Sunday, December 20, 2020

The Review: Lovecraft Country Season 1


Lovecraft Country 9/10


Full of spoilers! After months of not watching and some sad ass attempts at trying to recap this series episode by episode I have finally finished Lovecraft Country. This is one of the best series I have ever watched. I'm not even worried about hyping it too much because if you don't like this show something is wrong with you. Yeah. I said it. If you can't get into a show that has magic, time travel, ghosts, history lessons, monsters, science, and teaching you how not to be a racist asshole then I don't even wanna talk to you. Matter of fact, get out my face! This show was so damned good. So why didn't I give it a 10/10? I'll get to that.



This is where I ran into trouble trying to recap this from the start. This show is about a lot of stuff. The basic bitch gist is that a guy discovers that his family has a secret magical heritage and someone is trying to use magic to become immortal. The long version is this dude named Atticus Freeman gets a letter from his mostly estranged father urging him to come home. He is back from war and reading books and traveling in the back of buses that break down forcing him to walk the rest of the way. He meets with his uncle George who is writing The Green Book which is that thing millions of people didn't know existed until that terrible looking movie came out. I can't talk. I learn history from TV shows too. George's wife is Hippolyta who becomes so damned badass later int his show. There is Leti who no one in her family likes as she seems to be flighty and doing what she wants good or bad while people are stuck taking care of everything else. Leti's sister is Ruby who has a whole batch of shit going on later in the show I'll get to.



Every episode of this feels like a different genre that can make you damn near cry, cheer, or laugh. There were definitely scenes where if I was a crying person I would have. During a trip George, Leti, and Tic (I am not spelling Atticus so many times) end up being chased out of a sundown town and are saved by a woman named Christina who has a magical ass car. They are later attacked right before being killed by police by monsters who are called away by someone. Fuck me. Even as I am writing this I am having trouble trying to talk about the story.



It may not seem like it at first but every character gets am episode that they get to shine on. Hippolyta went from this worried mother who wanted to travel with her husband and explore into a time traveling warrior, space explorer, until deciding to be a mother once again. Her daughter Diana had one of the most harrowing experiences being attacked by Uncle Tom's Cabin creatures and losing her arm only to get a robotic one and choke the fuck outta someone who deserved it so much while a black Shoggoth is with her. Ruby drinks a potion that turns her into a White woman and discovers that the man she is sleeping with is really a woman. Montrose, Tic's father, fights with his sexuality in a time where it was super bad to be Black let alone a gay Black man. Tic falls for a woman who has a demon in her that has to kill one hundred men.



There is really just so much in each episode. This isn't one of those shows you put on as background noise or you sit and text or whatever while its on. You have to pay actual attention to it. As for why I gave this a 9/10 instead of a perfect 10/10...it was the music. There were too many scenes that used recent music that I hate hearing on a regular ass day let alone during a scene that would've benefited from a good song or an original score. Like, when some of the songs would play I would be yanked out of not just the show but enjoying myself and would have to get back into it. I'm sure there was a creative reason this decision was made that I won't understand but I really hated some of the music in this so much. Other music was great as well as speeches and poetry woven into scenes. Check this show out on HBO or whatever other weird ass HBO they got because there's like three of them and some shows I can't finish because I don't have them.

Jurnee Smollett as Letitia "Leti" Lewis

Jonathan Majors as Atticus "Tic" Freeman

Aunjanue Ellis as Hippolyta Freeman

Courtney B. Vance as George Freeman

Wunmi Mosaku as Ruby Baptiste

Abbey Lee as Christina Braithwhite

Jamie Chung as Ji-Ah

Jada Harris as Diana Freeman

Michael K. Williams as Montrose Freeman

Click here for previous The Review.

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