I Saw The TV Glow premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2024. It was given a limited theatrical release by A24 in the United States on May 3, 2024, with its theatrical release expanding to Canada and nationwide in the US on May 17, and received positive reviews from critics.
Plot
In 1996, Owen, an isolated seventh grader, meets Maddy, a ninth grader, when he notices her reading an episode guide for the young adult show The Pink Opaque. The show follows teenagers Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight monsters sent by the Big Bad, Mr. Melancholy. Owen sneaks over to Maddy's to watch a new episode with her and her friend Amanda, finding himself captivated by it.
Two years later, Owen's mother Brenda is terminally ill. Owen is unable to watch The Pink Opaque live due to his bedtime curfew and his father Frank deriding it as "for girls", so Maddy tapes the episodes for him to watch later. Owen approaches Maddy to ask if she would like to watch an upcoming episode together. Maddy reveals that she is a lesbian, is no longer friends with Amanda, and has been ostracized at school after a rumor circulated that she grabbed Amanda's breast. When asked about his sexuality, Owen expresses that he is uncertain but has nonetheless noticed that there is "something wrong" with himself. Later, at Maddy's house, Owen notices her crying while watching the episode. Maddy explains that she has resolved to run away to escape her abusive stepfather. She invites Owen to join her, but he loses his nerve and stays. Owen's mother dies, Maddy goes missing, and The Pink Opaque is canceled after five seasons.
Ten years later, Owen still lives with Frank and works at a local movie theater. Maddy reappears one night and takes Owen to a bar outside of town. She tells him that she disappeared into the show itself, prompts him to remember the show's finale and to meet up the next night at the high school after he has done so. In that last episode, Isabel and Tara have their hearts removed by Mr. Melancholy, are fed his poisonous "luna juice" and then buried alive. The episode's ending suggests to Owen that he is a dying Isabel, and with the closing credits appearing on the TV screen, Owen panics and shoves his head through the screen. Frank pulls him out of the broken TV set and forces him to wash himself, while Owen screams "This isn't my home! You're not my father!" and vomits luna juice.
The next night, Maddy explains to Owen that after leaving, the feelings of isolation and falsehood she felt at home followed her to Phoenix, Arizona, where she got a job at a shopping mall, so she paid a man to bury her alive. After suffocating, she awoke in The Pink Opaque as Tara, her real self. She claims they are currently in Mr. Melancholy's "midnight realm", a deceptive world where time passes quickly. After being unable to find where Isabel was buried in The Pink Opaque, Maddy has returned to save Owen before he suffocates. She urges Owen to bury himself with her in order to start season six as Isabel, but he loses his nerve again and runs home. He never sees Maddy since that night and is haunted by the possibility he is meant to have a different life.
Frank dies of a stroke a few years later and Owen stays in the house, saying that he has settled down and started a family. He works at a family entertainment center and rediscovers The Pink Opaque on a streaming service, but finds it to be cheesier and more childish than he remembers. Twenty years later, he still works at the center and has grown miserable and physically weaker due to his worsening asthma. During a birthday party at the center, he breaks down, screams that he is dying and begs for his mother to save him. He locks himself in the bathroom and cuts his chest open, smiling as he sees a glowing TV screen inside. He returns outside, apologizing to the indifferent guests for his breakdown and saying that it has been caused by his new medication.
Lundy-Paine cited I Saw the TV Glow as an allegory for being transgender.[4] Schoenbrun has frequently described the film as being about the "egg crack", a term for the moment in a trans person's life when they realize their identity does not correspond to their assigned gender,[5][6][7] and said Owen's choice to not bury himself alive with Maddy and ultimate existential crisis was illustrative of their personal fears of potentially living out their life without having transitioned.[8] In a June 2024 profile of themselves published in The New Yorker, Schoenbrun discussed how their relationship with their family had influenced the film's story, saying:[8]
TV Glow is about something I think a lot of trans people understand... The tension between the space that you exist within, which feels like home, and the simultaneous terror and liberation of understanding that that space might not be able to hold you in your true form. I think many people, even if they are sympathetic to narratives of biological-family estrangement, still want to believe in resolution or restorative reparative work. And I think this does a disservice to queer people who are not in control of whether that work can be done.
