Welcome to Escapist Routes, a weekly-ish newsletter where I turn up in your inbox and ramble happily (or otherwise) about what I’ve been watching, reading, listening to, playing and maybe eating. Thoughts which are a little too substantial (or spoilery) for BlueSky, and unfortunately blogs remain unfashionable.

Which is very sad, but also there’s a lot to be said for the way a newsletter turns up in your inbox, all friendly and relaxed, reminding you of its presence but not insisting on your attention right away. I secretly believe part of the reason for the success of newsletters right now is that they dilute the endless stream of spam and corporate mailing lists which otherwise fill our personal inboxes.

I’m currently attempting to transition to Proton mail, but I got as far as switching my newsletter subscriptions, Archive of Our Own messages and library emails over, and then thought, “This account receives nothing except things which make me happy, and I don’t want to taint it with weekly Aldi catalogues and Kmart’s new product drops.”

(Please note that I opted in to receive Aldi catalogues and Kmart product news, and I also don’t want to unsubscribe from them. Capitalism has its hold on us all.)

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been watching this week; please accept the inevitability of spoilers.

Yellowjackets, season 3, episodes 3 and 4

Thanks to Reddit’s recommended posts feature, I keep seeing people ask if Yellowjackets has jumped the shark, or if this character or that is irredeemable now.

To me, these questions miss the point. Yellowjackets has always been a messy show, and its characters have always been irredeemable. The girls (and Travis) sacrificed their humanity to the wilderness in order to survive, and then they returned to civilisation and grew up to become adults who have to live with that. Travis and Natalie were the only ones who really grasped this, and they spent their adult lives seeking escape in drugs and ultimately death.

Having said that, am I still having fun watching it? Uh, maybe? Sometimes? I enjoy getting to watch two generations of incredibly talented actresses be completely unhinged, and I am always delighted to see Ella Purnell turn up. I’m impressed at how well the show has weathered the departure of Juliette Lewis, and frankly I would watch Christina Ricci and Melanie Lynskey passive-aggressively read the phone book at each other. And I am very eager to see the return of Elijah Wood’s Walter, not least because I am absolutely convinced he is responsible for the death at the end of episode 4, and probably also sabotaging Shauna’s brakes.

But sometimes you can tell when a show, its writers and producers, know exactly what they are doing, even if you have no idea what that is yet. Yellowjackets is not one of those shows, and I don’t think it ever was. Overall I like it, but I never love it, and I wish Amazon’s The Wilds (the other series about a plane full of teenage girls crashing in the wilderness) had gotten a third season instead.

As for the fandom, well, it’s funny how a show made by women and aimed at a female audience attracts female viewers whose main preoccupation seems to be hating female characters. And it’s extra “funny” that mostly they seem to hate the housewife with a teenage daughter, the teenage daughter herself, and the most prominent and outspoken Black woman (who is a lesbian, who has a mental illness) in the cast.

Don’t get me wrong, Shauna and Tai are very hateable. Tai killed a dog, guys. Her wife is right to keep her away from their kid. But it’s just interesting that Shauna and Tai (and Cally, an annoying teenager who does not eat people in a show about annoying teenagers who eat people) get all this hate, while Misty — an aged care worker who subtly mistreats those in her charge — gets a pass. I love Christina Ricci as much as every other Millennial, but Misty’s a bad person in a way that’s all too realistic.

Severance, season 2, episodes 6 and 7

(I was out of the house last Friday and Saturday, so we caught up on multiple episodes of shows this week.)

Severance is probably the best and smartest show on TV right now, and at the same time, it is completely predictable on a macro level.

That’s not a criticism. I’ve watched and read a lot of sci-fi, and I think Severance is doing brilliant work with familiar tropes. And the originality is in the details — I think I know where we’re going overall, but I was not prepared for baby goats, or John Noble being married to Christopher Walken. This, to me, is one of the joys of genre media: the story might be generic (it’s there in the name!) but the specifics can be unique and surprising.

