Emmy Catch-Up: I May Destroy You

Every year, I watch the six submitted episodes of every series I don’t regularly watch that’s up for one of the Emmy series prizes. Last year, I started watching the entire season of each show to get a better idea of the quality I missed, and I’ve decided to continue that this year.

I May Destroy You: Season 1, Episode 6 “The Alliance” (B+)

It’s so interesting to see how, in the aftermath of Arabella’s big bombshell and all the subsequent press and chaos, this show chooses to spend almost the entire episode in flashbacks to reveal a deep pain that Arabella was involved in causing without realizing it. Terry didn’t seem impressed with the group that Arabella was going to, especially when she found out that it with Theo, who was referenced as a classmate but without all the important context. Seeing how Theo had photos taken of her by Ryan on his flip phone without her consent indicated how powerless she was in a horrifically judgmental society, and agreeing to do more for money only to throw his phone out the window was an intriguing step designed to, in some way, give him his due. Cutting herself in the bathroom and then framing it as a violent sexual assault prompted Arabella and Terry to come to the aid of their friend Ryan once they found the phone, which told a different story, but everything is much more complicated than that. The racism they saw in Theo accusing Ryan was evidently rooted in the cruel comment she muttered as she passed them walking out of the school, and she also revealed later that her mother had forced her to make false testimony against her stepfather, presumably to offer her a better life even if the truth was lost along the way. The unconditional support that Arabella and Theo now offered each other was affirming, and the list of statistics that Theo opened the meeting with was truly harrowing.