This week’s episode, “Holy Ghost,” finds Leti as a homeowner of a rundown boarding house in an all-white neighborhood. On the North Side of Chicago, Leti stands alone. She fights off cops, disgruntled neighbors, and a series of ghosts. She both suffers the consequences of her defiant actions and the confidence that comes with standing up for one’s self. A goat, some ancestors, and touch of mental torture give the first Leti-led episode a unique flavor, and an exciting twist ending.
Discovery plays a role in the enjoyability of reading H.P. Lovecraft’s original works. Brilliant scientific minds slowly unearth the magical elements of an old object or discarded book. The details of how an unaging man built his castle, weaves together with real American history to set the reader on the edge of their seat as the impossible suddenly seems horrifically possible. In Lovecraft’s “The Outsider,” a man tries to escape his home, where he’s dwelled in isolation for as long as he can remember. When he approaches a gathering of people, they shriek in fear and run from him. He believes there must be something near him, and tries to see what they’re seeing. It isn’t until he faces a mirror, that he realizes he is the horror from which the people run. He senses a presence, touches it, and must spend eternity with them, now an outsider.
Lovecraft claimed “The Outsider” represented his closest attempt to mimic his hero, Edgar Allen Poe. Gothic and horror historians also point to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein as a possible inspiration, where feelings of isolation and inhumanity culminate in the lead character’s destruction. “Holy Ghost,” directed by Daniel Sackheim, shows an emotional parallel to a monstrous-looking figure with a human heart. Instead, Leti feels like a monster on the inside and represents as a gorgeous, care-free woman on the outside.
In the opening scene, Leti sits in church and watches a member of the congregation catch the holy ghost—a moment a parishioner feels the presence of their god sweep through them, often manifesting as dance or speaking in tongues. Everyone claps, rejoicing in the Lord, as a poem read about Leti being an angel on Earth, guided to heaven to fly higher than the rest. Leti can neither feel the holy ghost, nor hear the loving words spoken about her. As she’s encouraged to fly, she cries.
Self-isolation can become a defense tactic for the depressed. Leti tries to isolate herself inside groups of people. When surrounded by laughter and booze, bad feelings have to work harder to touch the soul. First, she invites her sister to see the house. In one of the most uncomfortable walks in history, they pass neighbors spying on them from windows, too scared to address the newcomers. To walk into an inhospitable space incites revolution both for the inhabitants and the invading individual. Leti creates an artistic utopia filled with dancers, a piano, and her photography. Craftily, Leti dodges any explanation about where she acquired the money to purchase the house.
Of course, 10 new Black people in the dilapidated house down the street stirs a sense of white nationalism amongst the neighbors. So, while the women clutch their pearls, the men-folk park three automobiles outside the home and attach heavy bricks to the horns. Thus begins the first wave of torture; the wet, saturated heat of a Chicago summer launches the second. The noise and heat begin to break the fierce Leti, who outran vampires and mentally prepared to kill a white sheriff in the Jim Crow South. Exhausted and still feeling distanced from her sister, she pushes straight into a block party where she invites all of her Black friends to drown out the horns of hate and laugh.
No matter how Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) persists that these white folks were going to be unhappy, Leti needs a win. So she chooses to see the bright possibility the housing unit holds. Not even the mention of the Trumbull Park Homes Race Riots of 1953 and 1954, which saw hundreds of white Chicagoans gather outside an accidentally segregated public housing building, could bring Leti down from the clouds. Nor does a near decapitation by elevator deter her.
Meanwhile, Tic’s been helping out Hippolyta and Diana after the death of George. He cooks, cleans, helps the family publishing business, and plays with Diana, but none of his good deeds can assuage his guilt. Hippolyta can smell it all over him. Atticus and Montrose agree not to tell the family about the white wizards they met. Instead, they attribute George’s mortal wound to a gunshot, telling half-truths and burying the past behind them. Or so they think…
The house party reveals a lot. First, Ruby will not be satisfied until she gets this job as a counter girl. She’s convinced hard work and determination will pay off. More importantly, she finds those two attributes missing from the larger Black population. Perhaps shaped by her sister’s and mother’s care-free attitude about life, Ruby believes herself to be better than her people. How deep this belief goes and how impacted by whiteness it is, remains to be seen. But it’s disheartening to see. Unlike her sister Leti, Ruby disrupts to adhere to the ideal. A counter-girl was the standard of grace and beauty in the ’50s. Being gorgeous and graceful, it’s not difficult to see why Ruby would want the rest of the world to acknowledge those ideals in her. But thinking that these things can come to her through anything other than structural change is difficult to watch. If you’ve walked those roads, I don’t need to explain the hardship and disappointment waiting at the end.
It’s also revealed at the house party that Leti is a virgin. Her outfits, which we might revere as cute and freeing today, were provocative and showy during Leti’s time. Some might even say the short skirts and hotpants were dangerous or inviting (we were still so far away from understanding the root causes of sexual assault.) Leti flirts and dances with the best of them. She’s alive, free, and disconnected from just about everyone. She wears her sadness only in her eyes, and just for a second. You have to be looking for it. She needs something to give her life meaning.
What young woman can’t identify with Leti’s struggle? Behind her back, the men, including our beloved Atticus, discuss who can partner with her. One stranger even claims to have slept with her back in high school. But Leti’s biggest fear is becoming her mother. Mentioned in every episode so far as being cruel, absent, and flirtatious, Leti’s mama didn’t give her the time and love a mother should. For any number of reasons, Leti chose to run from all of that. After almost being lynched in the forest and escaping a racist wizard, Leti came to this house to build a life. Her first time with Atticus isn’t idyllic. It’s an experience she wants, but without the whole truth, the experience can’t be everything it should have been. Atticus is a gentleman. The heat and jealousy get the best of him, and he doesn’t stop to do a proper check-in or aftercare. While not a fan-pleasing coming together of this couple, the moment does feel authentic to the chaotic nature of their lives. Still, there’s a flash of regret in Leti’s eyes as she is further isolated when Atticus walks out.
The house party elicits the last action a white citizen can take before calling the police, a burning cross on the lawn. Usually, when this symbol pops up in film or television, the cross is filmed from a low angle, emphasizing the horror of a holy symbol turned ominous warning. The family inside the home almost always flees that night or the following morning in the movies. It is the ultimate sin. But here, it’s another day as a Black American. A plan forms without words amongst the party-goers. Ruby first checks on the children, then runs to her car to take the guns as far away as possible. But Leti doesn’t follow plans. After the night she’s had, she cannot sit still, nor be quiet. So she rages. Like everything Leti does, she destroys beautifully; throwing back the straps of her dress on her shoulder so she can get a better swing at the car window, her years on the softball team showing in her familiarity with a bat.
Of course, destruction of property gives the police all the probable cause they need to arrest Leti and take her for a ride. They think someone must have given her the money to buy the house. Perhaps a powerful political figure is trying to ignite a cause for segregation. Leti’s tiny body slams against the walls of the van. The way Misca Green builds up the action to this scene, one cannot help but think of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody on April 15, 2015, after a suspected “rough ride.” He lived in a housing project, which recently saw calls from the mayor to have more police officers stationed around the site. Luckily, Leti survives. But the police won’t acknowledge that she complained about the harassment. Once again, Leti stands alone.
When she returns home, most of her tenants have fled, not wanting to be on the receiving end of any more violent acts of prejudice. Leti clings to the hope her new home brings at a start over. She’s already given her virginity to the man she loves, but he isn’t in a state to return that love. The fear of becoming her mother permeates every interaction she has. In her best acting in the series so far, Jurnee Smollett, as Leti, must stand in front of her sister and listen to the long list of misdeeds, broken hearts, and character flaws that outline her character. Mosaku is right there with her, matching each flinch with a desperate plea to be heard after years of being jerked around. The emotional pain felt physical to me as Smollett flinches and deflates under Mosaku’s earned resentment. Leti took all the money their mother, the mother Leti readily admonishes, whose funeral Leti did not attend, had and kept it for herself.
