urgh

ABBOTT ELEMENTARY (2021-)

On the first watch, I was like "of course Owen couldn't go with Maddy the first time, her mom had cancer :(". But this time I caught that Maddy went missing "a few weeks" after Owen's mom died. Owen had nothing left to stay for. Maddy probably waited around for those extra weeks, just in case Owen had a change of heart. And yet,

The first time we see the dress flashback, it's through what seems like a relatively objective perspective. The second time we see it (as they walk to the grave), the memory has taken on the vhs-fuzz and aspect ratio of the pink opaque tapes. The real becomes unreal, an impossible fantasy, "kid stuff"

Happened to see a captioned screening this time, and the Tara from the streaming version is described as "Fake Tara."

The tv guide page Owen finds by the electrical field is for "season 6, episode 1: Escape from the Midnight Realm"

Mr. Melancholy and Maddy's ex friend who accused them of dykery ("like a secret agent sent to ruin my life") were the same actor

All the school hallway motivational posters are thematically relevant, but this time I caught the "the only easy day is yesterday" and "courage: without it, no other virtues matter" ones

You can see the emotional shifts between Owen and Narrator Owen in real time (ie, Owen looking distraught as the firefighters surround Maddy's tv, then dropping the expression and looking coolly into the camera as she starts to narrate again)

There's an interesting recurring thing where audio from the near "future" plays over footage from the "past." ie, we hear Maddy's planetarium monologue, while we watch Owen still walking to the school to meet them. Something about time not working right, something about Owen playing back memories that already happened, something about inevitability and walking down a path with a fixed ending

I keep seeing interpretations of Owen revisiting The Pink Opaque and finding it cheesy/childish as being a critique of nostalgia / not worshipping media from your youth, and sure whatever, I get the angle - but I don’t read it that way?

It’s “cheesy” because she’s snuffed out the spark. The glow. She grew up to Be A Man. Raise A Family. She severed the psychic connection - and with that repression, she loses the emotional richness she found in the show as a kid, it’s no longer a boundless space of self exploration / expansion because she’s shoved it all back down and buried it deep inside herself. And that’s the tragedy of that scene. Her family is nonexistent, the campfire she sits around is missing Tara, her favorite show is rendered emotionless, like herself… she snuffed out the space to become the Isabel she always was.