While some might think I was a bit harsh on Carrie’s rather static second episode, “Social Studies” manages to turn things around by offering us something of a departure from the established story. Now obviously, deviating from what’s known can be a double edged sword, because for every time you succeed in enhancing the story, there’s also a chance that new material can alter what comes later and make it less effective.
For example, in most versions of Carrie, the poor girl doesn’t manage to gain full acceptance from her peers until the very end of the story during the infamous prom, dashing her dreams of normalcy with a well-placed bucket of pig’s blood. However, in its third episode, Mike Flanagan’s Carrie gives her a taste of validation way earlier. Will it dilute the later tragedy when it finally hits, or does it pile on the heartache even more for a young girl totally unprepared for modern life? I guess we’ll find out once we reach the end, but until then, “Social Studies” is both appropriately heart warming, indescribably sad and strangely tense.
With the school library offering her the type of unrestricted access to knowledge she’d never get at home, Carrie starts researching her telekinetic abilities only to find a string of women dating back to the middle ages either denounced as liars, frauds, or burnt at the stake. Meanwhile, her mother Margaret is still trying to weather the indignities of modern life as her forthright, contemptible attitude to customers has landed her on the night shift. But while Margaret is cleaning blocked toilets and negotiating a decadent minefield of discarded condoms and hidden crackpipes, Carrie has had something of an olive branch offered to her.
It seems Sue Snell is taking the request of Ms. Desiardin to take Carrie under her wing seriously, much to the confusion of mean girl-in-crisis, Chris Hargensen. However, even the trusting Carrie is taken aback when she’s invited to a party and immediately she realises that there’s more chance of a wildebeest playing checkers than her mother allowing her to go to a place where booze, drugs and sex will probably be running rampant. Thus good little girl Carrie turns schemer, and plots a way to sneak to the party while Margaret does her night shifts, while also hand making her own clothes to go in.
However, while school seemed like a massive social jump for a girl who literally has barely left the house since birth, a party proves to be an explosion of the senses where, for the first time in her life, Carrie starts to feel acceptance. However, someone who isn’t having a good night is Chris, whose family troubles has already caused her to lash out by creating a mock social media account around Carrie’s embarrassing period scare. Regardless, the better Carrie’s night goes, the worse Chris feels until, in a drunken haze, she makes a decision that torpedos Carrie’s good vibes utterly.
Last episode, I criticised Carrie for essentially doubling down on a lot of already established plot points and scenes that had already occured in the first installment, which led to it feeling like it was stretching the narrative somewhat. However, with episode three, we find the series making a play for something new, that focuses almost totally on the mindset of the story’s two polar opposites – the trusting innocence of Carrie and the broiling resentment of Chris. It proves to create something quite remarkable as we watch these direct opposities attend the same party and both have utterly different experiences that put them on their respective, tragic paths, but the most impressive thing about this episode (directed by none other by Flanagan’s other half, Kate Siegel) is that while nothing particularly huge happens, it provides an impressive amount of conflicting emotions as you watch it.
From Carrie’s point of view, watching her finally take control of her life and take risks by finally rebelling is tremendously affirming, but it comes with an underlying, clawing tension as you become convinced that something awful is going to happen to ruin it all. As Carrie’s happiness grows, you become convinced that it’s all going to come prematurely crashing down any moment, especially when we’re simultaneously watching Kris start defiantly down the path that’ll lead to everyone’s ruin. Carrie gets drunk, is included in drinking games, experiences the dizzy highs of being part of a community and generally feels like a real person for possibly the first time in her sheltered existence – and yet, Segal skillfully tempers this with the fact that we know she has enemies and everything will all eventually end in a telekinetic cataclysm. While nothing technically “happens” here and Carrie not only emerges from the party unscathed, she even has moments of transcendental beauty, staring up at the stars in wonder or even dreamily levitating her ride home in a moment of content bliss. Even when she arrives home, we’re fully expecting Margaret to be back from work early, or to sniff out her daughter’s transgressions; but again, Carrie is allowed to savour her night as a pure, wonderous experience – right up until the next day when the humilating Carrie Red page goes public to the entire school.
While watching Carrie come within touching distance of a normal life is only part of what makes “Social Studies” work as well as it does. What truly seals the deal is the simultaneous thread that sees Chris Hargensen start fully down the path to bitchdom – and what makes it so alarming is that the episode deftly explains in simple terms what make people become bullies in the first place. Some people are inclined to nastiness anyway (which Chris’ entitled background certainly provides) but in experiencing a period where the top dog is feeling the unfamiliar pangs of insecurity, she can’t help but lash out in order to try and regain some sort of control. Due to the daughter of the man that her mother is seeing being off limits, the easiest target left available is Carrie White, and alcohol and the influence of local drug dealing, bad boy, sociopath, Billy Nolan, leads to Chris pulling the trigger on her viciously spiteful Insta page. However, it’s to Carrie’s credit that even though the show doesn’t condone or excuse Chris’ shitty behavior, it does allow us to understand it in a logical way which is quite revelatory when you consider that most on-screen bullies are presented as one dimensional bitches. In fact, it’s a nice touch that some of that character work extends to Margaret White as well, because if I was working nights while cleaning up human shit, crack pipes and used prophylactics, I’d turn my back on humanity too…
After an episode that spent most of its time covering old ground, the third installment takes us somewhere new, that not only gives us a heart rending look at the life Carrie has been denied, but fleshes out the antagonists in ways that allows us to see what turns people so bitter as to want to tear down the people around them. Wonderfully balanced, while still teasing other prevailing question marks (we still don’t know if the advice dropping Emaline is real or not), Segal gets to the core of Carrie while deviating from the familiar. However, from here, things are probably going to get pretty damn nasty…
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Where to watch Carrie – Season 1, Episode 3: Social Studies: