This episode made me cry. I watched it again immediately after the first time, I was just stunned.. How did they manage to pack so much powerful imagery and wonderful metaphors into a 20 minute animation? I would love to know how conscious the writers are of these elements in the work.

I spoil the whole episode:

Jack comes across a girl crying in the woods. He starts to walk toward her but as he does she becomes frightened and runs away, leaving behind a teddy bear. Jack picks up the bear and follows the girl so he can return it to her.

The girl enters a creepy house in the woods and Jack follows. While in the house, Jack starts having disorientating visions of a family with terrified expressions, being attacked by something he can’t see. He finds the little girl, and tells her they need to get out of the house because there is something very wrong with it. However, all the doors and windows have disappeared and they can’t get out. Jack decides they should sleep and try to figure it out in the morning.

When he awakes, Jack enters a kitchen where the little girl is sitting at a table, eating breakfast with her family, who seem happy. Confused, Jack accusses them of being an illusion. When he does this, the little girl shoots worried glances at her father. the father insists that everything is as it should be and is perfectly fine, however he does not sound sincere. Jack keeps asking questions about the house, and why the kitchen is impeccable while the rest of the house is run down and filthy. The mother says there was a storm, which doesn’t explain anything at all.

The son’s eyes start to roll back into his head and he convulses. Sweating, but smiling, the father asks “Why don’t you tell our guest about what you study?” but the son can’t speak. The same starts happing to his mother, and the father says they must not be feeling well. The little girl looks at Jack with sad eyes and apologises. Then the father starts convulsing as well. Everything flickers, and the illusion of the impeccable kitchen disappears – it is as dark and dirty as the rest of the house. The girl is the only member of the family not convulsing and she runs and hides as black shadows start emerging from the rest of the family.

The family members dissappear when the shadows have fully emerged and combined to form one big shadow. Jack has a vision of the shadow forming a dragon shape and engulfing the family members one by one, starting with the father. The shadow then sucks him into a silent, black and white world. Inside this place he is bound by an invisible force and can’t move. He sees the family members are bound also but they are smiling, seemingly not aware of that fact that they are paralyzed and in a bizzare dimension.

The dragon appears and tries to attack Jack, but recoils at the mere sight of his sword[truth!]. Noticing this, Jack frees the sword with his mind, and cuts the invisible ropes with it. He then tries to attack the dragon with his sword, but it only seems to get bigger. Jack realises that this world doesn’t follow physical laws. He can do anything he can think about. The dragon forms a ball of fire out of thin air and throws it at him, but he catches it and throws it back, destroying the dragon. The black and white world vanishes in an instant and Jack is back inside the house, which starts to cave in. Sunlight pours in through the gaps in the ceiling, upon the family who are now free of posession/entrapment by the dragon shadow and embrace each other.

The episode is a perfect allegory for a dysfunctional family. Doors and windows disappearing is a common theme in all kinds of media – when you’re in an abusive family, doors and windows are meaningless. You can’t leave even if you want to. They may as well not exist.

The youngest, the little girl, is terrified all the time, but not old enough yet to be possessed by the shadows. She apologises to Jack, as if she had done something wrong, but she is a powerless child.

The dynamics of an abusive power structure are all very apparent – the parents rushing in with excuses that don’t make sense like “there was a storm”, and sweating with the fear of their illusion being broken when the other family members are clearly in trouble, instead of actually helping them.

The stark black and white world represents the extreme black and white thinking of dysfunctional people; it is a psychological construct, thats why, of course, Jack can’t defeat the monster with physical force.

Sadly, in real life people can not be saved by an outside hero. They have to break their own invisible chains, and they so rarely do.

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