Remember that poem from the opening scene:
“Hey, Leti. What did you do to mak/e a mark on this world? What mountains did you climb? Which angels gave you their wings? Which skys have you flown? And when you reach the heavens, who was there to catch you when you fell? And did they tell you that you saved them, too, like you saved me?Like they’re mending your wings and holding them up to the sun, just to step back, and watch you fly? So go head Leti. Fly.”
It’s a powerful and arresting poem narrated by Precious Angel Ramirez. Originally, I heard this poem in a Nike commercial that celebrated trans artist Leiomy Maldonado and the art of voguing. At first glance, this seems a strange fit for the scene. The poem uplifts a trans icon for her ability to pave paths for others to make it in an exceedingly cruel world. To give this moment to a cis woman give me great pause. The poem itself is trans art. The conclusion of this episode sees Leti use the house the way her sister would use it. Housing-insecure families receive a beautiful place to live. Using Leiomy’s influence in her community to inspire others to do better initially feels like a good use of the poem. But I’m looking forward to hearing trans women speak about this scene.
The ghost in Leti’s home makes itself known in the emulsion layer of her photography. Cracks appear that, when lined up, form a face of the deceased doctor who performed horrible experiments on Black people he captured. One woman’s baby was pulled from her stomach. An elderly woman had the top of her head cut off. A baby’s head was sewn on a grown man’s body, and one man seemed to have pipes driven through his limbs and chest. This scene stands in for all the doctors who performed medical torture, disguised as scientific experimentation, on Black Americans. They harvested Henrietta Lacks’ cells just five years earlier.
Leti decides to stake her claim in this new world and calls an Orisha. The Orisha is an African priestess who aligns their study with a specific god. This Orisha calls on Mama Oya, an orisha of winds, lightning, and violent storms, death, and rebirth. When her protection of goat blood washes away, Leti and Atticus join forces with the ghosts who didn’t survive the doctor’s experiments. It’s only after saying their names that the ghosts feel empowered to cast out the doctor. “You are not dead, yet!” She shouts. “You can still fight.” And it works. Of course, now she’s living in a house with a creepy elevator that can easily reveal three dead white boys. But the house is hers. No questions asked.
Stray observations
- Children. Do not play with spirits in the basement. These are basic horror rules.
- Y’all, I love this level of gore! Heart pumping blood out of a headless neck is good stuff.
- Ooo, Christina Braithwhite is back and just as chilling as ever. This time she has an invitation to partner with Atticus to discover the family history. Also, she presents her power to freeze a man where he stands. The way she unfurled those blinds to reveal a Black man with a gun, was so frightening. I thought for sure she was gonna pull a Karen and call for help. Stay away from her Atticus. She’s evil! I know it.
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Random observations: If those children’s ouija board was not lying then George is haunting that house too?Will Hippolyta go on the road to carry on George’s work for his Negro Travel Guide? I hope she’s given more to do in subsequent episodes.In the first episode we see Hippolyta looking through a telescope in the kitchen as Dee is talking to her dad about her comic book when he’s on his road trip w/Tic and Leti. When she gets on the phone she mentions she was able to see Casseopia and wants to go on the roof for a better view. Then in this episode we see the telescope in her bedroom. I hope there’s more about what her interest in astronomy signifies but somehow I doubt there will be.
Lastly: MORE Ruby please!
I’m so glad someone else is bringing up the fact that the ouija board clearly spelled “George.” I think his time on the series isn’t done, and I’m so excited to see what happens with his character!
After the Ouija board spelled out “George” is also spelled out “IS DEAD”. I took that to be the spirits in the house taunting Diana, reminding her her father is dead. As much as I want George to return as a ghost helper/guide, I don’ think this is it. But maybe I’m wrong.
No, you’re right, the ouija board spelled out “GEORGE IS DEAD,” which is why Diana got upset.
On the other hand, Ouija boards are notoriously bad spellers, so it may have been going for “GEORGE IS DE AD___” but she disrupted it before it could finish. Clearly the big secret is what George is. De Administrator (perhaps of the Braithwaite family trust)? De Adversary? De Adventurer? De Adulterer? De Admiral? We may never know!
Also, no benevolent ghost has ever communicated ominously through a Ouija board.
I would love to see a movie scene with kids in a creepy attic with a Ouji board, spelling out “mom hides the good candy behind the dog food”.
Fair point. Full disclosure, I was a bit wine drunk by this point last night, and episode was getting me totally hyped so I probably missed a few details.
I was sober and could barely read along to the board.
I watched that like three times, and I think there were a few letters that were not shown. they showed the kids moving the reader over letters after “IS” and before “DEAD” but didn’t show them. I thought it actually said “George ISN’T dead.” And that they were talking to george. Would also explain why the “spirit” answered “no” to the “Will i have a good time on my trip?” question. Who would know better than George, the travel guide writer?
If it’s anything like the book, Hippolyta will have a GREAT standalone starring ep.
Spoiler warning:If they’re following the book then it’s going to be great. As with everything in this show you need to know your Lovecraft stories.
I do not like many of the changes from the book; everything is so over the top. The relative restraint of the book was more effective.
I think it isaid, “George is dead” although it cut away in the middle, so all I really saw for sure was “George” and “dead.” I think you’ll like upcoming episodes if they stay with the book at all.
Did anyone else notice the kid right before Diana? The one who asked the ouija board if he was going to enjoy his trip down south? To which the ouija board replied “no”? He’s credited as Gil but…Chicago…1955… he’s obviously meant to be Emmett Till, right?
Drat, I almost had an excuse to post the “Period Sex” song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but it turned out Letitia was fibbing to hide that she was a virgin.The bit with the car horns kind of took me out of it, because that would be as annoying for the rest of the neighborhood as for the occupants of the house. I feel like there are lots of harassment options that don’t inherently also make one’s own situation intolerable.
So much so, that when they were having the party I assumed all Leti’s guests were leaving their car horns on but at night to retaliate against the neighbors. The first shot of the party is from inside a white family’s house and it seemed like they were walking away from honking cars but apparently just walking by then as they would have to
The car horn thing also struck me as self-defeating (Not to mention the logistics of “Could you pick up the kids after school today? I’d get them with the other car, but, y’know, I have to leave it parked in front of that house.”) but nothing about racism makes a damn lick of sense, so…
Also, wouldn’t car batteries in 1955 run out of juice like overnight from a car horn blaring constantly?
Re: the honking – that was EXACTLY what I thought. There’s no way the rest of the neighbourhood would put up with that.
The car horn thing is real, regardless. In fact this terrorism tactic was used as recently as… 2 months ago during the height of the NYC protesting. The police drove their cars through Harlem all night with the sirens blaring as a sleep deprivation tactic.
I’m no mechanic, but I want to say the constant horn blaring would have drained the car batteries.
I can believe racists would totally inconvenience themselves to drive black people out of their neighborhood.
(Chekov’s elevator)Last week and tonight forced me to recalibrate my expectations on the show. I couldn’t help anticipate another experience as I enjoyed so thoroughly as the alternate universe of WATCHMEN and how seamlessly it folded in history and an utterly compelling mashup of numerous genres. I am now somewhat looking at each episode as a near stand alone story. Like Scooby-Doo in “The Scary Forest”, Scooby-Doo and “The White Knights” or Scooby-Doo in “The Haunted Boarding House”. It just seems like the horrors/experiences of the first two episodes going into this episode are somewhat set aside for the next adventure. However the show is not without ideas on visceral horror and race. Not familiar at all with the source material, I am still hoping for a story arc to pull these episodes in tightly with regards to the Sons of Adam or some such. That is why I remain invested, there is so much talent at work here.Still blown away by the production, the music is outstanding and everyone in the cast is aces. And please, more dialogue like:And Tic, really, you have to be smarter than this. You know you can’t just go around killing white women.”
(Chekov’s elevator)
Exactly what I said to the wife.
