Making another post actually, because all of the symbolism in Win or Lose is amazing.
Having anxiety be a creature that just grows and grows, and eats away and crushes Laurie down until she can't speak or walk like she used to? Having Laurie's dad always be under the sun, or some kind of light to signify that while Laurie is religious, and looks up to god, what she's really looking to is her father?
The way armour is necessary for some jobs - Frank need to be able to take criticism, and still stick firm to what he knows is true, - and that relief of taking it off? And when it bleeds into personal life, what can he even do? When he's been heart, because he can't open up, doesn't that just make it harder to shed that in the first place?
And then Ira, whose perspective reminds me a lot of Captain Underpants, and is so, so sweet. He's just a little kid, and a little weird, and he just wants friends who like him for that! And he wants his big sister to like him, and spend time with him! And he's so imaginative, the scribbly, cartoon style of his little world he spies through? I was just in love. The fact that he kept picturing the teenagers as super heros and rebels and good guys- and just the fact that he sounds like a kid! Are you kidding, that autraulian joke? I laughed so hard because I've heard kids talk like that, that's what shy, caring little kids sound like when they've been shot down before!
Yuwen's mini me inside his heart screaming like me!!, the version of him he doesn't let out, because it's cardboard and flimsy and so easy to crush. I'm really amazed at the way they portrayed Yuwen and Taylor, because i remember being in middleschool, and while I never dated (cough cough aroace), the depiction of them "picking out curtains and moving in" feels so real, because I do believe that's what love will always feel like, no matter the age. Being in middleschool doesn't mean the love isn't true, or isn't there just because it's not likely to last. And the way they depicted kissing, not by showing them kiss, but by showing what it felt like? I was amazed. Baffled. I can't believe I haven't seen more things like that.
(It's actually incredibly interesting to me, that 2/3 main male characters shown so far, have gimmicks of protection. Protecting themselves, their emotions, and who they are as a person, because they feel they can't be open and honest, they feel they can't trust their emotions to guide them.)
I talked about Rochelle and her mom in a seperate post, but the gasp I let out when I realized Rochelle's gravity was weird because she didn't have the stable force of a mom? Oh my god. Rochelle feels like her family is upside down, that she has to be the adult, and because of that, every force in her life is turned upside. She has no one to rely on and nothing to ground her, until her mom is finally there for her, no phone in hand at the end of episode 4. Gravity rights itself because her mom is there, fully present, to help her.
The way they contrasted Rochelle's episode's mood with her mom's was fantastic, because her mom's felt like a performance. She's performing, always, because she doesn't know how to be otherwise! She performs being a good mom and performs being happy for her audience, and even performs at the party, wether she wants to or not! That was an audience! And everything about her performance has bleeded into the way she sees the world, how everything's pink and sparkling and upbeat. It's only when she finds Rochelle do we see her not performing, we get to see, for the first time, who Vanessa is for just Rochelle. For just her family.
I'm so invested, so obsessed, SO READY FOR THE NEXT TWO EPISODES!!
(As a sidenote, if you haven't seen the storyboards of the cut trans scene, here's a link to the internet archive of them. I can't find them anywhere else. But the Picasso style falling apart, the shattering and splitting of identity, because Kai is scared, and has to act both parts and it's confusing and hurting her and oh- it really just punches me in the gut.
Here's the link directly to the archive: https://archive.org/details/23fr-4r
and the link to the reddit post i got it from: https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/comments/1hhj1zh/partially_lost_deleted_storyline_from_upcoming/
please go watch it if you like the show it's absolutely beautiful <3)
