Shining Girls Review: Screamer (Season 1 Episode 5)

After an episode that finally felt as though it were really moving the story of the series forward, Shining Girls Season 1 Episode 5, “Screamer,” takes several unnecessary steps back, returning to the same initial themes of gaslighting and mistrust it seemed we’d moved past. 

Granted, I suppose the natural reaction to a woman that insists reality is constantly changing around in ways no one else can see is to question her sanity. But given that we, as viewers, have been aware that Kirby is telling the truth for multiple episodes now, it’s just pointlessly frustrating to watch characters like Dan suddenly start to mistrust and disbelieve her all over again.

(Not to mention that he apparently gets constant second chances despite literally showing up to work drunk repeatedly, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Yet, I suppose there is something interesting about the idea that Shining Girls the show is also regularly gaslighting its own viewers in a sort of meta sense, insisting that there’s still maybe something wrong with Kirby despite the fact that we can see Harper’s actions independent of hers and know that he/his actions are real.

In the wake of Kirby’s attack in the laundromat that suddenly became the Bee Better Bar, she’s determined to force someone to draw an accurate composite sketch of the man she saw (Harper) and to pass it around to various places. (Despite the fact that the cops are like…not into this idea because I guess they’re just consistently terrible at their jobs.)

The gumshoe investigative work is once again, the best part of this hour, as Kirby keeps right on doing the things the cops won’t bother to try or follow up on, like actually showing people the sketch of the man who attacked her and running down clues like the military tattoo she remembers seeing, which is what ultimately leads her to Leo.

Or warning Jinny that something dangerous is out there, and most likely coming for her too.

There’s something viscerally hopeful about watching Jinny slowly start to put the pieces together—that whoever stole her keys has been using them to stalk her in her place of work, that she’s definitely see the man in Kirby’s sketch at her work before. She’s aware now, and that’s got to count for something—doesn’t it?

But it also feel like, since we essentially already saw Jinny die, and now she’s reliving several of the other moments we saw in the series pilot, there’s no real way for her death to be undone. Or…is it? After all, she didn’t meet Harper on the observatory roof the first time we saw that scene. Can time be rewritten in these women’s favors for once?

The thing is, though, we’re five episodes into this show now. Shining Girlshas shown us enough for viewers to have keyed into some of its biggest, reality-bending ideas. Yet, the show seems determined that the people onscreen stay as dumb as possible for as long as possible.

Perhaps this would land differently on a version of this show where we were meant to be questioning our realities right along with Kirby. Where we weren’t being constantly shown that she’s right, that something beyond the realm of our understanding is lurking just on the periphery of things. 

Yet, Shining Girls just keeps right on refusing to look at it, content to loop back around to another installment of Dan’s not sure if Kirby’s a reliable narrator of her own story, part ten. It’s frustrating from a narrative perspective (because other than a few key reveals about Harper which we’ll get to in a second, almost nothing of note actually happens in a way that moves the story forward this week) and it’s infuriating as a female viewer. 

I mean, we know that women have to fight harder to be heard and believed but whew how many times do we have to watch that play out onscreen?

Elsewhere, Harper wakes up in the hospital—in what may well be the first indication that he’s actually a human who can be hurt or harmed—and immediately proceeds to freak out, in what is another example of Shining Girls giving us just enough information to sort of guess what it all means without actually confirming anything. 

“Screamer” implies that the house Harper lives in is somehow connected to his strange time travel powers, and clearly serves as some sort of source/home base, since he seems to be incapable of being away from it for more than 12-15 hours without bad things happening to him.

What those bad things are is unclear, but since this episode also implies that Leo used to do the same thing that Harper does now and Leo is demonstrably insane now that he’s no longer in the house, it seems a safe bet that’s what would have happened to him too. 

Though, naturally, the question of how the power shifted from Leo to Harper, whether there was ever more than one time-traveling murderer running around, or how either of them discovered this house and whatever it is that it can do, are all still up in the air. 

And with just three episodes to go…it’s probably time that Shining Girls starts giving us some real answers.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• This series is at its strongest whenever Elizabeth Moss and Philippa Soo are allowed to share the screen. 
• I’m so glad that Dan finally started to put the pieces together about the fact that he has seen–and spoken to!!—Harper more than once.
• I desperately want to know so much more about Marcus, and how he ended up this bottomless well of patience where Kirby is concerned. He truly seems like he’s wandered in from a different world himself sometimes.

What did you think of this episode of Shining Girls? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Shining Girls stream Fridays on Apple TV+. 

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