Yellowjackets Season 2 Subverts Expectations With Callie, And It's Great
This article contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" season 2, episode 1.
If you watched "Yellowjackets" season 1, I doubt your favorite character was Callie Sadecki (Sarah Desjardins). The teenage daughter of Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Jeff (Warren Kole), she didn't have much personality beyond stereotypical "spoiled teenage daughter" character tropes. Callie's most memorable scene in season 1 was at her expense; in episode 5, "Blood Hive," Callie discovers her mom is cheating on her dad with Adam (Peter Gadiot). Callie tries to blackmail Shauna by threatening to tell Jeff, only to back down once Shauna explains how ruinous a divorce would be for Callie.
Shauna's affair with Adam ended with her murdering him. Now this season, she and Jeff (who is standing by her after several mutual misunderstandings) are trying to keep the crime covered up. Callie has been suspicious since she saw a missing person's report on Adam and grows even more distant from her parents. After Detective Kevyn Tan (Alex Wyndham) swings by the Sadecki house to ask about Shauna's connection with Adam in episode 2, "Edible Complex," Callie then goes day drinking to escape her family. She hits it off with a handsome stranger in a bar named Jay (John Reynolds), who claims he's also dealing with stress from parental drama. Unfortunately, it turns out that "Jay" is actually Detective Matt Saracusa, Kevyn's new partner.
I thought I knew where this was going. Saracusa would string Callie along the rest of the season, getting her to give away too much with terrible consequences for her parents come the season finale. My worries grew after episode 4, "Old Wounds," when Shauna confessed the whole truth to Callie. But then tonight's episode, "Two Truths and A Lie," proved me wrong — and I'm happy it did.
A family that plots together, stays together
"Two Truths and a Lie" opens with Callie and "Jay" on a bowling date. She gets upset when he won't kiss her (she's a minor and even undercover, he's still a cop), so he uses the good old-fashioned "I want to take things slow" routine. I feared this would be the first of many such scenes, but the "Yellowjackets" writers were smarter than I gave them credit for.
When Matt runs to the bathroom, the check comes and Callie notices his printed name doesn't match the one he gave her. She Googles him, sees he's a cop, and pieces things together. So, to throw him off Shauna's scent, Callie tells him that her mom's affair is with Jeff's best friend Randy (Jeff Holman), not Adam.
When Callie gets home, she fesses up to her parents. At first, they're upset — their teenage daughter is dating an older man, who's a cop investigating them no less — but soon Shauna is complimenting her quick thinking and staging a motel meet-up with Randy (minus the actual having sex with him part). Jeff is still upset, but his objection to being pretend-cuckolded by his best friend of all people is overruled. After all, to paraphrase Callie, that's still better than the cops knowing Shauna was sleeping with the man she killed.
Making Callie her parents' accomplice is a great way to reinvent her and bring her closer to the narrative's orbit. I'm reminded of "The Americans" — when Paige Jennings (Holly Taylor) discovered her parents were really Soviet spies, she became a much more engaging character. Plus, Callie's behavior fits the primary theme of "Yellowjackets" — teen girls can be little monsters.
New episodes of "Yellowjackets" release on streaming every Friday and air on television every Sunday.