I Saw the TV Glow is heavily influenced by[9][10] and draws parallels to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), including its use of The Pink Opaque, which features similar elements like strong female leads and a mix of mythic and monster of the week episodes. Owen is introduced to this "Buffy-esque" show that becomes a refuge for him until its narrative starts affecting his reality as the story explores loneliness and the search for something real through a fixation. The cameo by Benson, who played lesbian character Tara on Buffy, "felt healing in a way" for Schoenbrun,[10] who relied on the show as a coping mechanism during adolescence.[11] The narrative diverges by airing on a children's network and incorporating a magical realism akin to The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1991–96).[12] Maronna and Tamberelli, lead actors of Pete & Pete, star as ghostly neighbors to explore the uncanny nature of aging. Schoenbrun emphasized that the cameos are not mere Easter eggs but are meant to deepen the film's ideas.[11]
The Pink Opaque continues the Pete & Pete effect by taking up the theme of children living in a "semi-magical, frequently scary" world unnoticed by adults. As the main characters lose or find themselves in the show, Owen's story becomes a demonstration of "what happens to a trans person when the world makes the prospect of transitioning too terrifying to ever look at straight-on".[12] Owen and Maddy represent pre- and post-realization stages of identity, mirroring Schoenbrun's own journey of self-discovery. It delves into how people perceive media differently as they grow, with changes in tone reflecting shifts in understanding, and feelings of shame and dysphoria.[13] Owen experiences a sense of claustrophobia and disconnection from reality, mirroring the struggle to retain one's sense of wonder and magic in the face of adulthood. The film ends with Owen when the "world is content to ignore his screams that something inside of him is dying", and highlights the importance of "a little magic, borrowed from art, is one of the only ways to survive, and to remind yourself that—as the film's most haunting line reminds us—there is still time."[12]
The film also draws inspiration from Schoenbrun's recurring dream about Twin Peaks (1990–91) and aims to capture a "Lynchian terror".[10] Inspired by its follow-up Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), the film intertwines themes of TV series endings and revivals.[11]
Production
Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun in 2024
Schoenbrun began work on the script for I Saw the TV Glow three months after they had begun undergoing hormone replacement therapy, amid what they described as "overwhelming calamity" following having come out as transgender. In featuring the transgender themes, Schoenbrun deliberately avoided making transitioning or coming out explicitly central to the plot, opting instead to write the story as an allegory so as to distinguish it from other films on the topic.[8]
The film was released in select theaters in the United States on May 3, 2024 (playing in New York City and Los Angeles),[25] with its release expanding nationwide and to Canada on May 17.[26] It was made available digitally in June 2024.[27]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of 170 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10.The website's consensus reads: "With a distinctive visual aesthetic that enhances its emotionally resonant narrative, I Saw the TV Glow further establishes writer-director Jane Schoenbrun as a rising talent."[28]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[29]
Guy Lodge of Variety wrote, "This is both promising psychodrama fodder on its own terms, and of a piece with the particular fixations Schoenbrun has established across their small oeuvre thus far".[30] David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote, "Schoenbrun's astonishing second feature manages to retain the seductive fear of their micro-budget debut and deepen its thrilling wounds of discovery even while examining them at a much larger scale".[31] Some reviewers also praised the film for the authenticity with which it conveyed transgender themes, with Richard Brody for The New Yorker calling it "a profound vision of the trans experience" and Veronica Esposito for The Guardian saying it "speaks to '90s trans teens".[32][33]
Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times criticized the film as a "collection of leaden scenes that might make the audience want to claw out of its own skin", noting that it "invents a new emotion: passionate ambivalence."[34] Nicolas Rapold of Sight & Sound agreed, writing "There's the awed sense of a blueprint or roadmap that is insisted upon without entirely being executed and fulfilled" adding "[it] is a collection...of sequences and moments more than a fully realised whole."[35] Dylan Roth of Observer acknowledged this discomfort, noting "My challenge with I Saw the TV Glow is that almost everything I dislike about it is done on purpose, and effectively. As a piece of art, I can’t deny that it works."[36]
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↑ Kay, Jeremy (February 18, 2024). "How 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' helped inspire Sundance hit 'I Saw The TV Glow'". Screen Daily. Archived from the original on April 3, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024. A major influence was cult US TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which ran from 1997-2003. 'It was an obsession and a real balm for me in my adolescent years,' they reflect. 'I rewatched my tapes over and over again, and like Owen and Maddy do with The Pink Opaque, I thought of the characters like family. Buffy will always be an influence on everything I create.'
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