Ms. Crumble/The Witch: How Trauma and Healing From Trauma Changes Us and What it Means to Call Someone Crazy
Daybreak is a zombie apocalypse show where all the adults have turned into zombies but the children remain unaffected. In the show there is a character, Ms. Crumble/The Witch. Her story is one of trauma, physical and mental, how healing from that trauma changes us and what it means to be called crazy.
We learn in an earlier episode of the show that her real name is not Crumble. She cried during class once, someone made fun of her, her name was changed in the school system and she had to change her name legally to cash her checks. She walks around every day with a name made to ridicule her. We also see in episode seven her relationship with Principal Burr, and how he used this relationship to manipulate her for his own benefit.
In episode seven we see Ms. Crumbles story play out through distorted memories. Her memories being presented as a sitcom and her processing of these memories being behind the scenes of this sitcom. She has to stop during her memories to ask if it’s true. She at one point asks “is this a flashback or a nightmare?” with the director responding “yes”. Every other character tells their story through some form of narration and some style of flashbacks. The difference with Crumble is that she largely doesn’t narrate, she asks questions. And while she has flashbacks, they are distorted. She sees the world and her story like this not only due to the traumatic head injury we see she suffered later in the episode, but also due to the traumatic events that happened in her life. To put it more simply, she sees her life as a show and asks questions due to the head injury, but she sees it as a sitcom due to the events of her life.
Near the end of the episode, she monologues to camera. She ends the monologue by saying “I have a traumatic head injury, I’m not crazy.” Throughout the show its been said that she’s crazy, and we don’t really question it since she talks to herself and seems to think she can turn to mist, among other things. But she was never crazy, she had a head injury. And even if she was mentally unwell, she doesn’t have to be that way forever. She won’t be. She didn’t consciously take the steps to heal her brain. The phrase “our brains are constantly healing.” is said multiple times throughout this episode. While conscious actions have to be taken to better ourselves, sometimes it just happens, without you even realizing.
As far as how her trauma changed her, it’s implied that her head injury is what stopped her from turning full zombie. And from the side of mental/emotional trauma, near the end of the episode she says she even remembers her name. When asked, she says it’s not important, she’s “not that person anymore”. Her experiences as ‘Ms. Crumble’ and ‘The Witch’ have changed her.
