‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3, Episode 8 Recap: ‘Eat It’

Season 3, Episode 8: ‘A Normal, Boring Life’

This week, we tackle what the question of a “normal” life looks like for a Yellowjacket. Meet Adult Melissa, otherwise known as Kelly, played by Hilary Swank.

Adult Melissa thinks she has it pretty good. How did she achieve this? First, she faked her own death and changed her name. Then she married Hannah’s daughter, whom she ended up falling in love with despite initially semi-stalking her to make sure she was safe. Now, they have a kid, go to church and live in a house with a cheesy sign that says, “The Kitchen Is the Heart of the Family.” She still likes to wear backward baseball caps.

Melissa-slash-Kelly believes that she is pretty well-adjusted despite it all, and compared to Shauna, who broke into her home to kill her wife, she certainly seems to be. In order to move forward, Melissa erased the past, started completely fresh. And when the past came back to haunt her, she decided to exorcise it again. That’s why she sent the tape to Shauna after she learned about Adult Natalie’s death. It wasn’t, she says, a threat. It was a way to absolve herself, to keep the guilt at bay.

Shauna doesn’t necessarily believe that, and I’m not sure I do either. Melissa is almost a little too at ease with her transformation. But sitting across the table from each other, these former lovers seem like polar opposites. Shauna is jittery and paranoid, constantly thinking someone is out to get her; Melissa is calm, just wanting to maintain the peaceful existence she fought hard to create for herself.

Their dynamic in the present day is mirrored by the fracture we see in the ’90s story line this episode. With the arrival of Hannah and Kodiak, some of the Yellowjackets are thrilled to be heading home, dreaming of the “normal” lives they’ll have when they get back to civilization. Meanwhile, another camp is, perhaps rightly, unsure that normalcy will ever be an option.

All of this is brought into stark relief during a sequence set to Supergrass’s “Alright,” which has the jaunty lyrics “We are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean.” (You might know it best from the “Clueless” soundtrack.) As the song plays, we see how some of the girls fantasize about the creature comforts they’ve been missing. Mari’s water bottle turns into a Slurpee. Misty imagines sitting on a toilet and using real toilet paper. Van falls into a fluffy bed.