I thought, “Chekov’s bear trap.”
Same
And I thought stepping on a Lego tile in the middle of the night hurt!
I pre-winced every time people walked through the basement after we saw that trap
I would have liked to have had the elevator guy turn away and JUST have cleared the falling elevator – only to have him blankly fall forward to discover the back of him cleaved off. Like the Ghost Ship opening scene.
I loved how from the first moment we see Leti being isolated from everyone. She’s died and feels she hasn’t all come back. And everything she does seems to be to feel like she belongs among the living again. She makes up with her sister or tries anyway. She throws parties. She finally has sex with Tic like she imagined. But she clearly can’t stop feeling like an outsider. Imposter in her own life and it all just makes her feel more like an outsider.It doesn’t help that she can’t talk to anyone but Tic (Montrose is drowning his trauma in alcohol so he’s useless) and lie to everyone else. You can see the toll of those lies not only on her but also on Hippolyta who suspects they are not telling her everything.
But Leti finally finds her strength fighting for her house and Tic and calling the abused to fight against the abuser. With one leg in the death she can connect the worlds of dead and living and cleanse her house. And heal the ghosts in process (I loved the moment they turn from monsters into their real selves while the man who did that to them melts away). She found her purpose in helping people. Both dead and living that come to rent rooms in her new house.
From the first time Letti doges the question about the money I knew Christina was involved. And once the house turned out to be haunted I had no doubt. Of course everything Christina does comes with strings attached – she wants the missing pages from Book of Names so she can have all the magic for herself. Tic clearly knew she was behind it too.
I thought for sure she was gonna pull a Karen and call for help. Stay away from her Atticus. She’s evil! I know it.
That however never crossed my mind. She could clearly kill him anytime she wanted. She let’s him live because she still wants something from him so calling in the mob would be useful. She just wanted to remind him who has all the power in this relationship.
At the same time she tempts him with getting some of that power. But you’re right she is clearly evil so I have no doubt she doesn’t intend to actually give him anything but scraps. And only as long as he’s useful to her.The problem is what is more dangerous – giving Christina what she wants or trying to keep it from her? She once again alludes to being behind her father’s death and her threat is clear. But what will she do when she has the full knowledge of language of Adam and all the spells in that Book?
As soon as it started I was struck by goddamn, what a brilliant idea to combine haunted house tropes with the actual horrors that middle class Black people faced trying to move into white neighborhoods. This actual history is so bloody (Trumbull was referenced and that violence was all over, like sundown towns. They called Birmingham “Bombingham” back in the day because of white terror against Black families buying houses where they weren’t supposed to). I thought both gospel sequences were amazing, LOVED the use of Yoruba and Vodun to rally the ancestors to fight white supremacy, so true to the history and beliefs! Also that scene with the cross-burning was some real shit, my family tells a story about white terrorists burning a cross at Black school and the men grabbing guns and taking shifts to defend the school around this time period.( I thought in the show they grabbed the guns to cover Leti and then tossed them when the cops were close, I think self-defense was the primary impulse for grabbing them, the reviewer and I may have interpreted that scene differently). There are so many of these stories in the Black community and HBO is doing some real education on the history of white supremacist violence with this show and Watchmen. So brilliant!
You know, I thought the initial “race against sunset” in the pilot was a pretty great juxtaposition, using a classic vampire movie trope in a somehow more terrifying racist context. Didn’t think they’d pull off the same kind of thing two eps later.
Also, white people are HORRIFYING.
Totally agreed. Being terrorized both inside and outside the house was a crafty way to frame this story. When you’re hearing things go bump in the night, and it could be racist harrasment just as easily as it could be ghosts, really makes for powerful thematic resonance.
Smashing those cars was as fist-pumping a moment as I’ve had all year. And the exorcism at the end, the dead Black victims reclaiming their power, and THAT music, gave me incredible chills
I was totally yelling, “Go Leti!” (Well, inwardly. I was watching with earbuds because other people were in the room.)
I interpreted the gun grabbing scene the same way. I also interpreted that her
I was listening to the “Lovecraft Country Radio” podcast and they noted that it was great to see the men preparing and ready to defend a black woman as she raged. They didn’t try to stop her or calm her down, and that’s quite something, as women are so often told to “not be hysterical”.One thing that caught my eye about Leti’s rage scene, though,
was that Ruby got in a car, started out of the driveway, waited
for everyone to put the guns in the trunk, and drove off before the cops arrived. Whether she was just smart, or that had actually been hashed out in general at some point, I loved that it just happened. Ruby might have been mad at Leti, but they were all together and weren’t going to give the cops any extra reason to harass them.
I didn’t realize Emmett Till’s nickname was Bobo. He was the kid in the cellar who asked the Ouija board if he would have a nice trip…
Whoa, I did not catch that.
Oh my god, really? That went right over my head. Holy crap.
Except Emmett Till was around 14 when he was killed and that boy looked quite a bit younger, like 10 or 11? no?
Bobo in the attic is dressed like Emmett Till, down to the tie. Sometimes actors don’t look exactly like the historical figure they’re portraying.
Makes me wonder if we’ll see a young Fred Hampton as well given the themes and location (his family and Till’s were close).
Listen. I’m in.(When Emmett asks, “Will I have a good time on my trip,” it broke. my. heart. And the recent interview with Jurnee Smollett about this episode kinda touches on “fatal destiny” and we know, as an audience, what is going to happen to Emmett Till, but Emmett doesn’t, yet has to go anyway because he’s a child. I just love this show so much.)
When he asked that question, I just turned to my wife and muttered “aw, shit”.
That may have been intentional though. Emmett was 13 by all accounts and looked a fair bit younger from the few photos we have of him. BUT the woman he supposedly whistled at (yeah, right) claimed he looked much older and that’s why she was so afraid of him. So the show could be saying that even if he looked like he was about to take out a membership in the AARP, he was still just a kid who enjoyed playing games with his friends.
Oh man, I didn’t catch that and now I’m sobbing. That poor baby.
Jesus… I don’t even know what to say. It’s like a punch in the gut.
I really hate that choice. Emmett Till isn’t some fun Easter egg to throw into your show. This isn’t the American Racism Cinematic Universe. Treat his memory with respect or don’t invoke it at all. Don’t just use him to wink at the audience.
The reviewer seems to go off on tangents, finding more Lovecraft in this episode than it nray contain.Tangents are great, but do pay attention to the story we have seen. That sheriff in episode one did not represent the Jim Crow South, but Massachusetts.
That sheriff in episode one did not represent the Jim Crow South, but Massachusetts.This is very important. We northerners like to pretend that racism is strictly a southern thing. I like how LC is putting the lie to that.However, it was my impression that Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1784, which was several decades before the lodge burned down and Tic’s ancestor escaped.
I thought the only note hit off key this episode was Tic pulling a gun on Christina. Tic knows good and well that woman has supernatural powers and could cast a spell to protect herself. It was also an empty threat as Christina herself pointed out. Tic wasn’t going to shoot a white women and just disappear without consequences.
What was the fate of the Orisha? She took a terrible crash on the ceiling and floor when possessed. She didn’t participate in the spirits driving out the evil doctor’s ghost. Her body wasn’t in the deep dungeon with the three dead white guys and the skeletons. I don’t take it for granted that she survived yet there is no indication that she died.
I have some issues with this review, and, being Non-American and white, I get that at its core this show isn’t necessarily tailored for me, but let me just say that we agree on one thing – Jurnee Smollett is one heck of an actor. I’ll even go as far as to say that she’s been the highlight of the show so far imo.Aunt Hippolyta is gonna go dark isn’t she? She knows something happened to her husband, and she didn’t seem too happy with either the men or with God. Whatever that thing is that was talking to the kids ( and with her ) at the party is going to get into her head. Re: the experiments the “ scientist “ was conducting in his lab, I kinda got the feeling they had to do with aging/immortality? Maybe it’s because of his association with the SoA. Both of the athletes seemed to have been de-aged, although it clearly went horribly wrong. When they are released from their curse/prison their bodies revert back to their normal, young adult selves.As for Mrs. Henrietta Lacks, what was done to her was very disrespectful and ( from what I understand ) not something she would have wanted or would have agreed to, but I believe we can take some solace in the fact that even today she is helping save lives, and that her family was able to get some peace. Imo, you can’t compare her or her case with the atrocities that are shown in this ep. Unfortunately, there are plenty of cases of real, horrible medical experiments done on unwilling subjects in the US and elsewhere in the world that the OP could have referenced.
