Blink and you miss it: The name plate lists four names. Terje is Isak’s dad, Marianne is Isak’s mom, and Lea is Isak’s older sister.



Subtext: Eva isn’t shocked when Jonas says Isak’s mom was “already pretty crazy”, she just acknowledges it, which means that both her and Jonas knows that Isak’s mom suffers some kind of mental illness, and has known for some time.



Subtext: Neither Chris nor Sana says it outright, but from their dialogue we can figure out that they’ve got an assignment to pick a Christmas song and analyze its symbolism, its message, its subtext. Chris is struggling, because the song she picked simply doesn’t have a lot of subtext, it’s just a silly Christmas song for kids called På Låven Sitter Nissen.



Culture: In the Nordics, although the character that brings Christmas presents is red and fat and bearded and jolly, he is not based on the Christian Saint Nicholas at all. In old folklore, each farm had a household spirit called a nisse who watched over the farm and the animals, and could help out with farm chores. But you had to keep your nisse happy, and one of the ways was to set out a bowl of porridge with butter in it for him on midwinter eve. This is what the song is about, and this is why Chris is trying to think of the symbolism of porridge, but sometimes porridge is just porridge.

This character later changed into the bringer of presents, and in modern times this Julenisse merged with the Saint Nicholas character, making the Nordic Santa look exactly like English Santa, but with a different name and origin.



Blink and you miss it: Noora is drinking chocolate milk.



Subtext: Even though the girls are saying it’s going good with the bus, it really isn’t, because no-one gives a crap about the bus except Vilde.



Subtext: Vilde says she’s going to get her jacket, but she’s already wearing her jacket… She got caught red-handed in her lie that she was having lunch with her new bestest friends, and is panicking and making up shit to get out of the situation.



Subtext: Eva is standing in the cafeteria trying to choose something to eat, but when some other girl grabs a pasta salad, she follows suit and reaches for one. Except she stops herself and chooses a sandwich instead, because Eva is no longer someone who has no opinions of her own. Yay, character growth!



Subtext overload: This entire scene is overflowing with delicious subtext, because both Eva and Isak are lying constantly, about different things, for different reasons.



Isak says he’s sure his parents will work it out and get back together again, but his facial expression betrays him, he isn’t sure, he’s really scared that they’re going to break up.



Eva says she’s together with Jonas again, but this a lie, a trap to snare Isak. She continues saying that Isak is one of the people in her life that she can trust, but this is not true, and Isak knows this, which is why he’s trying to hide his shame with a fake laugh.



Isak is Team Jonas, alright. 😘



When Isak tells Eva to think about why he betrayed her, he’s actually steeling himself to come out to her, but he’s still scared to do it, to say that he is gay, so he tries to come out by making her guess it and say it.



But when that backfires, when Eva guesses wrong, Isak decides to stay in the closet, so he takes Eva’s wrong guess and runs with it, pulling a DARVO, pretending to be hurt, attacking Eva so that she feels bad for him, instead of angry at him.



Culture: The music playing during the make-Vilde-puke-montage is Deilig Er Jorden, a well-known Christmas psalm. Coincidentally, it’s also the song Sana chose for her homework assignment earlier in the episode.



Culture: In Norway, like in the rest of Europe, 112 is the emergency number. But Noora is calling 113, which is the number to get medical assistance and emergency advice in Norway. Throughout the scene she is being given advice for how to help Vilde, which she then relays to the rest of the girls.



Subtext: The music during the credits is Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean, which is about the title character claiming that the singer is the father of her child, something the singer is denying. This of course alludes to the Vilde-William pregnancy subplot.

