Like Mother Like Daughter: Callie Is The Surprise MVP Of Yellowjackets Season 2 – /Film

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Like Mother Like Daughter: Callie Is The Surprise MVP Of Yellowjackets Season 2 – /Film

This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of “Yellowjackets.”

Shauna Sadecki (Melanie Lynskey) never wanted kids. She confesses as much in the centerpiece scene of this week’s episode of “Yellowjackets,” a powerful monologue from Lynskey in a season that’s been in part built around powerful monologues from Lynskey. Shauna never wanted a family, she says, but she loves them despite herself. In the context of this, the most heartbreaking episode of the show to date, it’s impossible not to think of her first child here, who we now know was stillborn in the wilderness.

Yet when Shauna speaks to the police with obvious warmth in her voice, making it clear that she’s happy as a mom despite her instincts screaming otherwise, it’s not the baby who comes to mind, but Callie (Sarah Desjardins). Callie, who just lied to a cop in one of the show’s most hilarious and darkly satisfying scenes yet. Callie, whose false accusations shouldn’t be applauded, sure, but whose resilience and resourcefulness and sheer daring attitude in the face of grown men who have more power than her should. Somehow, one of the show’s peskiest characters has transformed into one of its best, and it’s a testament to the series’ great writers that viewers realize that pretty much exactly as Shauna does.

Callie got a major upgrade from season 1

Showtime

Before her second season redemption, Callie started off “Yellowjackets” as one of its most annoying characters. Throughout season 1, she fulfilled the bratty, ungrateful teen archetype, present not so much as a supporting character with an interior life but as a foil to Shauna’s attempt to get her groove back. When Callie found out Shauna was with Adam, she weaponized her knowledge in an attempt to blackmail her mom (like father, like daughter, I guess), but ultimately abandoned it after getting a reality check from Shauna. Still, even the most gracious reading of season 1 Callie is that she was a character designed for us to be annoyed with.

The second season of “Yellowjackets” set to work remedying this pretty much immediately. After all, this is in part a show about teenagers, so why can’t Callie be as loveable and flawed and cheer-worthy as any of the girls from the 1990s timeline? Callie starts season 2 off with a confrontation, telling her mom that Jeff (Warren Kole) deserves to know about Adam and getting overwhelmed when she finds out that he actually does. Callie snoops and finds Adam’s burned driver’s license, and briefly goes into weed-fueled catatonia while trying to process the extent of her parents’ crimes. Then, “Yellowjackets” pulled one of my favorite TV drama moves: the Tell The Kid Gambit.

Sometimes you just have to tell the kids

Kailey Schwerman/Showtime

The Tell The Kid Gambit, which is a name I just made up, is a classic crime drama move in which parents who are attempting to get away with something decide to clue their children into the situation. It’s a move that makes no sense in reality — who would want to make their kid an accomplice to murder? — but makes perfect storytelling sense. In shows like “The Americans,” “Ozark,” and “Weeds,” in which antiheroes juggle parenting milestones with criminal ones, the clueing in of teenagers serves as a sort of rite of passage. Adolescents and young adults have always been hungry to know more about the world, and at a certain point, parents all over the world must decide whether or not they’re old enough to learn about its complexities. On TV, though, sometimes those complexities involve the fact that your mom killed her lover after convincing herself he was a dangerous blackmailer.

Callie’s plotline this season has been satisfying to watch, both because it fulfills this fun trope and because, in a face-turn from last season’s bratty behavior, she has a tendency to make savvy decisions at every turn. When Callie realizes the man she’s been flirting with in an attempt to rebel against her parents is actually an undercover cop, she quickly feeds him false information with a convincing degree of emotion. Callie plays into another classic teen role here, acting like she’s simply overwhelmed by family drama and consumed by self-centered teen angst.

A twisted cover-up strategy

Kailey Schwerman/Showtime

The teen takes her performance to a new level this week, though, when she decides to insinuate that Matt (John Reynolds), the undercover cop who has been going bowling with her and giving her rides home in hopes of gleaning intel about Shauna, had sex with her. Again, in the real world, this false accusation would not be worth applauding, but this is a show that’s had fans looking forward to human cannibalism for over a year now, so typical moral rules don’t exactly apply. Plus, Matt really is being a bit of a creep; he breaks protocol to woo Callie, then drops all pretense of caring about her wellbeing once she finds out who he is.

There’s something delicious about seeing the underestimated teenager swiftly turn the tables on these authority figures, turning on the waterworks when she says the detective took advantage of her. “We’ll see who a jury believes, especially when they ask me to describe his weird a** balls,” Callie quips, in a comment that even had me briefly convinced that something went on between the two. Desjardins is compelling here in a scene that brings together a biting anti-authority attitude and genuine emotional pain. The strategy might not work, but it’s gutsy and creative, and it’s also a perfectly timed reminder that despite all the trauma she’s endured, Shauna truly does have a family that’ll do anything for her.

‘It’s you and me, kid.’

Kailey Schwerman/Showtime

She also has a daughter who’s tenacious, quick-thinking, and complicated — a lot like her. It’s hard to take solace in much of anything after this week’s episode ended with the extremely dark fake-out reveal that Shauna’s baby didn’t survive its birth, but the episode also possesses a sweet sort of symmetry between its two timelines. “It’s you and me, kid. It’s you and me against the whole world,” Shauna tells her baby during her blood-loss-fueled hallucination.

As awful as it is that this turned out to be a short-lived promise, it’s a sentiment I can picture Shauna sharing with Callie, too. The Sadecki family is finally a united front, and it’s satisfying to see, although it’s too bad it took a botched murder cover-up to get them on the same page. While Jeff and Shauna panic and ignore their problems, respectively, Callie leads the charge as a surprisingly assured — and entertaining — antihero who has managed to become a delightful highlight of the show’s sophomore season. 

Frankly, we can’t wait to see what this wild child does next.