I find many parts of your statement to be presumptuous and entitled.Have parts and cells of your body ever been taken from you without your consent with no compensation or acknowledgement for their use? Then why exactly do you get to weigh in on the degree of awfulness experienced by Henrietta Lacks? What gives you the right to say whether or not “we” can take solace in how much good her cells are doing for people?
Say it loudly for those in the back.Also non-POC voices are always “so disheartened” by the tragedies inflicted on BIPOC during medical and scientific experimentation…BUTInside that “but” is privilege. The privilege to brush that cultural trauma aside. The privilege to even attempt to separate the allegory here from the real narrative. The privilege to see the only the good while willfully pushing down all the bad in its foundations.
“Inside that ‘but’ is privilege” — yes, this exactly. Thank you for expressing it so well. I was deeply irritated by the OP’s statement, but there was another part I couldn’t quite articulate as to why I found it so tone-deaf. But it’s this exactly—the whole, “well, in the end humanity benefits, right?” while discounting what a person and what a community suffers when they are viewed as less than human. So many well-meaning people (not always white, but ALWAYS with bucketloads of unexamined privilege) say shit like this and don’t get why it comes across as so awful.
are we including Jews in POC here? we have some experience with being the subjects of experiments.Also, yes what happened to Henrietta Lacks was a violation of autonomy and disrespected her personhood, but there are degrees of things. Torturing one twin to death while monitoring the other one’s brain is worse.
1) who let this comment out of the greys?2) yes but only for the limited scope of this specific argument re: persecuted people of all colors (because it’s specifically about the persecuting) being experimented on but also fuck that “whataboutism” you just tried. 3) It smacks of the same non-sense that comes up every time black people express hurt over a cultural trauma. This compairing of pains doesn’t work or help anyone but the folks that oppressed everyone else by drawing divisions. What happened in the situation you brought up is so so wrong, but we aren’t talking about that right now. That’s just “all lives matter” again. Right now we’re talking specifically about black people and black pain and black art trying to make some understanding of that.Leave that shit with folks like former cookout invitee John Leguizamo. Read that article or this one and its comments to educate yourself on why what you tried is not the way.
wow that was delightful. You just connected your own disregard for holocaust victims with “all lives matter”I didn’t do that, you did. It’s almost like people aren’t perfect. And by perfect I don’t mean like they might slip up and do some death experiments with twins, they might be like you and be an ordinary schmuck!
*Gets offended that someone likens something you said to “all lives matter” equivocating while in the same breath accuses the perceived offender of being disregardful of holocaust victims.*
Nope, nothing batshit to see here, folks.
Please note, I’m NOT saying you both did the same thing here. I’m saying YOU, Duck, are a massive hypocrite, who completely (and likely willfully) missed the point of what Owl was trying to say to you and then did the very thing you were inaccurately accusing them of.
More listening, less bizarre personal attacks, maybe.
Yeah… any time someone feels the need to preface their comments with something along the lines of “I’m white BUT…” what comes next is never good.
I’m white but I tend to keep my thoughts to myself on message boards.Oops!
My god you’ve found an exception! Well done.
firstly, I’m not sure where you’re encountering enough discussion about the medical and scientific experimentation on “BIPOC” that you would know what white people “always” say about it, but I’d be interested to find out. secondly, what happened with Henrietta Lacks had nothing to do with her skin color. the harvesting of cells without knowledge or consent was standard procedure at that time. not standard procedure for “BIPOC.” the Supreme Court has ruled that once cells have been taken from someone as waste, such as in the biopsy Lacks had, they no longer “belong” to that person. and anyone who likes can sell them on the street corner if they want. that’s a ruling made for both “BIPOC” and “non-POC.” meaning everyone.
her information shouldn’t have been released, but did that happen because of her race? possibly. but how exactly would you know? this was an extrodinarily singular circumstance. it’s hardly self-evident enough to warrant bitter indignation. to be so malicious and nihilistic as to deny the good this has done humanity is really dark.
“What gives you the right to say […]”
Because they have a mind and emotions, a capacity for compassion, empathy, outrage and horror much like you. Because a free and open society respects safe spaces on the one hand, but respects people speaking their civil mind in the public sphere. Their relative privilege, greater or lesser, notwithstanding.
No one to be taken seriously has ever claimed the Trolley problem should be put into effect-
doctors should not kidnap and kill one innocent person, using their
organs to save 10 other innocents- but if some insane doctor did that- horribly, ghoulishly, unethically- the saving of 10 lives is a good thing. It will never justify the killing of an innocent. But basically no good thing will ever justify the killing of an innocent. That doesn’t make them any less good.
If my airplane crashes, stranding people on on a frozen mountain- but not me, I die in the crash- we can all take solace when the survivors use my body to nourish their own. If a sick mad scientist kidnaps, tortures, and kills me, but his/her experiments allow thousands of people to survive some disease, that doesn’t make my death less horrific or less wrong. But the survival of thousands is still a good thing, even when arrived at horribly, by a mechanism no one would ever wish into existence.And in any society I want to live in, once you or I have kicked the bucket, any organs our corpses contain should immediately go to any living creature that can use them, and our bodies should go to science. Bodily autonomy is sacrosanct, but only for the living.
Jesus H. Christ, do you fundamentally not understand the Trolley Problem. I’d go as far as to say your stupid ass has never even read the actual fucking thing.
But here’s the clue you so desperately need, late though it may be:
The trolley problem involves an ACCIDENT. A runaway trolley (based on events that were common when this thought exercise was created). Not a purposeful act of evil done with the support of underlying evil power structures. Fucking NO ONE (sane) thinks that forcing individuals to give up their bodily autonomy without their consent is OK, no matter who it benefits. In the United States we don’t even give up this right in death (i.e. how our organ donation system works).
There is no version of this ethical problem that exists that asks people to decide if FORCING or DECEIVING people to die or be otherwise bodily violated to save others is ethical. We all goddamned know it isn’t. Therefore, you simply cannot argue that any medical or scientific advancement made from the violation and torture of bipoc, Jewish, lgbtqia, and/or female bodies have lead to any good things. It hasn’t.
Mostly because you are forgetting an important fact: these things WOULD HAVE, COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE been discovered anyway, without the suffering, murder, torture, violation of basic human dignity, and etc, the repercussions of which are felt in the communities impacted by these practices still TO THIS DAY. And therein lies the logical failure of every racist, misogynistic, homophobic clown-ass dipshit who makes the argument you are making here. You assume that because it happened that way, it HAD to have happened that way. Fuck that and fuck you for perpetuating that sick, twisted, grotesque line of thinking.
Now go read about the CURRENT news of the women in the US immigration camps being forcibly sterilized RIGHT NOW, year 2020, and you again think about how the idea of “it’s justified because it already happened” is a fucking bullshit idea.
