A fun fact about me is that I find it impossibly difficult to watch TV – as in it takes me multiple to months to even get through a single season of a show. But there’s one recent TV show that broke this trend for me, Showtime’s Yellowjackets. Since the moment I first started watching this show I haven’t shut up about it. However, as a general warning, do be aware that the show contains some pretty grotesque violence, some of it very graphic.
Yellowjackets follows a New Jersey girls’ soccer team whose plane crash lands deep in the Canadian wilderness in 1996, leaving the survivors aboard stranded for 19 months. The show follows the team in the few days before the crash, the weeks after, as well as some of the characters lives in 2021. But the show is so much more than that, it’s gruesome, it’s queer, it’s packed with a powerhouse female cast, it’s an intense look at trauma and its effects and it truly is a triumph.
The pilot episode of Yellowjackets is maybe the best pilot episode I’ve ever seen, you instantly fall in love with all of the girls and their team, twists are revealed that will develop into intense conflict and the final shot will leave your heart pounding. It’s hard to talk about this show without giving away spoilers (so many of my favorite moments are way too far in spoiler territory), but it is a show unlike no other. It takes loose reference from Lord of the Flies while also being an incredible look at female friendship, teen romance and the ghosts of the past. It is heart pounding, jaw dropping and twist turning television. There are ships to root for, morally gray characters you can’t help but fall in love with, the best soundtrack (please listen to the Florence + the Machine’s cover of “Just a Girl” I’m begging), amazing haircuts and fashion and a general air of suspense and confusion. If you love the found family trope, strong female characters, some cult-like influences and a little bit of myth and magic, I promise you’re gonna love this show. And if you watch season one and are desperate for more, don’t worry season two premieres March 24th.