Pretty much every show occasionally features a great monologue. It could be Ben Wyatt weeping in a Batman costume as he explains why Treat Yo'Self Day has meant so much to him, or Walter White painting his incredibly dark and self-aggrandising portrait of the universe.
Monologues are a moment in which someone gets to uncork about some aspect of their lives. And there's really something exciting about that -- especially when it matches up with some pressure or expectation that we've been feeling as an audience about something that has gone so far unsaid.
Most shows use moments like this sparingly. But a couple have made Catharsis Speech moments part of their signature. GREY'S ANATOMY in its early seasons under Shonda was known for these kinds of beats where a character (often Bailey) would step forward, give a kind of thesis statement, then pour out their heart in unexpected ways and end up somehow back at that thesis, and the trip in between having changed what that statement means.
In many ways THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL is those kinds of speeches -- delivered onstage as stand up comedy routines -- with story bits woven in between. (I love MAISEL's characters and storylines. But the reason I'm watching that show week after week is to have that experience of a woman living in a society where women's roles are limited and censored just standing up and saying what is actually going on in her life.)
SHRILL doesn't do this every episode, but it has some really strong Catharsis Speeches of its own. And the thing that's striking to me about them is that the empowerment and catharsis they provide is often simply in the act of Annie describing the horrible bad mind things she's been taught to think about herself. There's that old Christian spiritual concept that evil spirits desperately don't want us to say their names, that once their identities are spoken in the open, they necessarily lose some of their power.
And that's how things seem to work on SHRILL. Annie lays out some horrible thing she thinks about herself, and that frees her to some extent from the net it's trapped her in.
Here's a good example from Episode 104, "Pool", written by Samantha Irby.
The moment's followed by Fran's girlfriend saying, "I wish someone would have said this to me when I was younger." Which leads Annie to go upstairs and write an article about it, which in many ways is not only her key choice in season one, but the thing that really fulfills the promise of the pilot and solidifies the direction of the series.
Again, SHRILL doesn't do this every episode. But every time it does, it has that same sense of revelation and the shucking off of chains, without ever seeming contrived or "The Author Steps Forward"-ish. Which is really hard to do. The series is well worth watching just to see the unique way in which they build these moments.
