There are three constants in life: death, taxes, and having a B-tier show you’re strangely attached to. Back when I was still an obnoxious teenager surrounded by even more obnoxious teenagers—including one who would steal bits of people’s lunches, claiming “Food tax”—I got introduced to Reddit by my friends and eventually wound up on r/horror. I got a lot of decent horror film/TV recommendations, but mainly a lot of redundant ones (“Hey, has anyone seen The Thing? Great stuff”). Years later, I was twenty-one and preparing to transfer to Drew University in New Jersey to finish up college. I was scrolling Reddit when I noticed a post urging people to watch this new horror show, Yellowjackets. Looking into the show, I was intrigued. Violent women, supernatural influences, a character with a blatantly Italian last name? I had to like this show!

I did. Kinda.

Listen, there’s some really good things about this show, I promise. The premise is great: The Yellowjackets soccer team, which consists of a bunch of New Jersey teenage girls, have their plane crash on the way to nationals and they end up stranded in the Canadian wilderness. The show also flashes forward to an adult timeline where the remaining survivors cope with their trauma as their pasts catch up to them.

Once I got settled down in New Jersey and started watching the show, the predicaments of both timelines felt oddly apt for my situation. Like the teens, I was in a new strange place: the girls were in a forest and I was at the “University in the Forest.” But like the adults, I was still unpacking who I was away from my past and if I could ever separate myself from it. I had a creative non-fiction course my first semester and all I could really seem to write about were things that happened to me back home in New Hampshire. My two big pieces from that class were about a guy I accidentally led on, and me learning about what a bad person my friend Joey was while grappling with the good he gave me in my troubled teens. When I finally got a night to myself, I would usually sit down at my desk and watch Yellowjackets, content to see someone else struggle with their past for once.

While the adult cast is great—Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, and Simone Kessel being some of my personal favorites to watch—I have a certain fondness for the teen cast. Not only do I find the teen timeline more interesting in general, but in a weird way I kind of feel like I’ve grown up with them. For instance, I started watching the show in early 2023 as a new transfer student right when Sophie Thatcher was only really known for her small The Book of Boba Fett role. Now, Thatcher is receiving nominations and acclaim for her performance in Companion and headlining more upcoming films like Her Private Hell. Meanwhile, I’ve graduated college with plenty of academic awards, friends, and honors societies to my name though I’m in no way as employed as she is (e.g. having time to write this article).

But it’s not just this parasocial sentimentality that makes the teen cast so special to me. They’re also all damn good actors. Sophie Nélisse, Courtney Eaton, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Liv Hewson specifically never fail to captivate me while they’re on screen, the dynamics here utterly addictive to watch. Brown and Hewson passionately bounce off each other as they play a codependent lesbian couple. Eaton’s Lottie becomes more and more obsessed with Nélisse’s Shauna and what Shauna harbors inside of her. All these dynamics and plenty more have kept me and millions of other viewers tuning in to the latest episode.

The relationships are enhanced by the brutality and horror here too. Is there something supernatural here or is it just a bunch of sad, feral teenagers going insane? Something that can’t be rationally explained suddenly happens, and you and the Yellowjackets don’t know what to believe! As food gets scarce, the Yellowjackets have to resort to grisly cannibalism and grapple with having to choose someone to eat! Elijah Wood sometimes shows up and annoys everyone including you! When the show wants to go all in on its more horrific aspects, it’s an absolute joy to watch. The unfortunate, underlying problem is that Yellowjackets is still a Showtime series at the end of the day.

Showtime shows always feel a little half-baked, never quite living up to their potential as they struggle to stick the landing. If you need any past proof of this, just remember the later half of the original Dexter run and its ending. Granted, Showtime doesn’t have money or clout like HBO does, but, bless their hearts, they still try to achieve their lofty ambitions even when they can’t.

Whenever Yellowjackets tries to get surreal and channel David Lynch, the presentation just falls flat and feels kind of goofy with effects a little too out of the ‘90s. Much like my time at college, there are a ton of interesting plot threads and relationships between characters that are dropped and ignored between seasons. Switching between the two timelines can be torture. You could go from a scene like the “Climbing Up the Walls” ending in “Edible Complex” where the show comes together to pull off a moment that’s truly stunning… and then we could cut to Juliette Lewis watching a family argument before smuggling a goldfish in her mouth. One scene feels like prestige TV, the next scene feels like an episode of Goosebumps but they’re allowed to say the “Fuck” word. Whenever I brought up Yellowjackets during a party, I always gave the disclaimer that it was sometimes like watching two separate shows.

But even with all these shortcomings, I still can’t pull myself away from it. Yellowjackets and I have been around for each other’s growing pains, and that creates a bond almost as strong as the team makes with each other while stranded in the wilderness. Plus, a show with a bit of jank to it feels refreshing and unique in a world of perfectly fine and forgettable Netflix originals. There comes a certain excitement and loyalty in seeing how the show will surprise me whether it be in a good or bad way. I watched all of the third season with a girl friend who recently got into the show, both of us reacting to it like it was our personal Super Bowl. I like every Twitter post about the show that comes across my feed. I got the Doomcoming throw blanket from the Paramount Shop because I loved the design that much. I will keep watching and will cheer when Melanie Lynskey finally kills that fuckass Jeff.

It has a special place in my heart like it’s my own child. Even if I do get very frustrated by the choices it makes, I love it dearly for all the great moments it’s given me.

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Lorenzo Occhialini is just getting started with publishing his work around, so you can’t really find him in other lit mags right now. He hopes to be published in many more while he continues his scribblings of creative non-fiction.