Severance is a show where I absolutely feel like everyone behind the scenes understands the story they’re telling. I’ve seen a lot of people who are concerned that this is going to fizzle out into an unsatisfying and unresolved mystery box, like Lost, and I completely understand that, but I’m not concerned. Yet. (There were enough behind-the-scenes problems that I did not expect season 2 to be anywhere approaching watchable, let alone as good as season 1, but here we are. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that a show about the alienation of workers from their labour seems like it was created under pretty alienating circumstances.)

Here’s what I mean when I say Severance hasn’t surprised me on a macro level: I guessed that Gemma/Ms Casey was subject to ongoing experimentation, and it was probably related to Lumon’s wider projects. We know there’s a severed birthing centre, we know Harmony Cobel was raised in the cult, we know there’s at least one child (Ms Huang) who seems to have been raised in the cult and put to work at an early age.

Here’s where it does surprise me: I had assumed that Lumon’s taking of Gemma after the car accident was opportunistic, and that she was effectively being kept on ice in between stints as Ms Casey.

It turns out she was targeted — via a Lumon-sponsored blood drive and the Lumon fertility clinic — and that the “car accident” probably never happened. And instead of being kept on ice, Gemma is fully aware of herself between sessions in the severed rooms — torture chambers which Mark has unknowingly built as he refines the macrodata.

There’s been a certain low-level tension in the series and fandom this season, which boils down to Who Should Mark End Up With — Helly or Gemma. I had a lot of feelings about episode 7 and how it transformed Gemma from Dead Wife Smiling Under The White Sheets to a fully-fledged character, but I wish to propose a solution in the form of a throuple.

Gemma is more compliant than Helly, who would have been hitting creepy doctors with books within a day, but they ultimately come to the same goal: escape Lumon. You could link that with their outside personae: Gemma was an English professor, who considers and analyses before acting, while Helly is secretly the entitled Lumon heiress. But my point is this: maybe they should kiss.

The White Lotus, season 2, episode 2

This is the first White Lotus season I’ve watched as it airs, and honestly, I think it’s too early to have Grand Theories, or even a strong sense of what is going to happen next. But here’s what did happen:

• Jason Isaacs was there, and I appreciate that. I keep seeing criticisms of his accent, but I had a friend from Raleigh who sounded exactly like that, complete with the weird English vowels.

• Posey Parker is also here, and I felt less like she was performing with one eye on going viral as a reaction gif.

• Patrick Schwarzenegger, as their son, was thoroughly off-putting and I hate him. The character, I mean. Although I’ve heard that Schwarzenegger himself is a bit of a dick, so I don’t feel bad about how much I dislike his face. (My flatmate reminded me that he is also a Kennedy, so his chances of having a likable face were always low.)

• Shout out to Ke Huy Quan, making a cameo appearance as the voice of Jason Isaacs’ shady business partner. I was going to say what this season needs is Michelle Yeoh as a wealthy guest, but uhhh can you imagine a season of The White Lotus with an Asian main character who isn’t working for the resort in some capacity?

• Speaking of the dubious racial dynamics that The White Lotus throws up whenever it leaves Europe, I think it’s doing a better job following the Thai perspective than it did with native Hawaiians in season 1, and I appreciate the subtitled dialogue between Mook and Gaitok. But mostly I appreciate Lalisa Manobal’s performance as Mook, which is unflashy and competent and makes it easy to forget she is also Lisa from BLACKPINK. (I am informed that the allcaps are essential.)

• Something about Walter Goggins always makes me want to apply aloe vera and other sunburn treatments to his face. He’s not even especially sunburnt in this series. He just has that vibe. (Obviously Fallout turned it all the way to eleven, and I am only mildly ashamed to say that he is most attractive as The Ghoul.)

• The rule in The White Lotus is that the less power and money you have, the more you enjoy your time at the luxury resort. (See also: me when I use points to upgrade myself to business class.) Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) has no power and no money of her own, and she is having a great time at the White Lotus. Except for being on the scene of an armed robbery, and her boyfriend kind of being a dick, and her new BFF’s boyfriend also being a dick. (And a murderer, but Chelsea hasn’t seen season 2, so she doesn’t know that.)

• See also: Belinda, who is literally here to work, but “work” involves trying out beauty and wellness treatments and enjoying a respectful flirtation with the extremely attractive Pornchai. If this show harms one hair on Belinda’s head, I will joke on social media about burning down Mike White’s house, then get into an argument about whether or not that is in poor taste or otherwise inappropriate, then delete my post but only grudgingly because I know I’m in the wrong but I hate being called out. I’ll just be mad, okay? Don’t hurt Belinda!

• I guess the exceptions to the rule are Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb, who have only moderate wealth and no power compared with their friend, The One Who Isn’t Carrie Coon Or Leslie Bibb, who is paying for their trip. They all seem miserable, and every scene has my flatmate and I agreeing that our circles of friendship are vastly superior. This is the fundamental joy of The White Lotus: it’s a compelling murder mystery, and ALSO we get to watch wealthy white people being unhappy.

Matlock, season 1, episodes 6, 7 and 8

Matlock is such an unexpected joy and delight. Is it radically changing the face of television? Not in a flashy prestige television way, but let’s face it, a series where the central relationship is between the 75-year-old female lead and her 40-something Black female boss is valuable.

Mostly it’s just good, in the way that Elementary is good: a strong overarching arc and enjoyable case-of-the-week stories, driven by a great lead actress in Kathy Bates and a strong supporting cast that features named like Beau Bridges and Jason Ritter, and a bunch of younger actors you’ve probably never heard of.

And, crucially, it has Skye P. Marshall. I encountered Marshall in Good Sam, a fairly dreadful medical drama/Sophia Bush vehicle that I watched obsessively for Jason Isaacs reasons. Marshall played the lead character’s best friend, who is secretly having an affair with their boss, her friend’s dad. That’s a thankless role, and Marshall, as a Black woman sleeping with a white man and making Sophia Bush unhappy, bore the brunt of a lot of fan negativity.

Until … suddenly she didn’t. There came a point where the audience was on her character’s side. And it definitely wasn’t because the writing was good. It was entirely because Marshall has so much charisma, and imbued that character with dignity and grace and whatever quality it is that makes a person likeable. I knew then and there that she was someone to watch, and I was like, “Really? A Matlock reboot?” when I saw that was her next project, but I was curious.

So much of Matlock hangs on the relationship between Matty (Bates) and Olympia (Marshall), and that relationship is complex and ever-changing. They go from dislike and distrust to cautious respect to a spiky friendship that is doomed to collapse when Olympia learns the truth: that “Matlock” doesn’t exist, and the woman using that name is looking for proof that Olympia’s firm is responsible for her daughter’s death. As a dedicated Matty-Olympia friendshipper*, I’m not looking forward to that day.

(* Look, if you told me that Matty had a crush on Olympia, but doesn’t have the internal vocabulary to recognise it or put it into words, I would believe you. But I am also very invested in Matty’s marriage, sooooooooooooooo…)

Paradise, season 1, episodes 6 and 7

I never know what to make of Paradise. It feels like an artefact from the Obama era, a more innocent age when “what if a tech billionaire was secretly running the US government and engineered the end of the world to enrich herself” was the stuff of science fiction, and also the idea of a female tech oligarch was plausible.

Additionally, Paradise reminds me of my cat: it looks really good, and sometimes seems intelligent, but you peek beneath the surface and there’s just nothing there.

Except when there is. If Paradise is a ginger cat in television form, then it got hold of the brain cell for episode 7. Its science had an air of truthiness (I don’t know what would really happen if an Antarctic super volcano erupted, but sure, it sounds bad), and I was willing to buy the geopolitics on the ground that these flashbacks take place a few decades into our future. (Honestly, “what if the leaders of nuclear powers/the oligarchs who control them saw a business opportunity in nuking their neighbours ahead of a devastating environmental disaster” should feel more improbable than it does.)

Mostly, I appreciated the way “The Day” ramped up the tension of the disaster, even though we knew exactly how it was going to end. I appreciate how Sterling K. Brown and Krys Marshall get to be heroes, at a time when the US government is actively erasing Black people from public life, and I appreciate an American post-apocalyptic drama which is aware that Australia exists (even if it does seem to think Melbourne is the capital).