“Jesus H. Christ, do you fundamentally not understand the Trolley Problem. I’d go as far as to say your stupid ass has never even read the actual fucking thing.[…]There is no version of this ethical problem that exists that asks people to decide if FORCING or DECEIVING people to die or be otherwise bodily violated to save others is ethical.”Ok. The MAGA here is immeasurable and my amusement at it- immense.Philosophy/Psychology are now richer thanks to Phillipa Foot, who- in her 1960’s writings on abortion- first introduced the modern version of the trolley problem. So the trolley problem has been around for decades. But from that very first introduction of the problem (and Wikipedia will offer you Foot’s original thesis of a judge framing an innocent), up through the most recent pop culture references of the trolley problem, (see Chidi forced to do surgery in the Good Place,) the trolley problem has always questioned the ethics of “FORCING”, as you put it, others to die in other to save a few more. The trolley problem is so widely applicable because it doesn’t necessitate an accident. Your assertions of what the trolley problem is and is not, as well as your assumption I have not read it: they are all wrong.I do really like the ire, and the lordly superiority in: “I’d go as far as to say your stupid ass has never even read the actual fucking thing.” An ignorant person proudly flaunting their complete oblivion as if it were a solid grasp of the facts: what could be more MAGA than that?But wait! …for you have more MAGA to offer. You don’t offer the unimpeachable claim that no good can come from the violation and torture of “people”, or just “human beings”, or frankly any “sentient, human or non-human life.” No, you argue against the torture of a subset of “bodies”- specifically the bodies of “bipoc, Jewish, lgbtqia, and/or female[s]”. But not the Muslim bodies. No, nor the Hindu bodies. Forget the GRT. Or are you so reductionist as to lump all human beings not like you as a POC? Is your view of the world so white-centric as the world to be either “white” or “POC”? Lets be honest: there’s nothing more MAGA than the certainty of devout Trunp-loving Christians or the certitude of that fringe of zealous white liberals who are convinced they hold ethical absoluteness in the palms of their self-anointed hands. They need no knowledge, they need no rigorous framework of fact. They have something better: emotion and belief and blind ignorant animus.Just as you believed you knew what the trolley problem was, you believed you understood what I wrote- and you got it wonderfully, hilariously wrong. Every single thing you argued for is trite, obvious, understood. No one would disagree with any of your views- other than that the opposite of such were contained in my statements. The straw men you invented to fight against with such histrionic spleen could only be drawn from my words by someone as blindly ignorant as… well, from a person as ignorant as one who argues against torture only for a subset of humans, or someone who sees all humans as necessarily as either “white” or “POC”, or someone who confidently distorts the trolley problem while, in the same sentence, insulting other people for not knowing the trolley problem.
Good observation about the nature of science guy’s experiments. While the baby head on the jock guy was suitably disturbing/horrific it did seem kinda random in the moment but the ending’s reveal about science guy being a SoA means your take is likely correct.
Joelle only mentioned Henrietta Lacks specifically, but there is a long history of white medical exploitation of black people in the US, from J. Marion Sims to the Tuskegee syphilis study and beyond.
One of the victim names Leti calls for help, Anarcha, was also the name of one of the unwilling enslaved black women that Sims experimented upon.
Wow, great catch. What a monster he was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Doctors#Needle_Men_and_the_Black_Bottle_Men
HBO has been educating my middle aged white ass for the past year and I love it.
Picked up Loewen’s “Sundown Towns” and “Lies my Teacher Told Me” and I’ve been basically undoing my predominantly white high school history education for the past two months.
“ . . . very disrespectful . . . .”
Eat shit forever. Just, honestly, go fuck yourself. I mean, really what you need to do is go educate yourself, but if you can’t even fathom the basic idea of bodily autonomy I doubt the complexity of race relations throughout the history of the United States is going to be something your pea-brain is going to be able to grasp.
(I am aware of how old this comment is. I just honestly think people weren’t mean enough to you, possibly for complicated reasons. So as a fellow white person, let me again reiterate: Don’t talk about things the one-drop-of-self-awareness you have is telling you you clearly don’t know jack-shit about. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH. Never post on the internet again. The end.)
LOL.
Why, why did Leti have to tell Ruby that the house would be a way for them to bond? No one talks in that self-conscious way about bonding except in fiction, and certainly not in the 1950s. (A minor quibble about an intense episode but it’s a pet peeve.)
Totally agree.
Recalling Lovecraft’s lines in Call Of Cthulhu about degraded mongrel mixed-blood “voodoo” cultists in the thrall of the Old Ones, it was delightful to realize the Orisha was there to drive some evil murderous colonizer spirits the hell out.
This being my first exposure to Lovecraft Country… I had trouble connecting the described story with any of Lovecraft’s stories, especially since the beginning of the article seems to indicate the Azathoth story. But I gather that it is something of a story in the voodoo style of perhaps Alabama. I’ll have to find this story somewhere where it might be streaming, sometime. Sounds interesting. Thanks
Think of it less than a criticism/re-evaluation of Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos, but more of reframing the genre of writing he worked in with a view towards the Black perspective.
I’d definitely go more in the B range for this one, but still pretty good.
Scientist fighting death/experimenting on humans/torturing them with sadistic intent in the basement of an old house and no mention of Re-Animator?
I am surprised that there wasn’t more mention of Tic trying to murder an innocent woman.
Christina Braithwhiteis obviously not a good person, but going from being outright hostile towards people helping him, to now trying to kill them is weird behaviour from one of the shows two protagonists.
How is she both “an innocent woman” and “not a good person?”
her family is directly responsible for killing his uncle, kidnapping his father, technically killing Letti, and nearly using him as a ritual sacrifice for their own immortality. It was a dumb move as Christina pointed out, but it tracks for me that he’d want to kill her
But is Tic really the kind of guy that would kill a woman for stuff her family did? Especially since, as Oasx mentioned she only acted as an ally so far. I understand that he wouldn’t trust her – she is definitely the future Big Bad – but considering how the show’s other White people have treated his family and his friends, it’s not the first person I would have chosen to point a gun at.
Point a gun, yes. I don’t think he really would have fired.
And speaking of Christina, did she ever state why she gave Leti the money to buy the house? I got a bit confused on that part. I’m wondering if they’ll revisit that little detail.
Maybe if she had just left him and his family alone after he, Leti, and Montrise escaped, he’d leave her alone too, but she didn’t. She tricked Leti into buying a house haunted by the vengeful, racist spirit of a doctor who tortured, experimented with, and murdered black people. If it weren’t for Leti’s strength and wits this episode, she and many others would’ve been killed or worse. They barely managed to banish the doctor’s ghost from the house. Clearly, Christina is willing to hurt and kill Tic and his family to further her own goals, and it’d make sense for him to try and stop her.
The series is on a steady decline since the excellent pilot (which the AV Club incorrectly rated lower than the subsequent episodes)
I reset my expectations from “Watchman” to “Buffy with a better budget”. I think it works as a campy horror show in the Jim Crow era.
Yes!! That’s what I did last night too! Boldly announcing that it is more like Buffy with the melding of the real world and fantastical horror. Monster of the week with a through line. Just without the filler episodes. Really helped to recalibrate.
It reminds me of the 1980s Friday the 13th TV show. Anthology horror series with persistent major characters/protagonists… I’m gonna buy the book I think….
As much as I am enjoying the show, the book is way better.
And yet I will bet that we will see you comment on every future episode.
Did I say I will stop watching, asshole? Not like there’s much else on Sunday nights.
This is the first extreme diversion from the anthology that we’ve seen so far. I think it works in that it certainly evokes the power of a communal response in exorcising the ghost, and Leti being able to get a toe hold at a property by standing on/with the bodies of those that came before, and it certainly more in keeping with the tone of the first couple of episodes. That said, I really liked the original version of this story, and the comedic aspects that helped lighten the mood. I also think that version had its own show of strength, with an African American woman who refused to be scared off where the white occupants had been in the past.I got a 13 Ghosts feeling when the spirits showed up at the end. Also, when I saw the basketball player with a babies head, I was a bit distracted (the implication is horrifying — especially when you see the lady with her stomach torn out —but the visual is a little funny) and had to admit that as evil as the old occupant was, he had to have some skills to make that happen.
