we light the way

The dramatic irony/tragedy is that Marielle didn't have to try to protect Fatima. Fatima probably would have been fine if Marielle had abandoned her in the lobby to fend for herself against Smiley. To survive Marielle just needed to be more selfish and more cowardly. Unfortunately, at her core, Marielle is neither of those and so her instinct was to protect Fatima, her patient, because Marielle, like Kristi, is a helper. Not great for self-preservation to not prioritize your own wellbeing, but them's the breaks. For Marielle and for us. Marielle dies (needlessly) because Marielle is who she is.

Speaking of Marielle being Marielle, she's so confused and alarmed by what she witnessed with Fatima howling back at Smiley, that her first instinct is to tell Fatima not to touch her, but then her second instinct in the face of Fatima's distress is to reassure Fatima by saying, "I'm going to be okay." Truly, at her core Marielle is trying to make life easier for others. Because Marielle is not going to be okay. She knows that. It's why her wording is "I need to see Kristi" and not "Get Kristi, she'll know what to do." Because Marielle needs to see Kristi to say goodbye, that was always the intent.

Fatima's little "I know, I know" is actually quite sad. Fatima also is someone who wants to help. There's a reason Fatima was a light at Colony House, why Donna loves her effusively like a daughter. The loss of Fatima will devastate Ellis, but it's going to hit Donna hard as well. I feel a lot of frustration and anger on behalf of the treatment of Fatima's character as well. Involuntary pregnancy. Involuntary murder. Involuntary monsterification. This was a decent woman who tried to uplift the general spirits of this dismal place--another one of the helpers--and terrible thing after terrible thing was done to her.

Fatima, Marielle is a nurse and probably has been in numerous high-stress situations. Remember when your husband was stabbed and Kristi and Marielle drained his lung to save his life?

Marielle and Fatima actually shared a relatively high number of scenes. They have an interesting dynamic over the course of the seasons that was sometimes healthcare/nursing setting, sympathetic (they were both one half of the few romantic relationships in Fromville and so could relate to one another's woes and worries; in fact, they both had partners who weren't supernaturally harassed firsthand but via the shit their girlfriends were subjected to and had no idea how to deal with it), contentious as Fatima tried to assert herself and the lack of visible and tangible effects made the medics doubt her, and by the end they were kind of on the same page of trying to feel empowered and find agency in a situation stripping those away from them while their partners fretted oppositionally because ~risks~. They were more alike than unlike at times and both of them died/"died" in this episode . . . interestingly not because of what their partners fretted about them doing, per se.  

In fact, they're both queer women! Fatima, legendary bisexual who made young, impressionable Julie question her own sexuality! This episode really was a crime against the gays.

The audio capture they chose to use of Kristi yelling "Mari!"--piercing. I think I jumped the first time because it was unexpected.

If you saw my gifset, you'll see that I compare the staging and blocking of this scene in 4x10 to 2x03 when Kristi returns to the clinic to almost beg Marielle to stay with her in the clinic instead of going to Colony House with the other people who arrived on the bus. (Low-key because Marielle was like "how do I hide my addiction?") It's almost eerie: Kristi framed in the door, the way she goes to Marielle, that both scenes end with an embrace (reversed but similar in nature) and Kristi crying. These are the only two times (so far) that Kristi allows herself to have an emotional breakdown. Kristi expends so much energy trying to keep a grip on herself that she only really unravels at the prospect of losing Marielle--Marielle choosing not to stay with her and Marielle actually dying. 

And it's Marielle who sets the tone both interactions in different ways.

Kristi clearly internally starts to panic the moment she sees Marielle because she knows, but perhaps hasn't accepted immediately, that the situation is dire. Too much blood everywhere. Here Marielle begins with an apology to Kristi. Again, Marielle is not thinking about herself, she's thinking about Kristi first and foremost--it has been the issue of their difficulties in caring for others and one another that they don't prioritize themselves and so providing care can come at the expense to themselves. We'll see that Marielle is pretty much on death's door at this point; if she held on, it was to see and speak to Kristi. For both their sakes.

Two things about Marielle telling Kristi that "it's bad": 1) Marielle waited until Fatima left to tell Kristi, which is interesting because I think Fatima still had a little bit of hope that Kristi could do something and so it comes off like Marielle wanted to do a tiny kindness and spare Fatima the hard reality since she'd already lied to Fatima about her status. 2) Kristi and Marielle spend so much time silently communicating with one another regarding other people's health in an agreement to withhold bad news that it's notable that Marielle tells Kristi her own diagnosis upfront: "It's bad." Marielle knows she's out of time, she's giving it straight to Kristi to perhaps soften the blow to Kristi as well, a way of saying "there's nothing you can do, I know that, it's okay, it's not your fault," so let's cut to the business that needs to be done.

