Jello Reviews - "Haunting of Hill House / Bly Manor"

Did anyone else realize the five kids of Hill House represent the 5 stages of grief? Pretty sure Steve is denial, Shirley is anger, Theo is bargaining, (an element of which is taking up stimuli that distracts from pain, which is why she asks the girl she ends up seeing to touch her in that one scene) Luke is depression and Nell is acceptance —it’s also in order from oldest to youngest in order of the stages, I think

JimmyJames

In Bly, I liked the tie-in with Dementia and the ghosts being stuck in memories. It's definitely on-the-nose and not subtle, but I just found the link between the two cute. We hear about Owen's mum's dementia for several episodes, and then episode 5 is when we get to explore Owen's perspective on dementia alongside the events Hannah goes through in Ep 5. ...idk, you didn't mention it and I thought it worth mentioning here is all - easily my biggest takeaway from the show. (Which doesn't reflect well on the show when my takeaway is basically just one thread, but still, I liked it. The ghost mechanics are definitely the most interesting thing about Bly.)

Finn Underwood

Also if your looking to watch any more of Mike Flanagans stuff, Dr Sleep was good and I really liked Before I Wake, which is on Netflix.

Chandler B

Okay I can’t compose my thoughts so, TLDR; I get that Shirley is arguably a bad person, but I like that her characters response to a very sad situation, her moms untimely death and them being taken away from her dad, is to try and control them in a vain attempt to keep the family together. I really liked the idea of her becoming a funeral home director/mortician because one brought her some comfort after the death of her mother. I liked that this tragedy took her caring nature as a little girl, why she tried to care for the kittens, corrupted it and made her kind of bad. I haven’t rewatched Hill house in like…a year, so I might be misremembering stuff, but I liked Shirley overall. Hot take. I do agree that the cheating plot was dumb.

Chandler B

Okay so I didn't go into this meaning to write a small essay, but I have a lot of thoughts on Shirley so here we go! My problem with Shirl is that she's the kind of person who just *decides* something is now a rule and everybody else has to agree with her and if you don't follow her rules she goes ballistic. Don't get me wrong, I understand her on paper. She's believable and well-written, I just think that she's an awful person. Shirly’s big character trait is that she wants to take care of things. The baby kittens, Theo, Luke (for a time), Nell at her wedding, Nell’s corpse, etc. The problem is that she sucks at this. She’s just not good at it. Time and time again we are shown that Shirly wants to be the caregiver, but her need to feel like a caregiver takes precedence over the wellbeing of the people she’s looking after. She prevents Luke from attending his twin’s wedding because she thinks she’s protecting Nellie. This is something that both she AND Nellie regret for the rest of their lives. After Nellie dies, Shirly insists on preparing her body for the funeral because “it’s the right thing to do”. Literally every other character is horrified by this and insists she doesn’t do it and she gets mad because *she* wants to, even though it makes everyone uncomfortable (herself included)! She frames it like it’s something she has to do “for Nellie”, but really it’s something she’s doing for herself. Closure for the little sister she couldn’t save. Another dead kitten. On top of that, Shirley is just… an idiot? At one point during a blackout she finds that her loving husband and Theo took shelter in the same closet together. Her immediate assumption is that her husband, father of two, is cheating on her… with her *lesbian sister.* What an idiot! What a colossal fucking idiot! This is so unbelievably stupid that I literally forgot about it until this writing, otherwise I would’ve bitched about it in the above audio clip. Shirley is fully aware that Theo is gay (they make a point to show you this both at Nell’s wedding and in the present) but for some reason she makes this assumption anyways. I think this is *supposed* to be her projecting her guilt about her own infidelity onto her husband. In my opinion this whole subplot is one of the few misses in *Hill House*’s writing. Every other sibling has to deal with their own shortcomings as a person during the climax of the story. Their own personal and literal demons in the Red Room. Luke’s friend from rehab, Steve with his wife, Theo with her self-imposed isolation. These are all major character arcs that affect not only the sibling in question, but other characters we have seen and cared about the entire show. Steve’s vasectomy is tied to the perception of his family and their mental health. Our heart breaks for poor Luke trying and failing to save his friend as he is betrayed and left in the streets. Shirley fucked some guy at an airport. No other character ever met this man. He never affects anything or anyone else but Shirley, and even then only barely. This man has nothing to do with her theme of being the mother hen. They just… needed to give Shirley a “final boss”, and unfortunately the main antagonist in every scene with Shirley in it is... Shirley! We can’t very well have her face off against herself now, can we? So here he is! Sexy airport man! The one “ghost” in the series who fits into absolutely nothing. Shirley is a massive hypocrite in every way. She immediately blames her husband for cheating with—and I cannot stress this enough—sister who is a lesbian. Shirley claims Steve shirks his duties as “the older brother” and that she has to do everything. Now, Steve is far from perfect. He’s easily the biggest asshole in the show after Shirley, but the truth of the matter is that the Crane family is only as stable as they are because of Steve’s book money. Without that money Theo couldn’t have gotten her degree. Nellie never wouldn’t have met her husband. Luke NEVER could’ve stayed in rehab as long as he did. Shirley herself constantly cuts corners on funeral costs for clients to the point she herself is almost broke, so her husband has to take Steve’s money behind her back. Obviously this is a betrayal, but Shirley’s hatred of Steve’s book is 100% a problem of her own making and the only reason she never asks her brother for help is pride. Frankly I never thought it made sense for Shirley of all people to be the one so deeply mad at Steve for his book in the first place. She’s not the one who’s story is being stolen and whose character is being slandered. That’s Nell and Luke! And Nellie is rightfully mad at Steve! When she confronts him that’s a really good scene because it makes sense that she would be mad at Steve! If anything Shirley’s take should be more like Theo’s, a neutral dislike and quiet condescension. Instead, Shirley just *decides* to be mad about the book like she *decides* that it’s her job to dress Nell’s corpse for the funeral There’s a scene where Steve and their father are driving around looking for Luke. They report in and say they haven’t found him yet and Shirley explodes. She passive-aggressively says “I’m elbow-deep in our little sister’s corpse! I think the least you can do is GET LUKE TO THE AIRPORT!” This is a great scene for showing off why Shirley is the absolute fucking worst. She’s trying to play the martyr because she’s doing the unthinkably awful job of preparing her dead sister for a funeral… but that’s something nobody asked her to do. It’s a job she gave herself. In fact, it’s a job that her siblings and her husband explicitly told her not to do. And her she is getting mad at her brother and father (who have done nothing wrong in this scene) because they can’t find their missing brother who ran off on the streets within the course of a two hour car ride? Anyways one of the best scenes in the show is when Nell’s ghost yells at Shirley and Theo and causes their car to spin off the road because for a second I thought that Shirley might crash her car and die :)

JelloApocalypse

Love these reviews! Can’t wait for the next one!

You're not alone at all. I wouldn't say I related to her but I understood why she was so angry and hostile.

Willow Whisper

Also i'm sad, I feel so alone in the "I didnt hate Shirley Craine" club XD

Chandler B

So from what I can tell, Bly Manor is less an adaptation of the Turning of the Screw and kind of became an adaptation of all of that authors works; like they incorporated elements from a bunch. I get what your saying though; the ending was kind of meh compared to how it started.

Chandler B

When you mentioned "The Turning of the Screw," something clicked in my brain, because there is a really bad movie called "The Turning" that is essentially a worse version of Bly Manor, because it's also an adaptation of that story.

BedknobsandBookshelves