i saw the tv glow

- i wrote a whole thing about this but it's embarrassing so these were my concluding thoughts:

(im also not sure how obvious these are but some people still don't think it's a horror movie so..)

owen's 'story' is not linear, like maddie's path of resolution to live. none of the story is, because life does not follow a pattern of 'denial - acceptance - liberation'. isabelle tried, but she could not accept and liberate simultaneously (hence the complete dissociation) - in fact maddie attempts to keep the story linear. their journeys, and the film's general storyline, are representative of the uniqueness of this experience, maddie cannot 'bring isabelle out' for owen, but since he can't do it she tries to anyway, and he isn't ready. and by the time he is, he thinks it's too late. and he 'dies'. 

maddie's hesitation*, "in..in an industrial freezer"

- maddie is not delusional. owen is. maddie uses analogies from the pink opaque, and metaphors when speaking to owen because owen has completely disassociated from the events of his teen life and has suppressed the memories, projecting them onto the (real) show he and maddie used to watch together. the only way maddie can save owen is by bringing out his true identity (isabelle), and the only way she can get owen to listen, is by abstracting the past and future versions of his true self (e.g when they are standing on the football field and owen refuses to acknowledge his life even as it is happening, and he runs away.)

'Isabel, oh my god i found yours too, it was still beating' 

(something about the delivery of that did make me sob..) - maybe maddie saw someone living as owen needs to and saw a brighter future for him. - (or believed/saw in him that he could still accept isabelle one day)

*i interpreted maddie's struggle to find the words to reach owen as an acknowledgement that he was projecting the fantasy onto her and not the other way around, he thinks she's delusional because she is still referencing the pink opaque like it's real life but she does this because it's owen who has lived so vicariously through the show he can't accept that it's his own reflection.