Carrie, Episode Two: “Dramatic Arts, Part 1” and the Humiliation Nobody Stops
This episode opens with humiliation, and it hits hard. The details have changed over the decades, but the pain at the center is the same. Here is what stood out to me.
Humiliation, Then and Now
In the old days, humiliation could mean being seen in a vulnerable moment when you thought you were alone. Today it looks different: someone posts all your social blunders online for people to laugh at, or circulates private photos you never agreed to share. The tools have changed, but the cruelty has not. What has changed is the audience. A moment that once embarrassed you in front of a locker room now follows you in front of thousands, and it doesn’t go away.
The Adults Are Watching
What bothers me most is that the teachers and authorities know. They watch the video. They check the social media. And still nothing stops it. This points to a real gap: noticing a problem is not the same as fixing it. Schools often lack clear rules for what happens online, and when the harm spreads across platforms, no single adult feels responsible. The result is that everyone watches and the victim carries the weight.
There’s also something odd about how surprised some teachers act. They talk as if the internet and online bullying are brand-new, but the internet has been around since 1969, and bullying existed when those teachers were kids too. The tools got faster, but the problem is not new, which means “we didn’t see this coming” doesn’t hold up very well.
Being Gay in a Church
The episode brings up what happens when someone who is gay belongs to a church. Churches differ widely on this. Many Catholic and Anglican communities accept gay members, though how fully varies by region and congregation. Other religions hold that the Bible forbids same-sex relationships, pointing to passages like Leviticus, and they will disfellowship members who go against that teaching. Because a church is a private religious organization, freedom of association gives it the right to set its own membership rules. That’s the legal side. The human side is that someone who has lost a community they grew up in is in real pain, and the show seems aware of that. Believers on every side of the question can agree that cruelty is never the answer.
The Power of Anonymous Websites
This episode shows how powerful anonymous websites can be. Some are protected by an LLC, some are hosted in countries beyond the reach of prosecution, and some may not even use a provider, passing a site along as files on a flash drive and sharing links with friends. That makes them very hard to shut down. The practical lesson is that once something is posted, you may have no way to pull it back. The more anonymous the platform, the fewer people can be held accountable for what happens there.
Nobody Can Police the Internet
These days, it’s close to impossible to police the internet. That leads to a tough question the episode raises about phones: students want their iPhones with them, and one reason is safety. If a school shooting happened, a phone could be a lifeline. So banning phones solves one problem and might create another. There’s no easy answer, and the show doesn’t pretend there is.
The Security Gap
The episode also highlights how little security there is. In practice, the law generally expects a danger to be imminent, meaning happening right now, before authorities can act on it. A threat that might happen in five minutes, or tomorrow, is much harder to act on, and reporting a suspected danger may not get far in court. That’s frustrating, because the warning signs are often visible long before anything happens. It’s one reason the story of Carrie feels so tragic. People could see the trouble coming, but there was no clear way to stop it in time.
Telekinesis Is a Funny Power
Telekinesis has a comic side. Picture walking down a street where every light you pass flickers. You might not care at all. That’s part of what makes the power interesting here. It doesn’t always come with a dramatic moment, and sometimes it leaks out in small, strange ways. But small leaks are a sign of something that is building up, and the show is careful to remind us of that.
Workers’ Rights and a Reversal
This episode also talks about workers’ rights. Kris’s dad hired an off-the-books worker, and the worker died. That worker was Carrie White’s dad, Ralph White. Paying someone under the table means no insurance, no protections, and no one to answer for what goes wrong. In this story, the shoe is on the other foot for white people, since a white family is the one hurt by an arrangement that more often harms immigrants and the poor. It also adds a hard edge to the connection between Kris and Carrie: one family’s shortcut cost the other everything.
Billy and the Brick
Billy, Kris’s new boyfriend, has some interesting ideas. He’s right that most people, including Kris, wouldn’t give him the time of day. And yet he is the one who holds the power, and he could end their lives anytime he wants. He even asks Kris to tell him to drop a brick on cars, saying he’d do it for her if she believed him.
That scene is chilling because it shows how dangerous a person can be who has been ignored and has found some form of power. It’s the same thread we see with Carrie: people who feel invisible, who are handed something that makes them impossible to ignore. The difference is that Billy seems to enjoy it, and he wants Kris’s approval.
Final Thoughts
“Dramatic Arts, Part 1” is about what happens when humiliation goes public, the adults look away, and the people with the least power find a way to hold the most. The warning signs are everywhere.