few months into its 19 month mystery5, so everything could go very, very wrong (Lost, I am looking at you). I sympathize with the character of Travis, one of two boys stranded with the team. Being alone in the woods for months with a group of teenage girls is fucking terrifying, because women are mean6. I can tell you that despite what Lord of the Flies might tell you, if 16-year old Jeff was stranded in the wilderness with his high school friends, we would have spent the time playing Dungeons and Dragons and putting on skits to amuse ourselves. And probably masturbating feverishly, sure, but there would have been a hell of lot less murder and cannibalism7.
But I digress, as usual. The great thing about this show so far is that all of the surviving girls are unreliable narrators, and it’s handled very well because it’s calibrated. None of the women we know to be alive in the present (Misty [Christina Ricci], Natalie [Juliette Lewis], Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), and Taissa (Tawny Cypress) (we won’t count Lottie [Courtney Eaton] right now, as she hasn’t factored into the plot much and this could turn out to be a red herring) lie constantly—in fact, they are frequently honest and forthright. But that’s the secret sauce for an unreliable narrator: They only lie when it matters8.
This is important, because an unreliable narrator that is essentially Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in his “Wild Card” phase is predictable, and therefore actually reliable. If a character is constantly flat-out lying to you, there’s not much surprise when they reveal the one important plot point they lied about. A character who is so unreliable literally everything they say is suspect also raises the question of how they navigate society, but the women of Yellowjackets are variously successful in their lives. Taissa is a successful professional running for state office, married with a kid. Shauna is a full-time wife and mother with a typical suburban life. Misty is a nurse and an enthusiastic user of dating apps. And Natalie—well, Natalie’s an addict in recovery who drives a Porsche, which is a bit of a mystery, but she obviously knows her way around life.
Yet, we know these characters lie—to friends, family, and each other. So we also know, on some level, that they—and by extension the show—are lying to us, the viewer. The show’s restraint in terms of the unreliable nature of these characters means the audience never knows with any certainty whether they’re being told the truth or lied to, but it’s never obvious—it’s subtle. It’s the sort of thing where you wake up one night in a sweat and realize you’re not sure something happened just because one of the characters said it did9.
Would I Lie To You
Another reason the unreliable nature of the story works so well is how the show leverages it and uses it. Some writers use unreliable narration and characters just for the hell of it, which makes for fun but empty storytelling. Yellowjackets puts that shit to work.
For example, the character of Lottie and the seance. Lottie is initially established to be dealing with some unspecified mental issue, later implied to be either schizophrenia or an ability to perceive the future10. She’s shown furtively taking pills, and when her supply of medication runs out she starts to get weird and spacey11. She’s also dealing with some hallucinations (it’s telling that during the dance sequence that opens episode 5 that’s interrupted by creepy sounds from the attic, Lottie says “Hey, you heard it too?,” implying she’s become used to seeing and hearing things no one else does long before the audience is privy to her visions). So when Lottie appears to be “possessed” during the seance and starts speaking French and being creepy as heck, the audience can’t be sure whether this is a true paranormal event or just a girl in the grip of a psychotic episode12. And because Lottie has never confessed her condition to her friends, neither can the girls.
This kind of balancing act with the reliability of your narrative is tough to keep up over time, so it will be interesting to see how the show fares going forward. For a mainstream television show, the audience will eventually expect and demand certainty—they will expect to end the show with a full understanding of what’s happened. In a novel you might get away with an ambiguous “literary” ending that trails off into dream logic, but for a show like Yellowjackets people will want to know for a certainty who the Antler Queen is and whether there’s a hauntin’ going on or not.
Me, I know one thing for a certainty: If I crashed in the wilderness with a team of teenage girls, I would be eaten within a few weeks. Teen girls are terrifying.
Next week: Jimmy says hello from hell you fuck
And don’t even get me started about living with one. Or living as one. To quote one of the greatest characters in television history, you don’t even know my real name. I’m the fucking Lizard King.
Full disclosure: I have this mental condition and I have a letter from my doctor if you don’t believe me. Actually, no I don’t.
To be fair, the show has teen sex and pregnancy, cannibalism, and a lot of grunge fashion. It’s plenty shocking. Mostly the flannel.
The girls of Yellowjackets actually do a pretty badass job of surviving. They hunt, they gather, they perform emergency medical procedures (with an improbable zero infections) and generally do pretty well. I was a Boy Scout, and I witnessed teen boys collapse into panic after one night in the woods without video games. Either women are orders of magnitude tougher than men, or the show isn’t accurate. I think we all know which one it is.
In a neat feat of practical writing, the show uses Shauna’s pregnancy as a gauge of time’s passage, so we can guess that the Season One finale takes place ~3-4 months after the crash.
When I first moved in with The Duchess, I used to joke that women were much messier and worse roommates than men. She never argued the point, and it is no longer funny.
Please note I didn’t say zero murder and cannibalism.
That’s my policy as well. It’s not my fault that my life is a constant series of emergency situations requiring me to keep pretending to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Does this describe the day after my High School graduation? I honestly have no idea.
Naturally, the writer in me screams: WHY NOT BOTH?
I would point out that as far as I know there’s no prescription for “psychic abilities,” but this is a show that posits a 17-year old soccer player would be able to stitch up a teammate’s face after a wolf has torn her cheek off like a surgeon at some world-class hospital.
I will resist making the obligatory “girls be crazy amiright?” joke because The Duchess is reading this over my shoulder and I am frightened.
I love this post. As a woman, a previous teenager, and someone who raised a girl through those fabulous years, I can say without reservation - every teen girl is an unreliable narrator. Perhaps, even every teen boy. Adolescent survival in this society demands it. Add a plane crash, hormones, and mortal fear - well, that is going to go on overdrive. Well, done again Jeff. And just give the Duchess whatever she wants. Maybe she won't feed you to the cats.
Women are not the crazy ones. They are the epitome of the tenth rule which negates the previous nine whenever a testosterone-poisoned person figures them out. Or the adage of keeping our friends close but our enemies closer. Nay, dear escritor, it is us.