While it doesn’t return us to the level of that perfect pilot, this week was still a return to form after the mess of episode 2. Not that it matters, every episode’s gonna get an A rating anyway, apparently.Still a lot of weird editing. Hippolyta finding the orrery is an important plot point, not that you’d be able to tell given that they immediately cut away back to the party and she’s somehow already downstairs. Same with Diana in the attic, the guys who got whacked by the radiator, or the Orisha; we continuously cut away from characters and then never find the time to get back to them to resolve what they’re doing.Big fan of Leti reversing that “Get out of MY house” mantra back on the ghost. Nice touch.lol babyhead
oh man, episode two was truly terrible, it felt like we got the wrong edit. This wasn’t perfect, but gave me trust in the show again, although the CGI is a little wonky sometimes. But I am invested in the characters and the overall mystery which is good.
Christina’s power isn’t ‘freezing black men’ it’s immunity to physical harm. It’s why she was able to effortlessly overturn the pickup truck full of hillbilly’s back in the 1st episode.
It seems like her power might actually be more of a freezing power to me. It seemed like the car hit an invisible barrier much like uncle george’s car did in episode 2. Maybe she has some sort of freezing/barrier powers? And I think she mentioned it was her fathers spell that was immunity to physical harm
She specifically said that she was immune. Yes, it was her father’s spell, but she has it, too.
Yeah, It seems like episode 4 confirms it’s just invulnerability
In the scene, Tic clearly seems like he’s trying to move- even pull the trigger- but can’t (you KNOW he’d put his hand down once she started opening the blinds). And back at the mansion she cast a spell to keep him in his room. It’s likely she can do more than one thing with whatever powers she’s got.
Yes, she talks about how even the most disciplined Sons of Adam are each only able to create one spell for their own use in their lives. I heard the distinct implication that she had done a good deal better than that. (This is also helpful to me in understanding the limits of magic in this narrative. If ALL the wizards could do the kind of stuff we saw in the first episode, I feel like they would have pretty much taken over the world by now – unless they came into conflict with opponents with similar powers.)
I find the historical aspects of the show interesting but the horror aspects are becoming less effective on me. A recurring theme of Lovecraft’s work was the regular man caught in a situation that he cannot escape. The hero wasn’t really a hero and he did not have the capacity to defeat an enemy that was beyond his comprehension.This show definitely has at least 2 heroes. It’s pretty clear now that Tic and Leti have plot armor, and watching horror stories with them in the middle alleviate any tension the show is trying to build. It’s not a bad show but it’s limited by its concept.
Yes, I find it strange I’m more interested in the historical horror, but maybe that’s the point? Although doubtful. The ghost holding hand scene was a little hokey, but the scenes with white people really scare me.
I think an ongoing series with ongoing protagonists almost inevitably hasn’t to be different from an HPL short story or novel. Having them be constantly overwhelmed by malefic powers greater than any human can imagine without going insane is not sustainable on a week-to-week basis. (Well, I’m willing to be surprised, but I’m okay with this show not going there.)
I thought the show would be a lot less episodic than it apparently is. Yes, if they’re going for a “monster of the week” format, it wouldn’t be sustainable.
Thanks for the excellent review, Joelle! I love all your insights into history, literature, and culture, and I always want to rewatch the episodes with your words fresh in my mind.
And the award for “Most Improved from Source Material 2020″ goes to…Lovecraft Country! By a Lovecraft Country mile.Let me explain to non book readers in the nicest possible way (and before I say this, understand I overall enjoyed the book): Matt Ruff can not write Black women.To be fair, all of the women in LC are Black (in the book, it’s Caleb Braithwhite, not Christina Braithwhite), so maybe he just can’t write female characters, period. Either way, in the book, Letitia in particular stinks. While Atticus, George and Montrose are complex, three-dimensional characters with a fascinating dynamic, Letitia is a walking stereotype straight out of The Help. At no point during the haunting is she ever remotely scared, something Ruff tries to write for comical effect (this particular chapter of the book is mainly comedic). She casually talks to the ghosts out loud about how she’s not scared of them. She has conversations out loud with Jesus, who she never doubts for a second is keeping her safe. In the book, instead of the scary exorcism we see here, she finally gets mad at the ghost of Winthrop and reminds him that if she dies, she’ll haunt him back forever. From then on he pretty much becomes Casper and plays ghost chess with her, occasionally lending a cute helping hand. (cue the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme? Or perhaps Ghost Writer?) None of the emotionally intense scenes we saw in this episode between her and Ruby, or her and Atticus, were in the book. She has no inner conflict or depth.Ruby isn’t much better. Hippolyta at least has a great backstory, which I hope we see in the show, but all three of them are portrayed as completely casual and unflappable in the face of both racial trauma and cosmic horror. Maybe Matt Ruff thought he was being “empowering” by writing what he thought of as “strong black women” but they come off in the book as two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Given we’re still watching that racial trauma play out on the news cycle, the way Ruff writes often seems bizarrely clueless for a book published in 2016.In short…thank goodness Misha Green grabbed the reins of this show.
I enjoyed the book’s portrayal of those characters. The tone is completely different. I see your point, and the acting is terrific, but HBO tries to hard and the grand guignol stuff takes me out of the character work.
* Did the Orisha die? One thing I enjoy about the show is that so far its inverted the horror movie trope of black people being disposable. It’s the white characters that are fodder for supernatural terrors: whenever a black person is killed, its directly from very human white violence. We don’t see the Orisha in the basement and she’s not mentioned by the reporter. Possibly, the show hand waved it as a minor detail, but I’m choosing to believe she is still around.* The gore is great, but that baby’s head on a grown man’s athletic body is going to haunt me. As some have noted, it had something to do with the evil experiments that happened in the house, but it also stood as a stark metaphor for the way racists view black men. It was simultaneously horrifying and enraging.* The show has done a great job of balancing its serialized narrative while largely treating each episode as self contained stories, but — even though it was addressed and certainly has impacted the characters — the shift from Georges death in the prior episode still felt abrupt.
We don’t see the Orisha in the basement and she’s not mentioned by the reporter. Possibly, the show hand waved it as a minor detail, but I’m choosing to believe she is still around.
Leti: Hey, um listen . . . it got a little weird down there but um good work. Here’s an extra five and let’s keep this on the down low, alright?
I think Leti was due at least a partial refund. That Orisha was no newbie. You mean that is the first time an evil spirit has washed away the protective blood mark with a spray of water. She didn’t cover it with plastic wrap or petroleum jelly? That’s malpractice, or the magical equivalent.
Well, when you find your Orisha in the pages of the “Penny Saver” flyer from Piggly Wiggly . . .
Hey, they’ve got to advertise somewhere. It’s not like Leti could check out her Yelp reviews.
Simpler times
baby’s head on a grown man’s athletic body … stood as a stark metaphor for the way racists view black men. Nice catch!
The ghost with the baby head freaked me the *&^$ out.
I got freaked out earlier by the disembodied hand that pulled Letti’s sheets when she was in bed. And then grandma with no jaw. I have a thing about ghosts watching me sleep.
Just an FYI: a priestess of lucumi is called an Olorisha. Orishas (such as Oya) are gods.
This is turning into one of those rare book-to-screen adaptations that surpasses the source material—it’s richer, more complex and even more resonant. Great stuff.
This episode was great. It works well as a haunted house thriller, but it goes to another level when you start thinking about the house as a metaphor for the nation itself. Every haunted house story is about trying to make a home in a place that doesn’t want you there. This is the reality of living in America for Black folks, especially in the 1960’s. When Leti screamed “Get out of my house!” at the end, it was delivered with such intensity that I heard it more as a plea to end racism in her homeland than a directive to the ghost himself.
I seriously have to start watching each episode multiple times to catch the real life historical Easter eggs that they drop. In the premiere episode, they referenced Gordon Park’s Department Store picture.In last night’s episode the kid “Bobo” who asked the Ouija board if he was going to have a good trip that summer, only for it to say no, was Emmett Till.
