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Warning: All spoilers all the time below.
Tirhakah: The discourse aroundSwarmhas gone to just awful places.
Like predictably awful places.
Angelica: Can you unpack peoples reactions?
Twitter was seeing Chloe Baileys bare cheeks and Damson Idris breaking it down in the first 20 minutes.
And Chloe is in this weird position of visibility now.
So everything shes doing is hyperscrutinized.
Shes 24, right?
Like, shes allowed to make some missteps.
Tirhakah: She was homeschooled, goddamn it!
Im always like, yall, Chloes a homeschooled, Christian kid who just got thick.
It makes sense, right?
Especially with how shes like figuring out her sexuality publicly.
Shamira:Outside of that, I was actually curious about whether or not it was a body double.
Angelica: Thats what I was interested in as well.
And how you portray that you dont have to show peoples actual genitals!
These are all things that you cant mask once youre actually bumping uglies.
Because youll be dealing with depression or whatever other things that are interfering.
Its usually indicative of other things, not just that your sex is getting bad.
Anyway, like, it’s possible for you to ask questions about what is merited on TV.
But you cant dictate for someone that they feel exploited if they havent even said they feel exploited.
Angelica, what did that scene reflect for you when you saw it?
Angelica: Dres Dominique Fishbacks function in it.
Its kind of weird that people lose out on the storytelling aspect cuz theyre seeing some ass.
Like, come on, yall.
Shes in love with this woman.
Shes not interested in him; shes interested in how close he is to her.
I think thats why shes looking at him in a very judgmental sort of way.
And you’re free to tell what hes thinking, which is,Oh, she wants this.
A very intriguing and rich moment thanks to Dominique Fishbacks performance.
Reading that, I realize just how good of a performance Fishback is doing.
Glover said, I kept telling her, youre not regular people.
You dont have to find the humanity in your character.
Thats the audiences job.
Donald Glover is not a good storyteller.
He happened upon good things, hes done good things.
But I think his ethos as a storyteller is completely opposed to how I look at storytelling.
Its only cohesive because of what Fishback is doing.
The showrunners who I wish would shut up sometimes are also obsessed with the representational aspects.
Like, oh, were getting parity with white women who get to be crazy onscreen.
Its a Black womans story, but its not really about Black women, if that makes sense.
Tirhakah:Can I push you on that a little bit?
What is it about?
Shamira:They need to stop talking.
Tirhakah:It doesnt feel like shes totally an animal.
It doesnt feel like shes disconnected from her emotions.
Angelica: No, she isnt.
For me its also that people talking about anger doesnt make sense.
This is a lonely, hurt person.
It goes nowhere completely.
You dont necessarily wanna empathize with someones killing spree to understand the sequence of actions.
But, this cascade, that overwhelm, this is what she knows, right?
That final murder is different from the first murder.
You see her crying, right?
Thats a clear emotional spectrum of someone who is grappling with something very intense.
That doesnt mean that there shouldnt be any accountability or she should be exonerated for all her actions.
It just means that theres a clear evolution.
And what Dominique did was make us curious to all those circumstances she didnt even fucking know herself.
Angelica:Thats a good actor to be able to conjure what you yourself are actually confused about.
That final murder is the most intimate because she uses blunt-force trauma or guns every other time.
This time, like shes straddling this woman, strangling her, crying, can barely look at her.
Shes looking more past the cameras eye line.
Its actually very smart visual choices.
Theyre doing their own show a disservice.
Angelica:I think its muddling my thoughts on it.
I said earlier, oh, I dont think its about Black women.
But actually I think that episode six is all about Black women falling through the cracks.
Theres something fascinating and prickly and intriguing about that.
So when you interview them, youre thinking youre gonna get all these explanations.
But sometimes people dont really know what theyre creating.
Thats what people are kind of bumping into.
The way Dominique Fishback is acting shows that she is seeing humanity and dynamics that are pretty complex.
Which Im like, this is not the parody I was asking for.
Shamira:I found the scene where she was at thatNXIVM cultthrilling.
I was like,Billie Eilish, okay!
Tirhakah: Shes got some layers to her!
Angelica: It was smart in terms of rounding out how the show is mulling through femininity.
We see Dre in the context of a very specific kind of white woman.
The scene where Billie Eilishs character, Eva, queen of this cult, is snapping her fingers?
She slowly goes from Kayla to Dre.
The small allusions to the violence and her biological family, which she initially calls milk, becomes blood.
Eva goes, Do you pray?
Dre answers, I used to but I stopped.
