River Listens To: Mayfair Watchers Society - Episodes 5 & 6
We're starting to pick up more hints towards the overarching plotline as I move along! I'm cataloguing my thoughts in between shiny hunting sessions in Pokemon Rumble, so my writing may be a little more sparse. As always, spoilers under the cut!
📸 Episode 5: Flash Bulb
Here it is: the incident that was hinted at in Episode 2 with the Hayward Textile Mill! This episode was a little more difficult to listen to for me. The moth sound effects were a bit over-exaggerated, but also, I'm not sure how else one would communicate moth flight in an audio-only medium. The interviewer was also hard to understand sometimes. Granted, I could've looked at the transcript, but I was multitasking, so I'll take the L for that one. But there's probably a reason this is the first episode that comes up when I search "mayfair watchers society transcript".
I think the main thing making this a more difficult listen, though, was the character dynamic between our two leads, Drew and Cam. This doesn't mean it was a bad dynamic! They just don't have the easy chemistry of some of our previous characters. It made for a more tense episode, but I still think that it was a good story. In fact, I think their tension kind of carried the episode.
To elaborate, you can get the feeling immediately from the way Cam and Drew talk to each other that they are in a rough spot. Drew insults Cam a lot, and they both keep blaming each other for mistakes. The reason why is made apparent if you listen closely, though. Cam mentions someone named Finch who evidently knows that the mill had holes in the second floor. Cam was evidently supposed to come to the mill with them last year, until an unspecified incident which makes both her and Drew uncomfortable to even mention in passing. This name comes up a couple more times, until Drew says this:
"Finch was always full of shit anyway."
Was. This made their entire dynamic click for me. I think this is a mutual friend, or perhaps just a friend of Cam's, who these two had differing feelings on, and their evident loss must have torn them apart. Cam speaks of them fondly, but Drew dropping this line is what gives me the impression of what their dynamic must have been like when Finch was around. He later says that he's not going to leave Cam alone, so the remaining two clearly care for each other. There's just something making that difficult to sustain right now.
It's clear, too, that whatever happened with Finch is not the only thing straining this friendship. When Drew says that Cam's mom is nice, she says that he only thinks that because he doesn't have to live with her. Cam later asks if Drew is dealing with "stepdad stuff", which Drew does not want to talk about. So, it seems like familial issues on both ends are putting stressors on these teens and their shaky relationship.
There is more loss in the background of the episode, too. Cam mentions that her mom has been working late because someone "stopped showing up to work". That may be inconspicuous if this were not Mayfair. Drew also once mentions a brother, who he speaks about with some level of reverence; Cam later reveals that said brother was hit by a car. These two teens are clearly going through it.
Ultimately, the monster itself wasn't as exciting. Like I said, the characters felt like the greater focus. I'm glad for my relisten, because it shed a lot of light on the underpinnings of this episode that made it make so much more sense to me why it's so stressful.
🪵 Episode 6: The Host
This episode rocks. I remember liking it the first time, and it might be my favorite so far on this relisten. I like the characters, the setting, the anomaly of the week... There's a lot that I enjoy about this episode, and I'll get into why.
Arthur is a hilarious character to me. He's the epitome of "white environmentalist who thinks a week in a cabin is returning to his spiritual roots" and I find it so fun to rag on him. Let's look at the notes I kept on Arthur specifically (non-exhaustive):
"So-called civilization" oh it's one of those guys
OF COURSE HE'S WRITING A BOOK LOLLL
Guy who believes in untouched wilderness. Everyone point and laugh
"I'M OUT HERE EARNING M E N T A L WEALTH. THE CURRENCY YOU CAN NEVER RUN OUT OF. I JUST SAW A CONDOR"
"Always the fuckin' owls" guys do you think he's getting tired of this already?
He's so giving "humans are the virus"
I don't hate him. Don't let this list give you the impression that I hate him. I just think he's absolutely hilarious to make fun of because I've definitely met this guy before at like, REI. He's a guy who is disillusioned with capitalism but doesn't understand that it's capitalism and thinks that people just individually choose to work office jobs and go to college. You can tell this is true when he goes off on his friend Marv for "the crypto lifestyle" and blames him instead of, I don't know, the 1%. In that same scene, he compares his friend James' coming out (diversity win!) to himself doing his little off-the-grid soul search. He quickly realizes that he's being a dick, but like, it's emblematic of his deeper issues.
You can also tell how quickly he loses his mind being alone. I pointed out in my silly list how quick he is to curse out the owls. He also very audibly screams into his pillow before turning off the recording in one segment. Which makes sense, because he has no idea what he's doing out here. He thinks he's suuuch a naturalist, but his ass is NOT following the 6 foot rule for disposing of fecal waste. This man is going on about people not wanting to look truth in the eyes, and then he hears the most bearlike noises ever recorded and says shit like, "Must be that bird again." It's funny how out of his depth he is when he wants so badly to be a part of the natural world.
It's interesting how seamlessly his attitude towards nature flows into becoming one with the barnacles, or the Ick, or whatever we're calling it. He starts out already saying that these things out here are people, too. This made it kind of hard for me to tell when the infection started, or if there is an infection to speak of until he gets claimed at the end of the episode. I'm unclear on whether these barnacle things have some sort of mental effect upon first sighting, or if he's only lost when he makes physical contact with the thing that was previously a deer. I'm leaning towards the latter, or else I'm not sure he would have been so frightened by the bear-thing at the stream. But I'm still a bit uncertain of the mechanics of this anomaly.
Upon reading the transcript, things became a bit easier to understand. I misinterpreted some things in my notes; I'm unsure whether this fault actually lies on the sound design, since I was listening without headphones again. I did notice a gentle breeze at the beginning of the episode, which got me into the atmosphere. I also noticed that the creatures outside were sounding a little fucked up while Arthur here was still hearing birds. There's one bit at the end of the transcript that's really raw, but left me confused:
His voice fades away. The noises of the barnacles rise even higher. The bear roars. So does the ocean.
It's quite evocative, but it made me give the end of the episode another listen, because I did not catch any ocean sounds on my first go. It's faint, but you can definitely hear the ocean if you're paying attention. I have to imagine that this is metaphorical, otherwise it raises a lot more questions about how this anomaly works.
This episode had a lot of good dialogue lines, too. For as much as I make fun of Arthur, he delivers some real bangers, such as the following:
"How can you know something's dead if you don't know how it lives?"
and:
"The point is, I ripped out the part that rots. Now, the healing can begin."
I give the guy a lot of shit, but you can tell that he's a writer. (I also really like his VA; they use him a lot, but I find him to be quite effective.)
Overall, I really like this episode. I'm still a little shaky on how the Ick works, but since this is a monster of the week show, I don't think I need to dwell on it much. Some anomalies might play by different rules than others. That's something to keep in mind. I found the theming of the episode to be fantastic: guy moves to the woods with nobody to escape what he feels are the faults of humanity. Guy rejects connection in doing this. Guy then finds connection by succumbing to the horrors. I can't quite articulate it, but it's a fun turn-around. I look forward to more episodes like this.