The business that needs to be done is saying goodbyes. I was trying to get a read on "I don't wanna go--" In Kaelen Ohm's delivery, is it more apologetic than scared? Like "I don't want to die" but closer to "I don't want to go [and leave you alone]," i.e. "I want to stay with you." I think I pondered this because it feels like Marielle should be terrified to die after twice telling Kristi about her belief that the dead are stuck here, suffering, eternally--and thus if Marielle dies, she joins those damned souls whose suffering she claims to have felt. That would scare the shit out of me because dying almost sounds worse than living through this.

The first time I heard this, I thought: Is this just clunky writing? "Will you kiss me goodbye?" sounds weirdly . . . distant. Especially paired with the "please," like supplicating your partner for a kiss feels like it shouldn't need a sad little "please." But it does make you wonder what that day Kristi disappeared was like. Maybe they didn't have a formal goodbye at any point in that day, didn't get in a little parting peck setting out, maybe someone got to sleep in, because of course they expected to see each other later, they arranged to have lunch. "I need to kiss you goodbye, please" has such intentionally behind it. Like why "need"? Need for what purpose? For herself, to take Kristi's kiss with her as she crosses over into whatever terrible tortures she expects? For Kristi, to feel like she'd given this last thing she can give to Kristi? Like did Marielle regret (for months) how they said goodbye when they didn't know it would be a final goodbye and Marielle needs to do it correctly this time because she knows without a doubt that this is her last chance? Or just need because she can feel herself fading and it's gotta happen now, right now, or the opportunity will be lost? 

Because Marielle pretty much dies (or passes out) in the middle of the kiss. Which. I don't know. I'm not a super fan of that choice.

You know what I wished when I reflected on this? I wish that when they'd been reunited, Marielle (or Kristi) would have been more demonstrative in reassuring herself of the other's presence. Needing physical touch. Maybe stealing little sniffs at the other's shoulder to (re)capture the other's scent. (Maybe funky here if they are short on soap but it's still your person.) Making it a point to get a kiss or some degree of contact before they go separate ways to tend to whatever matters. I can envision how it could be done lightly, with giggles, with an underlying understanding between them that it is scary to leave one another in these circumstances and with their history of abrupt separation. That they both appreciate it even if perhaps one is primarily seeking it. I think asking for a final kiss --especially if we'd heard such requests before in different softer circumstances, in different tones--would have hit harder if they'd had established a little custom of it between them, verbal or wordless.  As is, I just felt so frustrated that a kiss had to be requested, like it was my words put into Marielle's mouth to express what I've been wanting to see for two seasons. But now we get a kiss and this is the last opportunity it gets to happen. And it doesn't feel organic. Sigh.

Chloe Van Landschoot sells Kristi's grief in this episode because she's kept Kristi contained and small in her emotional outbursts up to this point. In this moment she gets to go really big to convey the heartbreak--and she goes big. Literally it's close captioned as "sobbing" and "wailing." It's heart rending to hear her because it's one of the rare times she's venting emotion uninhibited. The way Kristi keeps saying "I love you" as if she realizes in this moment that she hadn't said it enough, that saying it, loudly, could keep Marielle here so that Kristi can keep telling her that she loves her. It's emotional manipulation and I'd have preferred getting it spread out over multiple interactions than packed into one.

Can we mention Randall and Ellis just standing in the hallway looking on? Either of them could have fetched the bag for Kristi. Also, it in no way would have taken the amount of time to retrieve the bag as it took for Fatima. lol

I do think Randall feels Marielle's death. They were essentially housemates so they likely would have had daily little interactions, if not more significant ones like maybe passing time together at night. There was that one time Kristi and Marielle sent Randall foraging for mushrooms, so he was kinda recruited into the clinic's operations. It was Marielle who stitched up his face and provided after care. Marielle who offered him the companionship of the clinic--even though he was sassing her in the conversation--in a time when he'd been ostracized because of his reckless endangerment of Donna and was drowning in the Horrors of hallucinations and afraid to be alone. It was Marielle who stopped Randall from frying his brain and she who told him that they were okay, they were going to be okay. Now Marielle is dead (and thus very much not okay). I think she was kind to him in a time when no one was extending him grace and kindness and I think he was grateful for that. Randall is quite somber and solicitous as he conveys Marielle's body to the church for Kristi. I think he's gotta look out for the gays who took him in.