How old is Leti supposed to be? I guess younger than Jurnee Smollett’s actual age (which she doesn’t look like anyway), but still mid- to late-twenties? I found a bit hard to buy that a person who’s not presented as particularly religious, and is free-spirited and exposed to environments, like the art scene, where the opportunities to meet fascinating people and give in to lust and desire must be plenty, never had sex for so long, even in the 1950s. At least not without a better explanation than a random “I was a virgin”. There must be a story there, maybe a way to distance herself from her mother, who, if I understand it correctly, was considered promiscuous?
I thought it was connected to her issues with her mother, who’d say she was “going to church” and be gone for days at a time with strange men, and who also had children by multiple fathers (it’s implied). So Leti didn’t want to get involved at all with any man for that reason? I think another review I saw theorized that as well.
Y’know, I thought it was pretty unbelievable that a simple son-of-a-farmer, a boy that whines about not getting to go to Tosche station to pick up some power convertors, would be the saviour of the galaxy. But hey, fantasy gonna be fantasy.
Also a virgin, as far as we neo-canonically know. Possibly because coming this close to accidental incest scarred him for life.
Do we know it scarred him? With the prevalence of fauxcest on the internet nowadays, perhaps Luke was chaste as a result of his missed opportunity.Alternatively, maybe Ahch-To’s Lanai are mad-good at running a brothel just for Luke’s needs.
Now that song is in my head again, my GOD.
Thank you so much for this!
Don’t thank me—it has been stuck in my head for two weeks now! hehe
This my first reaction, that it was odd and didn’t really add anything to the character. I am open to the recap’s argument that it’s connected to Letty being much more guarded than she seems. I’ll have to think about it more.
Yeah, I dunno. There might be a story there but there doesn’t have to be. I’m well past my twenties now so I’m old enough to understand that there are a million reasons why people don’t engage sexually. Probably most are boring reasons. Maybe she was just too busy to meet anyone she thought worthwhile. Add in the time period and it’s not at all a stretch.
In the previous ep when the main 3 characters are trapped in their mansion bedrooms going through traumatic events, George dances with someone he loved who died, Tic is attacked by and strangles (presumably) his love interest, and Leti is about to have sex but finds a snake in Tic’s pants. To me, that hinted at past sexual trauma Leti faced. Her saying she was a virgin surprised me here but I’m inclined to believe there’s more to the story (psychologically).
Right. Well observed, you’re definitely onto something here.
If you rewatch the scene where imaginary tic and Leti are talking in her room before he promises to never leave her there’s a painting of Adam and Eve where the snake is in place of Adams dick. May of just been related to that.
I’m not really sure Tic and Leti are supposed to be even that old. I feel like (and I’ve read the books, but can’t remember if it says in them) Tic went into the Army pretty much straight out of high school (which makes sense. I mean, he’s the type that nowadays would probably be able to find a way to go to college, but back then, his dad didn’t have the money.) I don’t feel like he’s been back for real long (even in Florida.) So, I was thinking early 20s–21 or 22. I don’t think that’s too old to lose your virginity even now, much less in the 50s.
Am I dumb or something? Didn’t we last see the gang in New England watching a wizard mansion implode? When are these boarding house events taking place?
In the episode, we are told it begins three weeks after George’s death.
Just curious what you thought the significance of the orerry that Hippolyta finds during the house party in the previously locked room is? Did she take it with her? It was gone when the ghosts were killing the intruders.
Something definitely happened when she touched it. My impression is that it somehow enhanced her suspicions that Atticus and Montrose were lying to her about George’s death.
It’s very hard to believe that those 3 good-ol-boys would’ve just “gone missing” what with the sketchy history of the house being known even by the police in town. The white sheriff in the police van tells Letti about body parts of black folks found in a “room below the basement” of the house. So with all the animosity of the white folks in that hood, ain’t nobody looking for them there? Cuz they’re right there. In plain view. I know this show is a genre mash-up with a lot of fantasy elements but nope that’s just poor plot development & writing.
As a point of order, the “room below the basement” was the room Leti turned into a dark room/exorcised the bastard, accessed through the door in the floor of the regular basement, and a known quantity to the cops. The white guys ended up in some sub-sub-sub-sub level tunnel at the bottom(?) of the haunted elevator shaft that I bet Leti doesn’t know about. I would have expected the cops to be tearing the house apart/make up charges too, but the Captain was explicitly connected to the scientist (and in turn the wizards) earlier as Leti made her case, so he’s probably under Christina’s thumb and silencing things.
They are still not buried deep enough for me. I was hoping to see their souls being tortured.
I assumed Leti threw them into that sub-sub-sub level tunnel. How else would they have gotten there?My plot hole complaint was how Leti ran screaming up from the basement after a giant head emerged from the basement floor and then had a difficult convo with her sister about the inheritance. Seemed to me the giant head would have been the priority at that point.
I assumed Leti threw them into that sub-sub-sub level tunnel. How else would they have gotten there?The house is still haunted. Did you not notice that the elevator took itself down to the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement after Leti left it?
Also a bunch of magic looking glyphy things were glowing as the elevator lowered. Plausible they’re influencing things
(and yeah speculating on a show with future people who’ve seen subsequent episodes is probably a futile endeavour!)
I think the last scene implies the elevator is going far, far down below the basement to a place even the police couldn’t access is they searched.
This also happened at the very end of the episode. We have no clue if this is ever going to come back to (literally or not) haunt them.
Not even the mention of the Trumbull Park Homes Race Riots of 1953 and 1954, which saw hundreds of white Chicagoans gather outside an accidentally segregated public housing building,…I think you mean “integrated.”
While I think it was the weakest of the 3 episodes so far, it was still entertaining. Very Herbert West horror in this one.
I don’t understand the ratings system here. Last weeks decidedly bad episode received an A. This weeks better but awfully disjointed episode also received an A. Objectively neither deserved that rating. I enjoy the show but……c’mon, it’s hard to take AV Club seriously with such wobbly grading standards. I loved the first the episode but the show-runners are clearly not handling the anthology aspect of novel very well so far, that really can’t be denied.
I don’t think you understand what objective means.
adjective1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.So, you’re telling me that an objective rating of episode 2 would be an A? Despite all the very obvious issues that the episode has? I’m just trying to understand what you mean beyond being condescending.
You can’t objectively rate art of any kind. All ratings are subjective purely by their nature, sure there can be a fairly common consensus on how affective a piece of art is but each individual opinion that makes up that consensus is subjective.
I loved this weeks episode. Still didn’t quite reach the highs of the pilot, but if it stays at this level it will be worthy of these grades. The only thing I can really knock the episode is it occasionally has some strange cuts that leave me disoriented for a second, which is weird for any show but especially an HBO show. Considering how ambitious the show is I can very easily overlook that though, but that’s just me
Are you new here or something?
I can’t speak to the novel, so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it more, but I thought this episode was AMAZING
Am I the only one who thought it was pretty tasteless that the Mengele-like evil scientist was clearly Jewish?
Was he?
Yeah, his name was Hiram Epstein and he was a physicist.
I’m looking at this months later and I’m shocked that this is the only comment on something that was so glaringly anti-Semitic.
Leti’s tiny body slams against the walls of the van. The way Misca Green
builds up the action to this scene, one cannot help but think of
Freddie Gray
Yep. The most pointed allusion the show has made yet, and it’s as upsetting as I imagined. Kinda wanted to cry, thinking about the real thing.
I didn’t realize it until someone posted about it on FB, but the kid who asked the ouija board if he would have a good trip was Emmett Till.
This hits me like a kick in the gut.
Well, I loved it. Classic ghost story horror, woven in and among actual real life horror. And a haunted elevator! What more could a person want?I too didn’t love the sex scene, Joelle. By 1950s standards, it was very typical – wham bam no bother to thank you ma’am – and because a lot of the episode dealt in that particular mid-century horror aspect (ouija boards and spell summonings and the like), I’m going to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say that’s where it was going with it. But it sure didn’t make me like Tic very much at that moment.I really love that they let Leti figure it all out with the research. I was worried that Tic was going to present all of the research to her, but no, she solved that problem all on her own. I love Ruby and demand more of her, immediately!Was Leti’s author tenant named James (with a dog called Baldwin) or were we supposed to think that was James Baldwin? It didn’t look like JB and JB was in Paris at the time, so I’m guessing it was just a little nudge.I worry that this show’s marketing is preventing it from finding an audience. It comes across as one long show about one story, rather than these horror vignettes, and some watchers may be frustrated over the bait and switch. (Not me, but I roll with the punches generally.)
