Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 18:52     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
I thought the writing was banal and that the plot doesn’t even begin to warrant the detailed exegesis offered above, but it made me realize I’d watch Julianne Moore and Meghann Fahy is just about anything. They elevated the series into something that got far more attention than it would received in the hands of lesser actresses.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 18:51     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:Wanted to add that this show is what Your Friends and Neighbors pretends to be. That show is marquee names and expensive production but it’s idiotic and most of the acting blows and sucks, Amanda Peet and the Asian actor playing the money manager with the impossible in-laws excepted.


Thanks- was going to watch that before our free apple trial expired. Now I might have to hang on for the Stanley Tucci movie in Fall.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 18:46     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Wanted to add that this show is what Your Friends and Neighbors pretends to be. That show is marquee names and expensive production but it’s idiotic and most of the acting blows and sucks, Amanda Peet and the Asian actor playing the money manager with the impossible in-laws excepted.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 18:41     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I thought this show was brilliant. It made me think a lot about how we (society) are so comfortable blaming women.

Sirens - mythological creatures who would hang out on the rocks and "lure" sailors to their doom because they would become enchanted by their beautiful singing ... and a metaphor for men acting on their sexual desires. (And then blaming the woman for doing so!)

For the person who mentioned the blue walls - that and also the "watery" look of the lighting ... that's to evoke the water. A nod to the mythological sirens.

Devon is a walking trauma response. I think a lot of her behavior is an attempt to avoid that trauma and possibly also to avoid becoming blackout drunk. So when she can't smoke on the boat she chooses to act in a sexually aggressive way.

The reason this show was so brilliant IMO is because it makes you as a viewer examine your own expectations and responses. It's become a pattern for this type of show to have a murder happen and then the rest of the series figuring out exactly how/why/who.

So we are all anticipating something big/murderous happening. Gossip around town tells us that maybe Kiki killed the first wife. We're waiting for that shoe to drop. When something significant does happen ... Ethan falling ... we see him blame Simone even though we *know* she did not do anything. We literally SAW Ethan fall off the cliff himself and still people here are trying to find a way to say that Simone pushed him off. No she didn't. If they had wanted us to wonder if she had they wouldn't have shown us her emotional state and concern for him, telling him to come away from the cliff.

We want to see Pete as a good guy, oh look he makes his coffee and is kind of charming and sweet. Oh but oops he sees his marriages as disposable and will get rid of a wife when she has a measure of power over him. The reason the photo was significant was because she would have been able to get a settlement that went beyond their prenuptial contract, this is spelled out in the facetime call with her attorney. We get the best measure of Pete's character when he so casually mentions to his wife that he might go on and have another baby. THAT is who he is. He let his kids 100 percent blame Kiki for the marriage vows he broke and then he sneaks off to be with them, again, not trying to take blame in any way but just to let his wife be the bad one. The ending is dark (and brilliant) because he has just seamlessly moved onto the next woman, and sent the other "siren" on her way.

At the end, Devon's realization of the future is so beautifully done. She sensed danger on the island and also blamed/feared Kiki--a woman. But Pete was the danger, and maybe just all the ways Simone had been shaped by trauma and made vulnerable to a man like Pete (and Ethan). Whoever said that she will help out with the kids in the future, no, that is 100 percent not happening. She lost her sister in that moment.




Great critique of the series. 100% spot on.


+1 I love this critique. PP please go watch Better Sister and report back on that thread. Also about the decor and the personalities. Please and thank you.


+ 2. I touched on some of this stuff but not so comprehensively nor beautifully. It’s also why the response immediately above mine, calling this ‘cliche’ because the women didn’t band together to take Peter down, didn’t land with me at all. It would not have fit. A somewhat novel ending like that, if that’s a fair description, would have been way more cheap than Devon’s realization. Meghann Fahy is so gifted with microexpressions and acting without dialogue.

Mr. DeWitt calls Devon’s dead mother a siren or a monster too, doesn’t he? He says at some point she ‘destroyed him,’ when it seems that he constructively abandoned her and their daughters at different points when she was extremely mentally ill and suffering.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 17:04     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I thought this show was brilliant. It made me think a lot about how we (society) are so comfortable blaming women.

Sirens - mythological creatures who would hang out on the rocks and "lure" sailors to their doom because they would become enchanted by their beautiful singing ... and a metaphor for men acting on their sexual desires. (And then blaming the woman for doing so!)

