Episodes
by Alex Scott

Episodes is the first graphic novel from cartoonist and illustrator, Alex Scott. It’s an accomplished and epic book, depicting an intertwining cast of characters whose paths knowingly and unknowingly intersect at different episodes of their lives over a span of twenty-seven years.

The stories told in Episodes include that of Sam, a smart-mouthed child living in a gay household with his single mother and her lesbian flat-mates, who provokes one of the flat-mates and lives to regret it; former child star, Charlie, who struggles to cope with post-fame life; and the awkward stories of teens Tom and Amy who can’t express their feelings to their respective crushes. These are sad, funny and painful coming-of-age stories depicting characters who are struggling to find and know their authentic selves, in the face of an increasingly ever-present media barrage; unattainable messages of who they should be and what they should be striving to attain, to achieve the impossible dream of happiness.

Episodes is a multi-layered graphic novel, showing snapshots of these characters during particular moments of their lives. Though it focuses on a few major characters, even minor characters have huge and satisfying character arcs. One such character (Natalie) appears just twice, and ever so fleetingly; once as a run-of-the-mill, teen promo-girl on the beach, and then over a decade later as a popular ‘Personal activations mentor/soul coach/emotional medium/typical Taurus’ social media influencer. By doing this, Scott gives readers the experience of a rich, complex, and fully realised world of which we are just scraping the surface. It’s often these minor characters, whose lives hold so much mystery, who haunt the reader and have us wanting to know more.

Throughout the book, adverts and television programs are juxtaposed and intercut against the stories of the characters, pushing the reader to find connections and meaning (as much as the characters themselves find meaning from the adverts). In an early scene, a competitor in a Gladiator-style game show is struck in the face by a padded jousting stick; her mouth guard is knocked out of her mouth at the same time as the previously mentioned Sam gets their comeuppance via telephone call, while the television audience scream cheers of approval. It’s one of many brilliant moments, where it’s not what is said, but what is not said that creates the impact.

Episodes is a powerful reflection of the role of television, and social media, on our lives. We see this as, gradually, the language of television advertising begins to permeate the dialogue of the characters as it becomes normalised, and insincere sound bites enter the common lexicon. In one scene a teen girl’s friends laugh and jokingly mimic the catchphrase from a tampon advert (‘It’s our little secret’) after she realises her tampon string had been dangling from her swimsuit all afternoon. Branding and packaging become part of their everyday lives, and in one of the most tragic storylines, we see a try-hard teen transform into a social-influencer wannabe, destroying her looks and relationship in the banal pursuit of followers. It’s the most devasting story, amongst several, making us feel the absurd emptiness of online branding, communication, and connection.

At the midpoint of the book, there is an audacious, surreal, and harrowing, forty-page sequence depicting Charlie, a grown-up former child star, in full mental-health-crisis free fall. This is later viewed on Sarah’s mobile phone as she sits in bed, condensed into fourteen concise panels of social media footage: she glibly laughs (‘Oh my god, ta-ragic’) before scrolling on to the next item on her feed. It deftly Illustrates the dehumanising effects of 24-hour a day news and content, in the palm of our hands, while also showing us an outsider’s view of Charlie’s very public meltdown.

Each chapter in Episodes is preceded by a television advertisement – not apparently related to the chapter but cleverly intertwining with later chapters and characters. The child star of an early advert appears years later in subsequent chapters, first as a hopeful teen, and then as a damaged, washed-up former child star. If readers find it difficult to track characters through the decades, the book ends with a a helpful gameshow-style graphic, which helps untangle who’s who and encourages multiple re-readings of the book.

The artwork, reminiscent of the style of Nick Drnaso (Beverly, Sabrina) is, on the surface, unassuming. The line work is wobbly and without variation of width, the colour palette subdued, and the characters’ body language and facial expressions are listless, stilted, and deadpan. But this is a graphic novel which revels in its plainness. It’s an anti-comic comic, the antithesis of mainstream superhero comics, with their flashy action poses, highly rendered muscles, and energetic panel layouts which desperately beg to capture readers’ attention. In the world of Episodes, the flatness of the artwork mirrors the repressed, emotional flatness of the characters’ lives.

Scott cleverly uses, and pushes, the form of the comic language throughout the book. The shape and size of the panels for each chapter evolve from 3:4 to 16:9 television aspect ratio to vertical mobile phone screen dimensions, as the chapters change from the 1990s to present day. It’s a clever conceit, encasing the stories in the dominant media format of the eras, subtly reminding us of the time period of the chapter and commenting on the way the media frames our reality.

Scott also chooses to do away with the standard ‘comic book’ conventions of conveying text: there are no speech balloons, with tails helpfully pointing towards the mouths of the characters speaking. Nor do flashy sound effects emanate from their sources. Instead, Scott chooses to present the dialogue and sound effects equally, along the bottom of each panel and in the format of television subtitles. The subtitles also aide the reader in tracking the characters through the different eras. The characters clothes and hairstyles change from year to year, but the subtitled dialogue is often attributed to characters by name, helping to clarify who’s who.

Episodes is a fantastic first graphic novel which offers a devastating critique of our ever-changing-but-always-obsessive relationship with mainstream media and social media; it’s a commentary on the ways media affects our lives and the ways in which we not only consume the media but have now, individually and collectively, become the media.

Scott tells these stories with brilliant, deadpan humour. By focusing on the small events and interactions, which sometimes leave the most lasting emotional scars, Scott shows the strange, unpredictable, and tragic trajectories of the lives of a cast of everyday people. Episodes deserves to be read, and re-read, and will have readers thinking about it well after finishing the book.