I think the way the camera treats Caitlyn in the first act of season 2 is really interesting. It cuts off her eyes at some very key moments.
The eyes are how we connect with someone. Cutting them off cuts off the ability to sympathize with them. And depending on how the mouth is shot it can make the character seem more base or animalistic in a given moment. I think the show did this quite a bit with Silco in season 1, and they do it with Caitlyn in season 2.
The first one is from s2e1 when Caitlyn says about Jinx, "I want to rip that laugh from her throat forever.
Up until this point the viewer has been quite embedded in Caitlyn's POV when she's on-screen. The musical segment was showing her perspective. We witness her fantasy of being able to take down Jinx. The show is making sure that we understand where she's at mentally.
But here, the first time she's expressing violent thoughts, we're decidedly not in her POV. Her eyes are cut off, we don't get that connection with her. But what we do get is Jayce's reaction. And he's concerned. It's the first kind of "uh oh" moment, where you get a sinking feeling about where Caitlyn's headed.
2. After the memorial attack, she calls the attackers "animals" and we get this uncomfortably close shot of her teeth.
She's calling others animals, but she's the one who's shown snarling in this animalistic way. Again, her eyes are cut off, cutting off that avenue for sympathy when she says this, cutting the viewer off from her perspective, distancing her. Instead our attention is directed at this ugly, unsettling expression of hers. The camera is presenting her as something to be worried about rather than someone to feel sympathy for.
3. After interrogating Heenot, when she's gearing up to go after Jinx, and Vi is about to ask to talk to her.
Throughout the preceding scene, we were getting a lot of shots of Vi reacting to Caitlyn's behaviour, with a quite open expression, and a lot of shots of Caitlyn looking hardened and aloof. And then we come to this shot, and though Caitlyn is centre-frame, it's still Vi's POV. We see how Vi is feeling and reacting to things, but Caitlyn's eyes are again cut out of frame. She's distanced from the viewer, just like Vi is feeling distanced from her. Vi's position in the frame communicates how she's feeling, like she's being edged out of Caitlyn's life by Cait's singular focus on revenge.
And just like with that first shot with Jayce, by focusing on the reacting character, the camera is showing the viewer how they should be reacting to Caitlyn too: unsettled, disturbed, alienated.
4. When Cait and Vi are fighting, and Vi grabs Cait's arm, before she jabs Vi with the butt of her gun.
It's a reaction shot, Vi just grabbed her arm and told her she's acting like Jinx, this cut should be showing us how Caitlyn feels about that. But we don't see the reaction in her eyes, we just see her mouth.
In this case, I think it's not just about presenting Caitlyn in a way where she's cut off from the viewer. Because it is a reaction shot, I think this communicates that Caitlyn also feels cut off from herself in a way, cut off from the sympathy she had for others that was such a part of her character in season 1.
And then it's interesting to compare all this to when Vi and Caitlyn cross paths again, and Vi calls Caitlyn "cupcake." And we get this shot:
We get the closeup on her eyes. Whereas before, the audience was repeatedly cut off from having that connection with her, now it's like, boom, big connection. And just as before, I think the shot is not just about the audience being able to connect with her, but Caitlyn being able to connect with herself. That despite everything, she's still the same woman who fell in love with Vi, that part of her is still there. She's been on this whole awful journey, and she's done awful things, and allowed awful things to be done in her name, but she's still the same person, and she can't pretend anymore that it's all fine. She sees clearly again.
