Review: Yellowjackets, “Edible Complex” | Season 2, Episode 2
A slightly unfocused follow-up starts slow but ends with fireworks
For roughly the first half of “Edible Complex,” I felt slightly antsy. It felt like a comedown from the explosive ending of last week’s premiere, perhaps overly concerned with reminding us of the basics: Taissa is still having serious sleepwalking problems in both timelines, Travis still can’t accept that his little brother is almost certainly dead, Shauna is still haunted by the various ways she betrayed Jackie, and both Natalie and Tai continue to reject their partners’ willingness to buy into Lottie’s whole deal.
It’s not that this stuff is boring, by any means, and it probably works better if you haven’t recently watched the first season. But the episode suffers a bit without a strong thematic or narrative center, especially when you compare it to the corresponding episode in the first season. There was a lot going on in that episode, but structuring the story around Misty allowed the show to really deepen an important character. While Yellowjackets generally does a great job balancing and pacing its various stories, I’d like to see more episodes structured around individual characters like that, especially with the growing ensemble. It feels more satisfying to get one complete character study over the course of an episode than to inch forward five different plots.