On a guess, anyone reading this blog has experienced the phenomena of becoming so utterly absorbed in a TV show that it starts to feel more vivid than real life. I, for one, sometimes get an “immersion hangover” when an especially deep binge comes to an end. I Saw the TV Glow (2024) is an inventive dramatization of this notion, a trippy psychological study about teens seeking escape through an imaginative TV series — a past-time that is, in fact, symptomatic of their internal isolation and need for change.
Set in the mid-nineties, the film charts the bond of Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), unlikely friends in a suburban high school. They meet at a school event, when Owen sees Maddy reading an episode guide for a show called The Pink Opaque, a fantasy series that airs too late for Owen, who lives in a strict household, to watch. One night, Owen sneaks over to Maddy’s house to watch an episode, and once he’s hooked, Maddy starts recording episodes on VHS for him. The Pink Opaque is about two psychologically linked heroes with superpowers, and taps into Owen and Maddy’s inner experience as disaffected, baffled outsiders in a stultifying heteronormative reality. Eventually, Maddy decides to run away from home, and encourages Owen to come with her. Owen balks, though, and the two are separated when Maddy disappears. Years later, she returns, whereupon Owen finally learns what happened to her, and is forced to make an impossible decision.
Anyone drawn to watch I Saw the TV Glow will likely have an idea of where’s its premise is going, and it delivers on that expectation. But writer-director Jane Schoenbrun executes the idea with such surreal, unexpected turns that there is still plenty of surprise. For context, it’s helpful to note that The Pink Opaque is a stand-in for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV series that uniquely tapped into the anxious struggles of being a weirdo in a conventional world. That theme also permeates I Saw the TV Glow, where the generic suburban lives of Maddy and Owen are fraught with dysphoria around sexuality and gender. Even while bonding over their shared passion for the show, neither of them is truly empowered or brave enough to open up to the other. As such, it feels very true to my memory of the nineties, a realistic emotional depiction of the period. Unlike Buffy, I Saw the TV Glow has a dead-serious affect, full of unsettling, Lynchian dream logic, metafictional quirks, murky visuals, and subdued performances emphasizing the brokenness of the characters and their world. As metaphorical commentary, it’s a powerful piece, and its final moments are jarringly bizarre and tragic, leaving the viewer with much to ponder. Something of a masterpiece of understated, moving, thought-provoking weirdness.