I also appreciate how much it has made me dislike Samantha Redmond. I support women’s wrongs, and I always have a weak spot for morally ambiguous brunettes whose choices have a body count. But I hate Samantha. The show has worked hard to make her complex and nuanced, and I’m even mad about that, because male oligarchs in real life aren’t nearly as well written. I have nothing but praise for Julianne Nicholson, but I cannot wait for Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond to face her comeuppance.

The Pitt, season 1, episodes 8 and 9

I love The Pitt. It’s like diving into a swimming pool that’s exactly the right temperature. It knows what it’s doing and why, and mostly it achieves its goals. It makes me as happy as Dr Mel when she’s given the opportunity to pick a thousand pieces of gravel out of a man’s leg.

@streamonmax

Pure bliss. #ThePitt #PatrickBall #DrLangdon #FrankLangdon #TaylorDearden #DrMelissaKing #MelKing

Nevertheless, after episodes dealing with threatened school shootings and abortion rights, it was kind of a relief to get to episode 9, which isn’t trying to Say Something About America Right Now. Except the punch-up between an anti-masker and a woman who thinks she should put a mask on her coughing kid. And the disgruntled patient who ends the episode by knocking Evans unconscious. And the homeless patient struggling with psychosis, and the need for a street team of medical professionals to seek out unhoused patients who can’t or won’t seek help.

At least the rats aren’t an allegory, right? Those guys were just happy, glossy Actor Rats who were happy to have a moment in the sun. That rat caught by Crosby the Hero Terrier and killed by Whittaker? Stunt double. Union. Nice guy. He was in Nosferatu, too. Gets around.

I do think it’s too soon in the series to have a miscarriage subplot — that feels like something for which we needed to get to know Collins first. On the other hand, Hathaway attempts suicide in the very first episode of ER, and that worked out fine. But Collins’ subplot feels like it’s hitting too many Preordained Beats: 1. She’s Pregnant; 2. She Buys A Fancy Stroller; 3. A Mild Cramp; 4. An Abortion Subplot; 5. A Mild Shove From A Pro-Lifer; 6. Miscarriage. The nicest thing I can say is that at least the first cramp predated the mild shove, so this isn’t literally a story where a pro-life woman causes a miscarriage. That would be 100% pure Late ER, and not in a fun way.

I will also be mad if Santos’s suspicions about drug theft are borne out, and Cassie is suspected even for a minute. Cassie is a little too good to be true as a character — a single mother! a history of substance abuse and an ankle monitor! but she’s the best resident there! — but nevertheless I want to protect her.

I am, however, not at all mad that Collins gently called her out on her failure to properly examine a patient because of subconscious anti-fat bias. That bias is all too pervasive in medicine, and should be addressed, but also I enjoyed seeing a Black woman call a white subordinate out for bias and receive only mild defensiveness. (No defensiveness at all would be better, but even Cassie is only human.)

Truthfully, it was also a relief to have a fat patient whose medical issues weren’t caused by her size, and whose weight went unremarked upon until Collins quietly and privately raised the bias issue with Cassie.

Doing the rounds with the other characters:

• Dr Langdon finally cracks the shits with Santos, which is absolutely fair, but he does it in public, which is entirely wrong. As Dr Robbie demonstrates when he chews Langdon out in private.

• For some reason this inspires Samira to support Santos, and I’m like, on the one hand Santos clearly thrives with positive reinforcement and needs it very badly; on the OTHER hand, she’s already so arrogant that I’m not sure she should be given more reason to have faith in her abilities. Shout out to Isa Briones for embodying a truly unpleasant person and yet somehow making me want to support her. A bit.

• Whittaker is a sweetheart who deserves a workday free of bodily fluids, but also he is the least interesting character in the whole ER.

• Dr Robbie is here to teach us all about the art of compartmentalisation. I know The Pitt was conceived as an ER spin-off, but honestly, it’s almost a relief to let John Carter be free, and to give a Noah Wyle character a whole fresh bucket of trauma.

• I would die for Victoria Javadi, or at least cringe along with her as she tries and fails to ask Hot Nurse Mateo out. Girl, I get it. (It is ironic that the nepo baby character is one of the ones played by an actor who is not a nepo baby.)

