The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The First Half of Lovecraft Country Season 1
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HBO’s Lovecraft Country has officially reached its halfway point of its first season and it has definitely been the talk of the town every Sunday, if not during the week. Created by Misha Green from Matt Ruff’s book, the show has lots of twists and turns. Now that I have a better idea of what the show is, I felt like it was good to take stock of the journey so far.
The Good
The Blend of Themes and Genre: This show had quite a tough road to hoe in terms of having to blend real world issues with genre trappings with protagonists who haven’t been given the chance to shine. Horror is always at its best when it use the real life horrors as grounding. This show is wild and crazy but watching the Black version of an Indiana Jones tale or a haunted house where the spirits show up for the Black characters is thrilling.
The Acting: There’s some genuinely great and moving work being done on this show. From Jonathan Majors’ quiet strength to Jurnee Smollettt and Wunmi Mosaku digging inton Leti and Ruby’s bravado in the face of any situation and the heartbreaking peace we watched Michael K. Williams feel as Montrose found his tribe…how thrilling it is to see the Black actors tear into this material!
Costumes: From Leti’s wardrobe in every scene to all the time they had Jonathan Major wearing clothes that were clearly taken in an inch or two, the costuming on this show is amazing. I love that it’s not afraid to be vibrant with its colors.
Episode 1 remains the standout but that exorcism in episode 3 is one of the best scenes I have seen on TV this year.
The Bad
The Modern Music – Yes, this show is not subtle, but listen…a Cardi B song as a woman is shopping in the 60s is just too on the nose. It doesn’t fit the time period, especially as they source period music so well. I wish they were more subtle with this rather than overt because the show is doing enough.
Connective Tissue – I 100% understand why a woman like Ruby would want to not be interrupted and Pollyjuice potion herself into a white woman. I also 100% understand how she could find herself sucked into the vortex of that power in how she treats her coworker and ultimately her boss. What I 100% DO NOT buy is a character just so readily accepting magic from a white man after waking up as a whole new person and not having any kind of hard thoughts about what she was doing. Lovecraft Country has presented its characters as having some knowledge about magic due to growing up with sci-fi but is not doing a smart enough job connecting all of the bits to make the story land. The creators are taking for granted how much the audience is invested in the power of this show and it’s making the flaws of iis anthology style glaringly obvious. Take the scene where Leti has to press the door in a specific pattern. We don’t even see the symbols or know the order other than Montrose speaking. When each episode feels like a distinctly different genre, dropping the ball on simple things makes plotholes seem bigger.
The Ugly
I want to give this show the benefit of the doubt for many things because the showrunner is a Black woman and I have the slim amount of faith that the show won’t fall into issues other shows do because there’s a non-white man at the helm.
That still does not help me get rid of the terrible feelings that these last two episodes have left with with regards to two key moments. Ruby’s plan to get revenge on her boss for (probably) raping Tamera starts off well and good and then turns brutal as she sodomizes him with a stiletto to the tune of Bodack Yellow by Cardi B. I appreciate that the show is not afraid to challenge us by having our protagonists not have to be squeaky clean, but this type of violence in the same episode where we see gay characters have sex and Montrose have an awakening felt wrong in some way. I personally am not a fan of revenge rapes storylines but especially in this moment, it still felt kind of coded weird.
The most egregious thing this show has done was episode four ending with Montrose killing Yahima by slitting their throat. This moment does make narrative sense, Montrose is a violent character and probably thought he was doing right by his son getting rid of the temptation to dive into more magical mess.
But when you go to lengths about telling us this character is two-spirit, showing us their genitals, and then killing them in the same episode, what exactly are you doing? If this show were written by a white cis person we would be CRUCIFYING them for this kind of story and I still haven’t recovered from this moment since seeing the episode. They might have something bigger planned but this death just adds to the statistics and depictions of gender non-conforming characters being violently killed. Hopefully the show will rectify this in a good way because it’s a terrible misstep.
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