I Saw the TV Glow is a 2024 American psychological horror film written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The film stars Justice Smith as Owen, a suburban youth, who is introduced to a late-night TV show, finding both fixation and the tugging of belonging in the process. Maddy, an older classmate played by Jack Haven, becomes Owen’s connection to the show; the show becomes a connection to potential.
The film explores cosmic misalignment. While labeled horror, it missed me as such, but this is likely due to my cishet(ish) experience. To those living transitioned lives, this film would likely be both disturbing and cathartic.
Everything below is a spoiler. Go watch it first! Seriously, you’ll have no idea what I’m going on about unless you do so.
The World With No Air
We see young Owen, visage deadened while he watches a world breathing more vibrant than his own: The Pink Opaque. And I saw myself reflected here. Childhood me watching women with autonomy, agency, power. I assumed this is what Owen saw too, but perhaps I was wrong. Owen’s relationship with this show develops as the film progresses, the “real world” draining Owen more than the television screen.
That opening scene shifts to a dull and grainy grade school. High school band members play dissonant chords over a wave of chatter like static. Seventh grade Owen meanders with uncertainty, guided by his mother. But then there’s a book; the episode guide to The Pink Opaque. It’s vibrant, high contrast, and has a shine to it. He sits adjacent to Maddy whose knowledge of The Pink Opaque reads less episode guide than cosmic guide. It’s the magic of interacting with a high schooler who knows just a bit more.
Owen is dropped off for a sleepover, his mother yells out, “Honey! You remembered your inhaler right?” – an introductory nod to the suffocation of authenticity. We don’t see him use it yet, but now we know his intimate connection with his lungs. An uncomfortable, suffocating bodily awareness in middle school.
Owen carries that inhaler throughout his life. Ten years later, a sexually charged conversation disorients Owen. He goes home, his presence unnoticed, sits upon his child-like bed, and uses his inhaler. Owen seems no more developed than his childhood days – a breath half taken, a life half-lived. Later, a wheezing scream in a crowded room; the dusty, cracked, and greying Owen cries out for help. He reaches for his inhaler. Owen cannot breathe and it only worsens with time.
The Traveler at the Threshold
During Owen’s first sleepover with Maddy, Owen asks about the show’s premise – why would the girls be hunted by Mr. Melancholy, “Because they’re part of the Pink Opaque?” And Maddy replies, “Because they are The Pink Opaque.” The knowledge of oneself at the heart of Maddy’s reply.
In this scene, it seems Owen asked the shadow of another question. “Because he thinks he’s a girl?” And it seems Maddy gives a shadow of an answer, “No, because she is a girl.” Owen quickly apologizes for his faux pas. “Never apologize” Maddy insists, and Maddy would know.
Owen’s suffocation, Owen’s pink sleeping bag, Owen’s secret question in Maddy’s basement. Young Owen’s life is both lived for this show and lived by this show. During the sleepover, Maddy shares The Pink Opaque feels more real than reality. And it is. The feeling of Isabel, of The Pink Opaque, carries Owen two years into the future. The pink of Owen and his sleeping bag fades into a miserable, slightly older Owen; carrying a blue cotton candy through the fair.
By ninth grade, Owen is narrating his life to the audience. Either Owen has no one to talk to, so loneliness seeps out through dissociation, or Owen’s lived experience is in The Pink Opaque. The flatness of his life is vibrant on the screen.
Maddy begins leaving VHS recordings for Owen, complete with little notes. “Isabel’s magic dress,” “Tara and Isabel are family,” and “Tara and Isabel connect through the psychic plane” – even if they don’t speak, they know each other. The Pink Opaque becomes their lived reality offering warmth, friendship, honesty, and camaraderie. There is a moment while walking down a magenta corridor that Owen, and the words “WE are the pink opaque” scribble across the screen. With this, The Pink Opaque officially functions as a projection of the experiences they share.
During their last sleepover, Maddy shares she will die if she stays in town. Unspoken uncertainty, is this goodbye? In a tender moment, Maddy draws a tattoo on Owen’s neck. This tattoo is the ghost of The Pink Opaque; a label he isn’t quite ready for. That night, while sleeping on the basement floor, Owen sees projections of The Pink Opaque in the dark room. He is haunted.
The next morning, Owen can’t commit to leaving with her. In a panicked state, he scrubs violently at the gel pen tattoo on his neck, leaving it red and raw. While well-intentioned, once she labeled him, he couldn’t fully wash it off. Maddy serves as a guide, but this scene serves as a cautionary moment. Her early invitation fills him with only panic. Owen outs his circumstance to a neighbor and begs her to tell his parents.
With Maddy gone, The Pink Opaque is canceled.
It is eight years later, and an adult Owen is in an empty grocery store. The hum of the incandescent lights, a presence without a glow. Owen’s life is flat. Maddy appears in the grocery store like a villain from a 90s monster-of-the-week kids show. The awkward stance of an unused body.