For the person who mentioned the blue walls - that and also the "watery" look of the lighting ... that's to evoke the water. A nod to the mythological sirens.

Devon is a walking trauma response. I think a lot of her behavior is an attempt to avoid that trauma and possibly also to avoid becoming blackout drunk. So when she can't smoke on the boat she chooses to act in a sexually aggressive way.

The reason this show was so brilliant IMO is because it makes you as a viewer examine your own expectations and responses. It's become a pattern for this type of show to have a murder happen and then the rest of the series figuring out exactly how/why/who.

So we are all anticipating something big/murderous happening. Gossip around town tells us that maybe Kiki killed the first wife. We're waiting for that shoe to drop. When something significant does happen ... Ethan falling ... we see him blame Simone even though we *know* she did not do anything. We literally SAW Ethan fall off the cliff himself and still people here are trying to find a way to say that Simone pushed him off. No she didn't. If they had wanted us to wonder if she had they wouldn't have shown us her emotional state and concern for him, telling him to come away from the cliff.

We want to see Pete as a good guy, oh look he makes his coffee and is kind of charming and sweet. Oh but oops he sees his marriages as disposable and will get rid of a wife when she has a measure of power over him. The reason the photo was significant was because she would have been able to get a settlement that went beyond their prenuptial contract, this is spelled out in the facetime call with her attorney. We get the best measure of Pete's character when he so casually mentions to his wife that he might go on and have another baby. THAT is who he is. He let his kids 100 percent blame Kiki for the marriage vows he broke and then he sneaks off to be with them, again, not trying to take blame in any way but just to let his wife be the bad one. The ending is dark (and brilliant) because he has just seamlessly moved onto the next woman, and sent the other "siren" on her way.

At the end, Devon's realization of the future is so beautifully done. She sensed danger on the island and also blamed/feared Kiki--a woman. But Pete was the danger, and maybe just all the ways Simone had been shaped by trauma and made vulnerable to a man like Pete (and Ethan). Whoever said that she will help out with the kids in the future, no, that is 100 percent not happening. She lost her sister in that moment.




Great critique of the series. 100% spot on.


+1 I love this critique. PP please go watch Better Sister and report back on that thread. Also about the decor and the personalities. Please and thank you.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 17:04     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
I haven’t read the entire thread yet, but I just finished the series. Overall I really liked it, but one thing irked me 1 Kiki and Simone were SO close, once Kiki knew about the kiss, why didn’t she use that as leverage for the divorce? They mentioned the infidelity clause, I figured that would be a slam dunk. I was expecting the two women to work together and take him for everything 😂 I hated the ending, very cliche.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 15:59     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Watched it today. The ending was beyond stupid. And Simone looked like a child, so the whole premise of 2 older rich dudes falling desperately in love made them seem like pedophiles.


Uh, sounds exactly like every rich old guy in the news.


They are falling for someone who looks 12?


The actress is 25 and the character was 25. Forty years younger than Kevin Bacon but your comment is projecting something that wasn't there.


I didn’t personally think she was a bombshell 20 something. She was not really super attractive. I just didn’t buy it - she just was young and child like.


She only looks old and childlike to old women who aren't around young adults.

To anyone else, she looks like a typical 20-something.


Look, 12 may have been an exaggeration, but she is very VERY young looking for a mid-20 something adult. She is by no means some drop dead gorgeous woman.


it is a shame to reduce this show to a long conversation about whether the female character was attractive enough to warrant the interest of the male character. Don't you have anything more interesting to discuss?

On the other hand, you are providing a *perfect* example of misogyny/internalized misogyny, which basically underscores the themes in the show, so I guess thanks for that.

The whole point is that the dude wants to relive his youth, he literally says that himself and it's also hinted at implicitly many many times. He wants to be around someone pure and light so he can feel like his life meant something. This isn't about her. This is about him. Like the rest of his life.

Gah. Sometimes I read this forum and wonder if anyone watches the shows that they "watch" anymore.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 15:42     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Watched it today. The ending was beyond stupid. And Simone looked like a child, so the whole premise of 2 older rich dudes falling desperately in love made them seem like pedophiles.


Uh, sounds exactly like every rich old guy in the news.


They are falling for someone who looks 12?


The actress is 25 and the character was 25. Forty years younger than Kevin Bacon but your comment is projecting something that wasn't there.


I didn’t personally think she was a bombshell 20 something. She was not really super attractive. I just didn’t buy it - she just was young and child like.