• If Evans is badly hurt, I will go on a rampage, but ALSO it’s just kind of nice to see a fictional character smoking. You don’t get enough of that these days. I know it’s bad for you, and also gross, but I feel like anyone who works on the front line of the American healthcare system deserves all the chemicals they want.

Speaking of medical professionals and chemicals…

Berlin ER, season 1, episode 1

In the first episode of ER, Dr Green is woken up to treat a specific patient. He’s drunk, he’s incoherent, he’s George Clooney, and he’s a few short hours away from starting his own shift.

In the first scene of the first episode of Berlin ER, we follow a man as he enters a nightclub, takes a wide range of drugs, stumbles out onto the street, nearly gets hit by a car, meanders into the ER and treats a patient in crisis. He is Dr Ben Weber, and while Slavko Popadic is no Clooney, he is our male lead.

I like to think that the pitch meeting for Berlin ER went, “It’s ER but it’s in Berlin? Ja, das ist gut.” In fact, the German title is Krank: ER ("hospital” in German is “krankenhaus”), but it’s easy to see where Berlin ER got its inspiration. The first episode contains a whole pile of medical drama cliches: the wide-eyed newcomer (Haley Louise Jones as new ER chief Suzanna Parker), the reckless but brilliant doctor, the cynical old-timers, the greedy hospital admin. There’s the comedy patient (stabbed in the ass), the dramatic gunshot victims, the attention-seeking hypochondriac who takes things too far. There’s really not much that you wouldn’t find in any hospital drama.

But this time, it’s German. I know absolutely nothing about the German healthcare system, but this series makes emergency medicine there look underfunded and dystopian. Instead of the antiseptic white rooms of an American [TV] ER, this is all green walls, exposed concrete and graffiti. The hospital admin complains that he has to have an emergency department at all; that side of medicine is not fully covered by insurance, so it’s losing money for the hospital.

Is this realistic? I expect I’ll work it out as the series goes on and the thinkpieces roll out. I’m not in love with Berlin ER yet, but I’m open to the possibility. At the very least, it makes a fun double act with The Pitt on a Saturday night. And the medical professionals all wear Birkenstocks, that’s how German it is.

Australian of the week: Dichen Lachman

This is going to be a regular feature where I highlight some random Australian who has turned up in an international drama. Or I may even watch local television once in a while, stranger things have happened, but mostly I want to remind you that we are everywhere.

If I had started this newsletter a week earlier, I’d have given it to John Noble, Creepy Husband Of Creepy Christopher Walken In Severance. But instead I have to go with Dichen Lachman, Undead Wife Of Sad Sack Adam Scott In Severance.

Lachman was born in Nepal to an Australian father and a Tibetan mother, and grew up in Adelaide, which is a lot like being tortured by an evil mind control corporation. She’s been appearing in US productions since 2009, starting with Joss Whedon’s mind control/sexploitation drama Dollhouse, and also turned up in Torchwood: Miracle Day. Frankly, she deserves better, which is why I’m delighted she’s in Severance.

The big question:

How many episodes of Neighbours has she been in?

One hundred and three, baby.

Bonus: What I’ve Been Drinking

I’m a sucker for a novelty beverage, so when I saw Wolf Blass had brought out a House of the Dragon chardonnay, I had to have it. Even though I don’t really like chardonnay and thought last year’s HotD cab sav was only mid.

I want to say that the tasting notes included passive-aggression and dubious pretexts for war, but honestly? I would not go so far as to say this wine had tasting notes. There were none of the woody flavours that generally put me off chardonnays, but there wasn’t much of anything else, either. My flatmate compared it to a $5 generic white from Aldi, and while she added that it would be a good $5 generic white from Aldi, is that really what we want from a $15 novelty wine?

On the other hand, “aggressively white and fine, I guess” is a fitting flavour for the Hightower family, soooooooo well done Wolf Blass, I guess. (I suppose the real question is why a winery based in shiraz country is even wasting its time making wines that aren’t shiraz, but don’t ask me, I just drink the stuff.)