I've said it before that Boyd and Kristi have one of my favorite dynamics, as it exists in several registers. They hold each other accountable, as Kristi did for Boyd at the beginning of 4x10 trying to get Boyd to act sensibly to save a greater number of lives than risk everything for two. And then Boyd is a father figure to Kristi when he needs to be, when Kristi starts to crumble: when she started to panic in the RV at the beginning of S1, when she didn't know what was happening to Marielle at the end of S2 and was rendered hapless, now in this moment as grief is undoing her (and he's been in that position, Boyd lost his wife to this place; he knows that pain intimately--and that he can't let Kristi lose herself entirely to it). You can't sink into grief in this place because survival is tantamount (unless you give up) and Kristi is a key part of keeping more people alive.

I don't know, friends. I don't know if Marielle's death serves narrative purpose, notably for Kristi in the future, or if the senseless cruelty is the point itself, that this place is just cruel and anyone can die. I would have preferred Marielle's death take place in S5, if it was inevitably going to happen, to get more time with the character or, ideally, that she could have lasted until the end of the show and perhaps be freed if they're going to be freed. Because death feels quite equal opportunity in FROM--I think with a de facto final season, any character will be fair game--it's hard to say this is an incident of straight up "Bury Your Gays." There are shades of that, especially because the ensemble isn't populated with numerous gays, so to lose the few you have feels pointed (even if unintended). It's Bad Optics whether the production is aware of it or not. We've been through this song and dance; it's exhausting. You invest in something that doesn't feel like it's reciprocally investing in you. I suppose we never learn--productions and us, the queer minority demographic. 

You know, Marielle wasn't a "bad" person. Her only real "sin" was a drug addiction--which was more symptomatic and indicative of how thoroughly Marielle's life must have crumbled upon Kristi's disappearance, whatever supports and probably routines she had in her life to keep her sober falling away to leave her vulnerable to self-medicating. Drug addiction is not a moral failing--and Marielle owned up to it and overcame it within days of arriving in Fromville. Marielle wasn't malicious or particularly selfish once she was clean. She didn't harm anyone even though the narrative signaling seemed to indicate she was going to be party to something reckless. But quite the opposite occurred: Marielle died helping as much as she could in the circumstances she found herself in.

Oddly, when I think about it, the narrative almost feels like it punished Marielle for getting sober. I don't think this was the intention, but, again, optically the intimacy between Kristi and Marielle reduced after Season 2, when Marielle was no longer a mess and Kristi didn't have to approach her so tenderly. (I have theories and opinions/reads about this reduction that I might rant about if I can corral my thoughts into coherence.) It's like Marielle lost the ability to be vulnerable once sober because now that she was in control again and could maintain her composure she was trying to not be a burden to Kristi. As a result, Kristi was also trying to keep herself contained so as not to be a burden to Marielle (or anyone else) and so ironically they could not become supports to each other because neither let their guard down for the other's sake. Oops.

On top of that, Kristi didn't know how to navigate what she saw as Marielle expressing delusions. It read as if Kristi felt that if she went to Marielle in those moments, she would be validating those delusions (and thus facilitating Marielle falling deeper into them) and I don't think Kristi could compromise herself in that way and so she didn't find a middle path where she could comfort Marielle without a) betraying her own beliefs, b) not breaking down herself in a panic, and c) not relinquish control. I'm still trying to puzzle out her paralysis. It now feels so much more like wasted time and I'll be curious if that appears in the writing for Kristi. Will she think about how they could have spent the time they had? The . . . 30 days? (Wild.) Like they had 30 days after six months of involuntary, traumatic separation . . . why in the heck weren't you all over each other, ladies? 

I'll never stop asking that question. Because I know and see that intimacy can be written in this show for a couple. Ellis and Fatima are right there. Look at the way Ellis comforts Fatima in this episode, hand on her arm. Remember when Marielle was crying on the couch on 4x05 and Kristi and Marielle were not touching at all? I REMEMBER.

I suppose we should be glad Marielle didn't die alone, that she did get to say goodbye to Kristi, that she wasn't tortured to death. Not all the characters have gotten that courtesy. Elgin, RIP. 

Kristi . . . the fallout is on you now. I hope so, anyway. I'd be even more frustrated if Kristi isn't given time to grieve. I hope she cuddled Marielle every night when she had the opportunity because, if not, regrets are coming your way, girl. One of their last conversations was Kristi putting Marielle in her place re: Fatima as their patient. Not a great recent memory, I suspect. Will Kristi hold onto Marielle's engagement ring? Hold onto her clothes the way Marielle held onto Kristi's T-shirt? She still has the rock.

S5 is a long ways off. I had the privilege of catching up with FROM not too long before the release of S4 so this was a compact viewing experience for me. So will I be interested when S5 airs? I don't know. Perhaps less so, now. I think I want to see how the plot resolves even though I'm not invested in the lore. I'm like is this Animorphs where cosmic beings are playing a game with one another and the humans are proxies and no one gets cool morphing powers or enough information until it's frustratingly late?