Actually tethered to the camera, Danny has nowhere to hide his grief as he runs out to meet Craig’s young widow. Following the teary, confrontational grief-counseling schoolroom scene (and yet another dramatic slap), we see Danny ambling around the base adrift in his own thoughts. The teen has long been on the show’s sidelines, but now that he has lost his best friend, we find him front and center - and in one key moment in the episode, actually framed as such. As a portrait of grief, “Right Here Right Now VII” is transcendent.Īnd, rightly, at the center of such a story line is Danny. It also leaves all of our characters at a loss for how to react. The death of Craig, whom we last saw a few episodes back leaving his newlywed Italian wife soundly sleeping, rocks the base’s fragile social ecosystem. There’s an aptly dour tone throughout, matching the seriousness of what happens when death, arguably not an unexpected specter in a military base like this one, hits home. Not so in this episode - set at Thanksgiving, no less. The HBO show has long leaned heavily on its sun-dappled Italian setting between the playful beachside moments and the lustful poolside hangouts, Luca Guadagnino has flooded it with a sunny brightness that has helped make this coming-of-age tale feel almost dreamy at times. And yes, I mean that in both a literal and a figurative sense. I knew we had to come down from the giddy high of last week’s - that election-news button alerted us to as much - but, boy, was I not ready for We Are Who We Are’s darkest episode yet. Let’s not mince words or waste any time: This is a gut punch of an episode.

We are who we are episode 2