Owen and Maddy go to a bar on the outskirts of town to speak, it’s a place Maddy knows. That bar is full of life and sound. It’s not quite The Pink Opaque but not quite Owen’s typical world either. They are meeting in a space between these realities.
Owen shares that the police think Maddie is dead. In a sense, Maddy is. It is in this scene, Maddy shares that The Pink Opaque is real and that Owen’s world is fake. Owen’s narrative is challenged by his own flashbacks. Isabel’s magic dress. Owen in that dress. Owen denies the flashbacks, denies Maddy. But Maddy has been inside the show.
Now under the school planetarium, Maddy assumes their role as both celestial traveler and guide. Maddy tells a story of killing The Midnight Realm version of themselves, clawing their way to a rebirth. This allowed Maddy/Tara to become The Pink Opaque version of themselves, the real version. A nod to the dead name, the old self that no longer exists. After this, life went on. Tara was in the season six premiere, but without Isabel. For Owen, The Pink Opaque stopped at season five.
Transitions require depth. We dig deep to transform. Owen is told he must bury himself and claw his way out the way Tara did. Owen is not ready.
Glitches in the Fabric
Adult Owen’s suppression — of narrative, of self — tears into the fabric of “reality.” Owen stands amongst a deflated cosmos, while a sad blue balloon hovers idly. This marks an increased lack of presence for Owen in “the real world.”
At the drive-through, over the static, an employee speaks over him, cuts across him. The conversation is unnatural, out of sync. The delay was akin to NASA hailing a distant shuttle. A simple food order turned cosmically clumsy. While likely a relatable experience for most viewers, it is a tangible slip in “reality” for Owen. His presence is muted almost unnoticed, the “reality” around him full of grain and static.
Moments before meeting Maddy at the grocery store, Owen drives upon a downed powerline. It crackles and sparks. It glows.
This powerline scene occurs just after the sexually charged conversation in the movie theater. As much as Owen disengaged, this conversation was a trigger, and the power line was a resulting intrusion. Charred fragments of the episode guide litter the ground; The Pink Opaque tore into “reality” uninvited.
After meeting Maddy/Tara at the planetarium, Owen returns to the last episode of season five. Isabel is buried. It was as Tara said. Owen/Isabel is suffocating in Owen’s room. Owen is visibly panicked and horrified. In a shower of sparks, Owen’s head is in the TV set. Owen is ready to enter The Pink Opaque.
Owen’s father pulls him back into “reality.” Owen desperately tries to crawl back into the television, the crackle and spark of life. But Owen’s father, the enforcer of gender roles, will not allow it. In a scene that only reads like torture, Owen’s father forces Owen into the shower. Steam rises from Owen’s skin and Owen cries out that the world isn’t real. Owen vomits the Luna Juice.
The Myth of The Opaque
The Pink Opaque has plenty of monsters-of-the-week but the “big bad,” Mr. Melancholy, wants to trap Isabel and Tara in the Midnight Realm. It is a realm of darkness and sleep. A realm where an awakening never occurs. To remain awakened requires a weekly battle against Mr. Melancholy and his minions.
Returning to the final episode of the show, Owen recalls that Tara was buried by Mr. Melancholy, and Isabel was captured. Earlier that evening, Maddy had shared they were buried alive and forced to dig their way out again. Upon digging their way out, Maddy became Tara. A death to give life.
While captured, Isabel had her heart cut out, mirroring Owen’s emptiness. In an earlier scene, Maddy and Owen are seated on the bleachers. Maddy shares they “like girls.” At the time, it is presented as possible lesbianism. Owen shares that when he thinks of whether he likes boys or girls, he feels hollow, and that he has never been able to “open” himself up and check to see if there’s anything inside. Isabel’s heart has been removed and stored in a freezer.
They feed Isabel Luna Juice, to keep her asleep. Mr. Melancholy tells Isabel she’ll love the Midnight Realm and shows her a snow globe of a zoned-out Owen, gaze fixated upon a screen. The Midnight Realm is Owen watching the possibility of a healthy, lived trans experience without having one. Owen watches himself as a girl without being able to accept it. Isabel is buried alive, suffocating.
Elderly Owen screams for help in a crowded room. The world pauses for a moment and then moves on as though he was never there. Owen is seemingly near his end. He is slow and of a grey pallor, wheezing and devastated. Inhaler in mouth, Owen falls to the public bathroom floor. It is here that Owen finally has the courage to look within.
Owen cuts his chest; rips open his flesh and finds the cosmos. The glow of the TV plays from within, the possibility of The Pink Opaque. Owen closes himself back up and returns to the Midnight Realm.
Conclusion
Owen lives like walking dust. An inner self he can’t embrace, a cosmos intimate but unsustainable. Constricted breath paired with misalignment, his steps out of sync with the world. An existence trapped, inaudible beneath static. A scream in a crowded room that no one ever hears.