And its, Oh, because I realized that God is just my voice echoing.
Tirhakah: A fucking bar!
This is a woman whos playing with emotional extremes.
And theyre so reluctant to acknowledge it.
Theyre reluctant to assign an -ismto it.
They tell us she went to a psychiatrist, psychologist, and all that other stuff.
You dont go to somebody without them saying, You got something, heres a bunch of pills.
Especially just going to a psychiatrist, they tell you something after like 15 minutes.
Angelica:Thats a very weird way to describe this show.
I never thought of her as a villain.
Shamira:Its a tragedy.
Angelica:Shes a tragedy.
Its an alienating use of language to describe the character like that.
I just dont see it as a villain origin story.
Its a tragedy that you know is not gonna have a great conclusion.
But even with a character who makes such fucked-up decisions, youre hoping that she gains something.
That theres something at the end for her.
And we are no longer in reality, were in whatever dream space she exists in.
Tirhakah:So youre saying thatNijah/Beyoncedidnt caress Dre in her bosom?
Angelica:Right, what was that!?
Shamira:I wanna know if that CGI was bad on purpose.
Theres not going to be a resource that comes there for her.
I dont think its novel beyond her being a Black woman, though.
If you watch enough movies about mad women, you notice certain currents.
You dont know what has happened to her, but you know her emotional truth.
Shamira:There are so many moments where you are asked to fill in the universe.
Was there an actual propulsion of plot with that?
Theres more conversation around needing more Black womens rage onscreen, or womens anger onscreen.
Viola Davis, you know, Angela Bassett.
These are things that are explored.
This is not a novel, unprecedented concept.
She stepped up to that challenge.
Angelica:I noticed her movements too; theyre jarring.
For Dre, its overconsumption of shitty foods.
What is that connection?
Shamira:Shes so restricted with everything else.
Not drinking, not smoking.
Tirhakah:She said,Im doing everything!
No ones gonna make fun of me being a virgin again, its not happening!
Shamira:She got out that freak-em dress and she was like,Im that girl.
Where do yall stand on it?
Ive seen threads on color theory.
Ive seen it all.
I dont think so.
First of all, they went outta their way to indicate that Marissa had a self-harm habit.
Even though they used that as another opportunity to showcase Dres psychosexual relationship with Marissa.
I mean, I love my friends.
I dont be kissing their scars.
Angelica:Ive never kissed a friends scars.
Tirhakah: A friend?
Shamira:A sister?
People are forgetting that.
Theres a reason why shes so attached to her phone.
Its not just standom.
Its because she needs to stay attached to Marissa because the last thing she did was ignore Marissa.
And she feels immense guilt about that.
She feels responsible for this death, so she wants to protect and defend her memory.
Tirhakah:Okay, buthowresponsible is she?
She has guilt and shame.
Could it be from her being the one who actually killed Marissa?
Shamira:So are we saying that she, like, completely made up being in that niggas bed?
It doesnt add up.
They think that she made up or dreamed about it.
Did she dream going to the club?
Did she dream Marissa leaving?
Did she dream the video that Marissa sent her?
At what point is it that she actually went back and killed her?
Angelica:People thinking she killed Marissa is a cruel reading of her character.
It misunderstands her emotional state in a lot of ways.
To me, Dre reads as the person who really loved Marissa.
And so shes grieving a multitude of losses at once.
Shamira:Shes like catatonic for days on end after that death.
She clearly stops paying bills.
And as weve already discussed, after every other death, she goes on a binge.
But she didnt revel in Marissas death.
This is an actual moment of grief for her.
Tirhakah:Yeah, until its not, and she becomes fucking Jason Voorhees and murders everyone.
Like, did she start just like Googling how to murder?
Tirhakah:Shes really good at it.
Like, shes really fucking good.
Angelica:I did laugh when she ran over Billie Eilish after hitting her with the car.
Shamira:There were legit bits of laugh-out-loud humor.
Playing those comedic beats even in the middle of abject violence.
That maniacal laugh that she had while she was killing all the white bitches!?
And poorParis Halsey Jackson.
That diner scene was just a master class in nonverbal expression.
And then she just beat the shit outta him.
Like, imagine those were your last words.
Angelica:Swarmis a good example about how critics and audiences alike really struggle with nuance.
We dont know how to reckon with work that is complicated and messy and lacks certain elegance.
What does that have to do with criticism?
It just doesnt execute.
But what it does execute is the actual roles they cast really well.
Those actual performances lifted the show.
