Tuesday, October 6, 2020

What I’m Watching: Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country: Season 1, Episode 8 “Jig-a-Bobo” (B)

This show keeps getting even more disturbing, and as someone who’s averse to horror (yet for some reason is still watching this show), I really didn’t like watching Diana get chased by two extremely creepy girls who were dancing and twisting in unnatural ways. Everyone now seems to know that magic exists and that it can be used for both positive and negative purposes. They all got to cast spells to various degrees of effectiveness, and none of it was particularly pleasant to watch. Opening with Emmett Till’s memorial helps to ground this show in a history that’s very much real even if the supernatural content that dominates this show’s episodes make it easy to think of purely as fiction. It was bizarre and off-putting to watch Ruby shed her skin in a very bloody way during sex with William, and there’s plenty of meaning behind the fact that they chose to do that when neither body is a natural skin for either of them. Christina being beaten and killed by the cops was brutal and difficult to watch, especially since she just emerged having to frantically catch her breath but clearly not dead. Ji-Ah showing up to tell Atticus about his impending death didn’t sit well with him, and Leti was very concerned that trusting Christina might well be the way that he dies. I liked Atticus’s response, that they were surrounded by monsters and he didn’t have a choice, and this show really knows how to make Ruby running from her front door – the one that wouldn’t let the cops in just before that – an intense and memorable event. The creature emerging from the pavement to defend them was a formidable moment, and, after a good deal of fear, both Atticus and Leti were very relieved to discover that their spell had indeed worked. The biggest news I noted was that Atticus did go to the future, a fact he knows because the book he brought back was written by his son. I’m fonder of time travel than magic, so I’d be happy for a spotlight on that storyline in the remaining two episodes.

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