Dr. Rusk's interrogative lilt

Manufactured therapeutic sincerity exposed as empty reflex, and the kids weaponize it back. Dr. Rusk, the staff counselor, mirrors "the last dependent clause… with an interrogative lilt," wearing an expression "she probably thinks looks blandly deep," her pop-psych manuscript stuffed with 29 "self-"s in four pages. The counterfeit-caring register — professional attentiveness with no attention behind it — is so transparent the kids parody it in her own idiom ("Having trouble keeping from twisting my twittery head off like a game-hen's?"). This is pseudo-sincerity as consumer therapy, the same empty affect 047 casts in resin and 160's encounter-group runs as kitsch, and the E.T.A. verdict is that it's "whatever's just slightly worse than useless."