Yellowjackets

I was totally on board with the first season. Besides Dexter and Homeland, I don't think there has been a show where I've looked so forward to a new season. However, there is a trend in television now that I abhor. Can you say "dangling the carrot?" I get it. Writers/Directors/Producers all want to keep their jobs. But at what cost? I'm truly tired of this trend. I just finished Season 2 and I don't know much more than I did at the end of Season 1. Yellowstone and all its baggage: HUGE offender is this way. But back to Yellowjackets. There are some great actors playing the teen version of the characters; some quite compelling. Case in point, the actress playing the teen version of Natalie. Anyway, I really can't say if I will watch Season 3. And with the writers' strike, who knows when that will be? At that point, I may forget everything I've watched. Might not be a bad thing.

The series started off great-I was hooked immediately. The concept of a group trying to survive in a thrilling jungle-mountain scenario was really engaging.

Season 1 - 9/10 Stayed true to its storyline: a group of high school students struggling to survive in the wild. It was intense and well-executed.

Season 2 - 8.5/10 I didn't love that the focus shifted away from the teens. The spotlight was split between them and the adults, making it feel less like the teen survival series it started as.

Season 3 - 6.5/10 This season feels like they almost forgot about the teens. There's a big jump from the last episode of Season 2, but they never explain how the group went from a bad situation to a better one-it just skips over it completely with explaining nothing .

Instead, about 70% of the focus is now on the adults, which I don't like. The interesting survival aspects of the younger characters are mostly ignored.

The first episodes had minimal action, making them boring to watch. Now that six episodes have aired, there's some improvement, but I'm still not happy with the direction. Maybe it's just me, but I started watching this as a teen survival show, and now it has turned into something else.

If you don't mind the shift in focus, you might still enjoy it, but for me, it's been a little disappointing .

This is not exactly an easy show to review which might be part of the problem. Trying to compare it to other shows would be a mistake. It is alot like "Lord of The Flies" and "Alive" but with teenage girls. However that is just a simple explanation. Basically a successful girls soccer team crash lands in the remote wilderness and are forced to learn how to survive. 25 years later the trauma the survivors face is still haunting them. Part survival epic, part psychological horror and part coming-of-age drama. Its about not dealing with your past and what happens years later when it comes back to haunt you.

I was looking for a new show to binge and since Yellowjackets has gotten nothing but great reviews from both critics and audience alike I chose this. I'm glad I did because it is something both original and entertaining. I know a lot of people are comparing this to Lord of the Flies and I can definitely see that comparison, it has that kind of feel to the show but also something original. It's an intense mystery thriller that will keep you guessing and wanting more throughout the series. You end up becoming so invested in it that you can't wait to see what happens next and you'll want to binge it as quickly as possible. The entire cast is great here but Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci are the real standouts here. Both were just nominated for an Emmy, as was the show itself for best drama. It also currently has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. That's how good this is, it's being nominated for every major award their is. I was really looking forward to Season 2 because there are still a lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered but for every answer they provide, there are more questions. Season 2 just ended and there's still way too many unanswered questions.

Halfway season 3, I have to say: this should have been a limited series, maybe a 2-seasons run. Instead, they are stretching too little butter over too much bread, meandering endlessly and focusing on seemingly banal details (the lives of the real housewives of caniballand).

Are they red herrings? I don't think so. They are just bad writing and bad direction. What saves this show from total meltdown are the cast and music.

But good acting can only compensate partly for this loss of focus. So: a lot of promise squandered - I was so happy to have such a strong female-led and female-centered series. It became simply boring.