She only looks old and childlike to old women who aren't around young adults.

To anyone else, she looks like a typical 20-something.


Look, 12 may have been an exaggeration, but she is very VERY young looking for a mid-20 something adult. She is by no means some drop dead gorgeous woman.


No she doesn't look young.

She looks in her mid 20s.

You just have a distorted view of what 20s looks like on screen, because there are so many 30+ year olds playing young women and even teenage roles.

For example, the lead in "The Summer I turned Pretty" actress was in her 20s. The Gossip Girl actresses were all in their 20s. 90210 actresses were in their 20s and 30s. These are just a handful of adult women playing teen rolls. When all you see is 20 year olds playing teens and 30 year olds playing college women and 20 something, it starts to taint what you think an age should look like.

Look around you. That actress who plays Simone looks exactly like every other well groomed, fit, pretty adult woman in college through her mid 20s.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 15:19     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Watched it today. The ending was beyond stupid. And Simone looked like a child, so the whole premise of 2 older rich dudes falling desperately in love made them seem like pedophiles.


Uh, sounds exactly like every rich old guy in the news.


They are falling for someone who looks 12?


The actress is 25 and the character was 25. Forty years younger than Kevin Bacon but your comment is projecting something that wasn't there.


I didn’t personally think she was a bombshell 20 something. She was not really super attractive. I just didn’t buy it - she just was young and child like.


She only looks old and childlike to old women who aren't around young adults.

To anyone else, she looks like a typical 20-something.


Look, 12 may have been an exaggeration, but she is very VERY young looking for a mid-20 something adult. She is by no means some drop dead gorgeous woman.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 13:15     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:I thought this show was brilliant. It made me think a lot about how we (society) are so comfortable blaming women.

Sirens - mythological creatures who would hang out on the rocks and "lure" sailors to their doom because they would become enchanted by their beautiful singing ... and a metaphor for men acting on their sexual desires. (And then blaming the woman for doing so!)

For the person who mentioned the blue walls - that and also the "watery" look of the lighting ... that's to evoke the water. A nod to the mythological sirens.

Devon is a walking trauma response. I think a lot of her behavior is an attempt to avoid that trauma and possibly also to avoid becoming blackout drunk. So when she can't smoke on the boat she chooses to act in a sexually aggressive way.

The reason this show was so brilliant IMO is because it makes you as a viewer examine your own expectations and responses. It's become a pattern for this type of show to have a murder happen and then the rest of the series figuring out exactly how/why/who.

So we are all anticipating something big/murderous happening. Gossip around town tells us that maybe Kiki killed the first wife. We're waiting for that shoe to drop. When something significant does happen ... Ethan falling ... we see him blame Simone even though we *know* she did not do anything. We literally SAW Ethan fall off the cliff himself and still people here are trying to find a way to say that Simone pushed him off. No she didn't. If they had wanted us to wonder if she had they wouldn't have shown us her emotional state and concern for him, telling him to come away from the cliff.

We want to see Pete as a good guy, oh look he makes his coffee and is kind of charming and sweet. Oh but oops he sees his marriages as disposable and will get rid of a wife when she has a measure of power over him. The reason the photo was significant was because she would have been able to get a settlement that went beyond their prenuptial contract, this is spelled out in the facetime call with her attorney. We get the best measure of Pete's character when he so casually mentions to his wife that he might go on and have another baby. THAT is who he is. He let his kids 100 percent blame Kiki for the marriage vows he broke and then he sneaks off to be with them, again, not trying to take blame in any way but just to let his wife be the bad one. The ending is dark (and brilliant) because he has just seamlessly moved onto the next woman, and sent the other "siren" on her way.

At the end, Devon's realization of the future is so beautifully done. She sensed danger on the island and also blamed/feared Kiki--a woman. But Pete was the danger, and maybe just all the ways Simone had been shaped by trauma and made vulnerable to a man like Pete (and Ethan). Whoever said that she will help out with the kids in the future, no, that is 100 percent not happening. She lost her sister in that moment.




Great critique of the series. 100% spot on.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 13:12     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Watched it today. The ending was beyond stupid. And Simone looked like a child, so the whole premise of 2 older rich dudes falling desperately in love made them seem like pedophiles.


Uh, sounds exactly like every rich old guy in the news.


They are falling for someone who looks 12?


The actress is 25 and the character was 25. Forty years younger than Kevin Bacon but your comment is projecting something that wasn't there.


