At this point, it's become obvious that the YJ writers don't have a legitimate, fluid story anymore like they did in the first season. They may say they have multiple seasons mapped out, but the getting there so far has been very shaky. If there's any episode that fits the definition of the term "filler," it is this episode entitled "Burial." The past timeline focused on the search for Crystal, a character that should never have been introduced to the show in the first place. She basically only had interactions with Misty (thus the popular theory that she may have been her imaginary friend), albeit a couple of very minor instances where other characters told her to stop it with her annoying singing. But otherwise, every time we saw the character, she was always joined to the hip with Misty and shadowing her everywhere. This was Strike 1 for the episode because it's based on the search for a completely irrelevant, unimportant character that added nothing to the series and felt like a waste of time. Also, did the writers forget their own story in regards to Lottie? Why couldn't she "feel" that Crystal was dead in the same way that she felt that Javi was alive? Continuing with the past, Coach Ben had yet another empty, meaningless glitching effect vision of his boyfriend Paul, who basically told him the end is near (yadda, yadda), then Ben is about to throw himself off a cliff until Misty interrupts him in a scene littered with terrible dialogue. The writers just spent the last 6 episodes (thus 2/3 of the season) with Ben giving up hope, then he just decides to do a 180 based on a character in Misty, someone who he legit can't stand? What does Ben care that Misty will tell the world about him when there's all those other girls there, especially Nat who he bonded with, that would actually tell the truth? And Ben's 180 felt laughably forced as he looked like a guy who just changed his mind about something trivial. A very poorly constructed scene and I knew the entire time that he wasn't going to go through with it, so there was a complete lack of tension or suspense. Then there was that cringe exchange between those 2 upgraded background girls (Gen and Cap Girl) in the cabin about eating Crystal's remains if they found her dead. It was like listening to dialogue from a CW show and I've noticed a lot of this type of dialogue this season. Cap Girl in particular is pretty bad and I can see why the writers gave her no lines in the first season. But the capper for the past timeline was that very disturbing and completely unnecessary scene of Shauna beating up a willing Lottie while everyone else just stared in horror. I don't care what state of mind Shauna was in after losing her baby, it wasn't anyone's fault and just because she's got all this anger doesn't give her the right to take her aggression out on someone else for her loss, especially when Lottie tried to help her in her own way. Shauna is fast becoming one of my least favorite characters of this series in both timelines.
The present-day scenes in Lottie's compound of the main 6 ladies, now all together as a group, were very bland with boring scenes of Shauna taking care of a goat, Tai painting a barn, and Misty in a healing chamber, which resulted in what may be the worst sequence of the entire series yet. While sleeping in the chamber, Misty has some ridiculous dream of a Broadway musical dancing number of herself with Walter and the human version of her parrot Caligula. That scene didn't work at all and was utterly lacking in wit and humor. It's literally like something you'd see on a daytime soap opera. That scene reeks of fan-favorite writing for a character that shouldn't need gimmicks. If this scene ends up being Christina Ricci's Emmy submission and she actually wins for this nonsensical scene, then 'll never take that award seriously ever again! Lol Also, as previously mentioned, I'm really getting tired of Shauna's character, who has YET another scene where she breaks out with her emotional crying and ranting, this time to Lottie. All season, I've felt that the writers don't know what to do with Adult Shauna, so they just create these random scenes like the chop shop, police station, and now the cult compound, for Shauna to have these now-annoying monologues just so Melanie Lynskey can have a bunch of Emmy-submission reels to choose from. But Shauna's subplot has arguably been the worst written all season with a complete lack of narrative focus and some very suspect supporting characters like Callie and Mustache Cop. In fact, the way that the writers got all these ladies together feels forced and an excuse for them to do all that slow-mo montage dancing near the end.
Finally, this episode encapsulates a couple of things that have been bugging me all season. First, there's been a real overuse of swearing that at this point feels incredibly unnatural, in my opinion. It's not me being prudish having a problem with profanity because of course people swear, but this episode just seemed to take it to another level where it was overdone. And also, this episode brings up the vague "we brought it back with us" spiel that the writers have been going with this season to feed into the supernatural nonsense. And there's been a ton of exposition with the writers having characters tell us everything with monologues and awkwardly forced interactions rather than just showing us through a well-written story. With only 2 episodes left in Season 2, it's really feeling like this show is in an official sophomore slump. The showrunners supposedly have 5 seasons mapped out, but I don't see this series could reasonably continue past Season 3.
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