digging into the details of the helena egg sequence with her father almost frame by frame because one tweet isn't enough - A THREAD

the stairs I think you can draw a parallel between helly down on the severed floor being her true self (helena by herself in the pool downstairs) VS going back up to the surface and switching to helena (helena meeting her father and having to behave as a good eagan)

the interior is not welcoming at all, very cold if only for the fact there are windows to the snowy landscape, the furniture is oddly set and not really coherent stylistically, almost as if it is there just so that there is furniture in the house but it's not really used

colour wise, interestingly it's all rather blue (helly's colours) but it is helena here, and the only red in the picture is the fire : she's not the fiery helena we might have seen in previous episodes, she feels scared and entrapped as helly might be in lumon

the beginning of the very offputting and unsettling dynamics in this scene, jame was waiting for helena to arrive to watch her eat, the food was ready for her when she arrived, there's a weird voyeuristic dimension to this (hinted at by the clear windows EVERYWHERE in the room)

then she cuts that one single egg in 6 pieces in a very ritualistic manner, if the tool is here it's because it was set there before since the food was ready before she arrived, everything is set for jame to enjoy the scene and for helena to stall eating

then that's when it all starts getting interesting and ambivalent : she's moving the pieces the tiniest bit just to stall, either because she's uncomfortable at jame staring at her or because she doesn't want to eat (probably both)

same thing here, she's looking up to check if he's looking at her because if he wasn't, she wouldn't eat because she wouldn't have to

she moves on to cutting the tiniest pieces of a sixth of a single egg, and doesn't even eat them (the piece she's cutting in the first picture is still in her plate in the second picture)

she is chewing on that same tiny piece of egg for 20 seconds because chewing is partly how you trick your brain into thinking you're actually eating + eggs are high in protein so she doesn't have to eat a lot to still get just enough protein not to faint right after swimming

jame does this disapproving sound when helena cuts that tiny piece because it's not satisfying for him to watch her eat so little

then we have this absolute nightmare of a line : back to that voyeuristic dimension that he doesn't get off of seeing her eat a twentieth of an egg, and gulping a raw egg would be more visually pleasing

HOWEVER, while he surely didn't mean it like that, I think it's interesting for us viewers to also *consider* that he is still her father and she is still his daughter and you can't sip on a raw egg, so if she was eating her eggs raw then she would be eating more

now back into the wider context, he randomly says this and it prompts helena to put down her fork and stop eating and then he smiles : he knew that saying this would disturb her and make her stop eating, he did it on purpose

and finally helena is smiling (as much as she can considering the situation) while her father is looking at her but she drops the act the second he's looking away

end of thread, please get my girl out of here

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