I didn’t personally think she was a bombshell 20 something. She was not really super attractive. I just didn’t buy it - she just was young and child like.


She only looks old and childlike to old women who aren't around young adults.

To anyone else, she looks like a typical 20-something.
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 13:10     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Watched it today. The ending was beyond stupid. And Simone looked like a child, so the whole premise of 2 older rich dudes falling desperately in love made them seem like pedophiles.


Uh, sounds exactly like every rich old guy in the news.


They are falling for someone who looks 12?


She doesn't look remotely 12.

She looks like a college student through mid 20s.

In what world do you live where 12 year olds look like adult women?
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 12:37     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
I thought this show was brilliant. It made me think a lot about how we (society) are so comfortable blaming women.

Sirens - mythological creatures who would hang out on the rocks and "lure" sailors to their doom because they would become enchanted by their beautiful singing ... and a metaphor for men acting on their sexual desires. (And then blaming the woman for doing so!)

For the person who mentioned the blue walls - that and also the "watery" look of the lighting ... that's to evoke the water. A nod to the mythological sirens.

Devon is a walking trauma response. I think a lot of her behavior is an attempt to avoid that trauma and possibly also to avoid becoming blackout drunk. So when she can't smoke on the boat she chooses to act in a sexually aggressive way.

The reason this show was so brilliant IMO is because it makes you as a viewer examine your own expectations and responses. It's become a pattern for this type of show to have a murder happen and then the rest of the series figuring out exactly how/why/who.

So we are all anticipating something big/murderous happening. Gossip around town tells us that maybe Kiki killed the first wife. We're waiting for that shoe to drop. When something significant does happen ... Ethan falling ... we see him blame Simone even though we *know* she did not do anything. We literally SAW Ethan fall off the cliff himself and still people here are trying to find a way to say that Simone pushed him off. No she didn't. If they had wanted us to wonder if she had they wouldn't have shown us her emotional state and concern for him, telling him to come away from the cliff.

We want to see Pete as a good guy, oh look he makes his coffee and is kind of charming and sweet. Oh but oops he sees his marriages as disposable and will get rid of a wife when she has a measure of power over him. The reason the photo was significant was because she would have been able to get a settlement that went beyond their prenuptial contract, this is spelled out in the facetime call with her attorney. We get the best measure of Pete's character when he so casually mentions to his wife that he might go on and have another baby. THAT is who he is. He let his kids 100 percent blame Kiki for the marriage vows he broke and then he sneaks off to be with them, again, not trying to take blame in any way but just to let his wife be the bad one. The ending is dark (and brilliant) because he has just seamlessly moved onto the next woman, and sent the other "siren" on her way.

At the end, Devon's realization of the future is so beautifully done. She sensed danger on the island and also blamed/feared Kiki--a woman. But Pete was the danger, and maybe just all the ways Simone had been shaped by trauma and made vulnerable to a man like Pete (and Ethan). Whoever said that she will help out with the kids in the future, no, that is 100 percent not happening. She lost her sister in that moment.


Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 12:11     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Very good cast especially Fahey, Moore and Bacon and intriguing story that's both familiar and original. I like the weird acolytes/cult that Moore has.


Yes, Moore knocks it out of the park being so (seemingly) genuinely kind and also out-of-touch crazy rich lady.

I thought it was very telling that Simone didn't identify with the help and all the hate actually detested her. How realistic is that? Would the PA be removed from the rest of the help? Would they all loathe the PA or are they really one of the drudges rolling their eyes at "mistress" too? If I were Simone it makes more sense to try to be a balm or a salve or a buffer to the rest of the help rather than tiny second dictator...

I think it could be realistic. I think she felt she had an intimate relationship to the boss that elevated her.

I could see PAs being like this. They drink the kool-aid and act as protector of the boss. They feel more powerful than other employees due to their proximity.


I think they explained this dynamic with the scene where Kiki tells all the staff they did a great job and then lets Simone give the notes on how she actually feels. Kiki gets to use Simone as a buffer (honestly, kind of an echo of letting a woman be blamed for another person's shortcomings)
Anonymous
Post 06/02/2025 08:58     Subject: Sirens on Netflix
Anonymous wrote:Tried watching the first episode and gave up after about 20 minutes. It just seemed very cliche, especially the grunge sister. So stupid that she gave the boat captain a b job. I’m not a prude, it was just stupid.


They explain her issues in later episodes. It's completely inappropriate and she knows it.