Been thinking a lot about the brunch scene with Shauna, Jeff, and Jackie’s parents and what it can tell us about the characters. I may be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure Jackie’s dad stays pretty much silent the whole time. Jackie’s mom is clearly the decision-maker in the couple and it seems like he’s along for the ride. He grabs her hand to show solidarity in the offer to pay Callie’s tuition but is pretty irrelevant on his own.
I think that knowing this is Jackie’s main example of love growing up can contextualize a lot of her and Shauna’s dynamic. Jackie’s parents have shown her that love is one person submitting to another. It’s her dad going along with her mom’s decisions and blindly supporting everything she does. It’s her mom taking charge for both of them and not asking for his input. Jackie seems to act like her mom with Shauna and expect Shauna to act like her dad. Their relationship doesn’t even necessarily need to be interpreted as romantic, though I think it can be. Shauna is Jackie’s main person. She seems like the only person that Jackie has any real intimacy with throughout the show. So it makes sense that she’d try to mirror her parents’ relationship with her.
So when Shauna wants to make her own decisions or just disagrees with Jackie, Jackie interprets that as Shauna not loving her. If Shauna loved her, then she would agree no matter what. Of course, that’s not healthy and it makes Shauna feel stifled, but it’s all Jackie knows. And Jackie feels like any indication of Shauna’s independence means she loses her. So Jackie tries to cling harder to her, to control more, which only serves to push Shauna further away.
And Shauna, the nonconfrontational child of divorce, can’t talk to Jackie about how she feels. Jackie has demonstrated that if Shauna is her own person, Jackie will leave. Shauna disagreed with Jackie’s idea to stay by the plane, and Jackie’s immediate response was to ignore her all day. She even pretended to buddy up to Mari to make Shauna jealous. So Shauna feels like Jackie sees her as replaceable. If she tries to be independent at all, she loses Jackie. And as much as Shauna is resentful of the position Jackie has put her in, she still loves Jackie and doesn’t want to lose her.
I feel like the show does a good job of giving us enough context on each character to understand why they act the way they do. They make dumb decisions because they’re teenagers and can’t fully understand their own baggage. But at their heart, they’re both desperately trying to maintain their friendship. They lash out when they feel rejected. Jackie’s problem is with the interpretation of Shauna’s actions. She views any disagreement or deviation as rejection. Shauna’s issue is with communication. She thinks that openly admitting her frustrations would make Jackie leave her.
Plus, the Taylors have made it clear that Jackie can’t just be good. She has to be the best, which means better than Shauna. So Shauna has to be the passive, lesser side kick while Jackie has to remain in control at all times and keep being the best. The funny thing is, they tell Shauna and Jeff how much better than them Jackie would be doing if she was alive, but if Jackie was there, they would probably be telling her she should be doing better. There is no ceiling to being the best so Jackie could never be enough while she was alive.
I just think it’s very interesting that a pretty short scene with the Taylors can give us so much insight into Jackie as a character. We don’t see Shauna’s parents but their divorce is mentioned which makes it feel relevant. It makes sense that her parents splitting up would contribute to Shauna’s passivity and inability to communicate. Her parents admitted they were unhappy and her family was broken up. If Shauna just never admits she’s unhappy, nothing has to change.
I really love how layered and morally grey all these characters are. And it’s just so devastating because these were manageable issues that got mixed up with teen angst before being thrown into a life-or-death situation. None of it needed to happen but these girls didn’t know any other way to be.
