"Yellowjackets" Season 1 with Dr. Jessi Gold

Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by Dr. Jessi Gold (@drjessigold) to discuss the first season of "Yellowjackets" on Showtime. We break down the show's depiction of various forms of posttraumatic stress disorder and how the characters' pre-trauma backgrounds contribute to the different symptoms they experience in adulthood. We also explore the show's depiction of adolescent, teenage girl group dynamics, and the blurriness between psychosis and mysticism. We hope you enjoy!

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Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. My name is Dr. Katrina Fury and I'm A psychiatrist. And I'm joined by my friend and co host Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And today we are super excited because we also have Dr. Jesse Gold joining us to discuss season one of Yellow Jackets, the hit show on Showtime. A couple of episodes of season two have already started rolling out, but we're going to focus on season one today because there's a lot to talk about before we welcome our guests. I just wanted to give a little bio. I feel very strongly about reading people's full biographies, especially women, so I'm going to read the whole thing and I love it. Jesse Gold is an assistant professor and the Director of Wellness, Engagement and Outreach in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She's a nationally recognized expert on healthcare worker mental health and burnout, particularly during the Pandemic college mental health using social media and media for mental health advocacy and the overlap between pop culture and mental health, including celebrity self disclosure. She works clinically as an outpatient psychiatrist and sees faculty, staff, hospital employees and their dependents, particularly their college age kids. Dr. Gold also writes for the popular press and has been featured in, among others, the New York Times, the Atlantic, InStyle, the Washington Post, Time and Self. So, like, no big deal. She is on the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council and the Mental Health Storytelling Initiative and a co author of The Mental Health Media Guide, which can be found@mentalhealthmediaguide.com. Dr. Gold is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BA. And a master's in anthropology, the Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency training in adult psychiatry at Stanford University, where she served as chief resident. Again, no big deal. Her website is Dr. Jessegold.com, and she can be found at Dr. Jessegold Drjessigold on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jesse. This is so super cool.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Thanks for reading that thing. I was really hoping everybody would get to hear that also.

Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, I know. If you want to tell us your favorite color or your deepest, darkest fears, we got all the time in the world.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Can't wait.

Dr. Katrina Furey: So speaking of deepest, darkest fears, this is probably one of mine. Plane crash in the middle of the mountains of Canada. In adolescence, I cannot imagine a more frightening, terrifying experience. And Portia here, we're learning that she likes more of, like, the light hearted things. And I really like the dark and twisty nasty things.

Dr. Jessi Gold: So I was like, really worried for you.

Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.

Portia Pendleton: You gave me some. You were like, episode six, trigger warning this. And I was like, okay. I watched some things on. I skipped over a couple of scenes.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I was like, you got to watch it in the day with the lights on, hold all your pets. It's a lot, right?

Portia Pendleton: It didn't help my plane anxiety, but.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah, I forgot you have plane anxiety, too. You got to take a beta blocker before you watch these.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Who.

Portia Pendleton: You're just fine.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Oh, gee, sorry about that. It's a really interesting show in that when you try to tell people about it, one minor is just horrible. You're like, hey, it's a really great show. I swear. It's about teenagers who crashed in an airplane and may or may not become cannibals. And also they see them as adults, too. And people are like, what? And I don't like horror and really dark stuff. I like psychological thrillers. That bother me. I thought you guys said you kind of have boundaries on what it's going to show, and you can choose not to watch some of the stuff.

Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it's just such a fascinating portrayal of how one trauma affects so many people in a different way and then how you sort of simultaneously see the depiction of their back stories and their future stories and how they all weave in. And it's like at the beginning, the things you think are going to happen don't happen.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.

Portia Pendleton: I think Vanessa the goalie. I liked that we saw a little bit of her backstory with, like it seems like mom is an alcoholic. She was kind of like a caregiver. And then the trauma of the plane crash, and then she was left in the plane almost like, died via fire. And then comes out and is really mad at Jackie and Shauna for kind of like leaving her there. So I think even that initial, it's like she had a double trauma right at the crash scene, like the crash, and then had her friends leave her for dead. And then she survives. And then I think that she does not like Jackie.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Yeah. So Vanessa, again, to remind everyone, because there are a lot of characters, is the redhead on the goalie team, and she's ties love interest van oh, yeah.

Dr. Jessi Gold: People knowing kids.

Dr. Katrina Furey: And even like you're saying there we see those traumas right back to back, but also we see her backstory of her mom and how she's kind of been left by her mom in that way. And now here she is strapped in a plane that's exploding or catching fire, and now she's kind of left again but somehow gets out. So I think maybe we'll start with a rundown of the main characters.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Sure.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably just to orient ourselves a bit. So Jackie is on the team. She's kind of like the it girl, right? Like, she's the pretty one. She's the popular one. She has the boyfriend. And I thought she was the one we saw running naked through the woods originally. Who they sacrifice or something. Something. Now I don't know. I don't know who anyone is anymore. And then Shauna, played by Melanie Linsky, is her best friendfriend. Of me, maybe unclear. She's the one who ended up having sex with her boyfriend, with Jackie's boyfriend and getting pregnant. Oh, my God.

Portia Pendleton: Ends off right. She is still pregnant.

Dr. Katrina Furey: She's still pregnant, yeah. At some point. The trigger warning I gave you, Portia, was she tried to have an abortion in the woods. I thought that was really heart wrenching. I can't even find a word strong enough. What do you think? What did you think about all that part? Yeah, that part. That little part.

Dr. Jessi Gold: I think I get it in a lot of ways. If you don't have food and you are a kid anyway, like, what would have your choice been? A choice in the normal kind of setting, let alone setting where you're starving, everyone else is starving. You know nothing about babies or how to have a baby, and you are a baby. And I mean, I get and it's almost like you saw something on TV and that's what you do and so that's what you try to do. That's what it felt like.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

Dr. Jessi Gold: This is what I thought be a thing. And it's almost like just sort of the influence of restrictions and what people learn from that. But it's heart wrenching and it also just shows how scary it must be to be in that position as a kid anyway, let alone after a flame crash in the wilderness.

Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.

Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's a lot of trauma and a lot of vulnerability and it comes to ahead of it there. But I think it shows also how they support each other.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

Dr. Jessi Gold: Introduce Taisa, but she's there.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And that dynamic between Taisa and Shauna, I feel like again, in their adolescence and now in adulthood, as they're coming back together, just thinking that they were there together through these awful, horrible things. And when Ty, like, really is showing up for her in that way, I just thought was really intense and just really interesting way to see how the characters relationships develop over time. And with Ty, like, keeping that secret for as long as she could about the pregnancy and things like that, tyisse is another main character. Yeah.

Portia Pendleton: I was kind of shocked, I guess, at the end, which I don't want to just skip all over her other.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Scenes, but how it really did in.

Portia Pendleton: Fact impact her, like eating the dirt, her sleepwalking, her family situation, kind of like after the crash, her son, so we think is like the problem.

Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

Portia Pendleton: Or having some reaction to his mom, clearly. And then her political run, and then all of a sudden trying to jump back into the media. And it seems like all the other characters are like, we planned and we promised that we wouldn't do this,