The sex scene was a little jarring to me particularly in light of how the official HBO podcast hosts leaned into how hot they found it. While the initial kiss seemed like a sweet moment of connection and the camera seemed to sexualize his body as much as if not more than hers, I was surprised they didn’t particularly linger on how Tic was naive enough to be goaded into taking action and he was even more forceful and possessive than Leti’s dream snake penis fantasy/nightmare.Even though Letitia framed it as something she wanted, the show has established how often she tends to often say things for convenience even as she feels otherwise. Then I figured Jamie Chung was a love interest based on Tic’s fantasy of her in the pilot and her unusually high billing for someone who barely shows up, so it’s interesting if Tic ends up needing to balance his relationships with these two women yet he’s mostly been this sort of paragon of virtue.
Agreed. It knocked Tic down a few pegs from his otherwise heroic standing – both that he can be goaded by jealousy and participate in a pretty gross discussion about his friend and her sex life and that he basically just took what he wanted from Leti and left. (I suppose we’re supposed to find him gentlemanly for not freaking out about blood, but that’s a depressingly low fucking bar for people to clear.) In some ways, this is welcomed in that I don’t want Tic to be this flawless god-like man while he’s surrounded with actual people who are broken in the way that people are often broken – but I really wish Tic could have been humanized in literally any other way.And it’s gross to think the podcast hosts found it hot. I’m getting shades of Cersei’s rape on GOT.I’m presuming we have to be getting more Jamie Chung in the next few episodes than we’ve had up to now. Otherwise she’s got a hell of an agent for getting her such high billing.
For added context one of the hosts is a writer on the series and presumably privy to more information about where both characters are going or what their respective states of mind were meant to be, and I was somewhat distracted while I listened to it so maybe they did have a whole discussion unpacking the rest of it as well. (I recall the gentlemanly re: blood component definitely did come up.) The other host according to her wiki “is an American writer, podcaster and educator who deals with topics including race, sexuality and body image” so presumably she also may have a more nuanced perspective than ended up in the podcast (again, and/or I missed it).The way that Smollett played it made it seem like it notably more mixed emotions if not traumatic, and this episode in particular it emphasizes how the character’s front-facing representation of things differ from how she feels if left to her own devices.I’ve seen an Asian content reviewer allude to the series eventually dealing with some non-Black POC and though I’m a little wary, I wonder how it possibly pans out with Tic acting out American agendas in another country and the jarring way her current three scenes played out?
Yeah, I do think we’re at a (dis)advantage of being a 2020 audience looking at a 1955 sex scene, by which I mean it wasn’t all that long ago that “hot” sex scenes were basically . . . exactly like we just saw. So I don’t know if Leti herself saw it as traumatizing or more of a “well that’s just how these things go” sort of feeling, not unlike me at 16 being asked by my (middle aged) boss to pose for photos in a bikini, you know? Like if that’s all you have been told to expect then that’s all you expect.That said, we really aren’t so far off from those sort of scenes to be shrugged off as “well that’s just how it goes” – like, a few years, certainly not decades or anything – so I sure as shit hope people don’t think this is what consent looks like.I haven’t read the book so I’m not sure how much of the themes of this show align to the book’s. I looked up the author and, how do you say, his ancestry was not what I was expecting.
I have thought from the first time I saw Lovecraft Country (the book) recommended (I can’t remember where) that the author was black. I believed this so wholeheartedly, that I never looked him up.Holy shit. I am stunned to find out how wrong I was.
Right?? Which does put a bit of a pall on things because now I mistrust his handling on the characters. I’m not saying that a white author can’t write characters of another race, obviously, but there’s a difference between writing a story about a Black woman finding love in NYC and writing a story about HP Lovecraft’s racist legacy and tying it into Jim Crow and the horrors suffered by the black community. (But the show is in the hands of people I do trust to get it right, and they obviously must have seen something worthwhile in the book.)
Ok so this was a really amazing and heartbreaking episode, especially for Leti. On top of that, the music was outstanding too! Especially the last one where Leti and the ghosts were exorcising the doctor, “Satan, We’re Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down” – Shirley Caesar. Very powerful in that scene. Woooooo gotta track this song down!
Was pretty surprised how far this episode strayed from the source material. A lot of the subtle nature of the book is really being lost in the way it’s being told visually. I dig it’s b-movie nature for sure – but its just all so much more overt than when I read it.
I’d give this an enthusiastic B+, solid genre usage. Qualms: 1) Leti being a virgin. Unless there is some other reason for it, it was just unnecessary and unrealistic. They need to keep her human, in this episode she did at least three things that would have got her killed, got to balance that out with humanity unless she’s just a superhero. 2) Tic was so huffy during the hate sex I thought he was a demon again. 3) Tic had better tell her that money came from Braithwhite, I hate when characters withhold information for no reason. 4) I really really hope they find a way to bring back Courtney Vance.Other than that it is my favorite new show on TV. I don’t understand why they rushed through the events of the book so goddamn fast, they could have taken longer with the road trip, but it looks like they have some idea where they are going. Surprised they had Tic and Leti ship it out so quick also, I guess they might only have 8 episodes or something.
I am really enjoying these reviews. They’re teaching me a lot, and pointing out details that I miss during my viewing (like the multiple meanings of the episode title). Thank you!Easter egg for comic-book fans: George’s widow is named Hippolyta, and they named their daughter. Diana. Since they almost always call her “Dee,” I didn’t notice it until tonight.
That was one of the most magnetic episodes of television I’ve ever seen. Good god is this show knocking it out of the damn park.
Yea, I’m done. Feels like “Supernatural” along with the awful effects. Tried to give it a chance especially after that great first episode but episode two suuucked and three just looked cheap but fun, though not as fun as “Supernatural”. IMO.
One more thing: has anybody here ever played Alone in the Dark? Do you remember the giant thing down in the caverns below the house?
Alright, this episode has fully brought me back on board for the show. Episodes 1 and 2 felt so starkly different to me, and I wasn’t sure if ep 2 was a big misfire, or if the series just had a really good pilot but went off the rails from that point on. But now that we’ve gotten through the first three eps, I’m finally beginning to understand the vibe of the show much better, and knowing what to expect has really added to my enjoyment. During the pilot, I thought the show was supposed to be pure, Lovecraftian horror through a black lens, a reclamation of a genre founded by a racist. And while the latter is true, its got much more of a crazy, campy Buffy vibe instead of pure horror, which is great now that I know that’s what it is. Its emotional and horrifying, depicting a legacy of the monstrous medical torture of african americans under the guise of science and medicine, but its also a series with a evil medical doctor ghost villain, and where racists get beheaded by possesed elevators. Its fun and scary and powerful and campy and complex all at once.Now that I get that, I’m absolutely loving where its going, and I’m excited for the rest of the show
This has probably been too long to be seen much but nonetheless. I thought that they ahd changed this a lot from the books section dreams of the Witch House, and thought it odd that they exorcised the ghost from the house, where in the book they reach a bit of a mutual agreement. But I didn’t realize that ghost wasn’t Winthrop, but rather the doctor Epstein that was doing the experiments. Wonder if Winthrop will come into it at all. Maybe it still was Winthrop that took care of the 3 white dudes breaking in?
Fun (not so fun) fact: Three of the spirits in Leti’s house that she calls in the end are named after three of the enslaved women J. Marion Sims experimented on in the 19th century- Betsy, Anarcha, and Lucy! There were around 11 other unnamed enslaved people that he tortured, so I appreciate that name placement in this episode.
Also revealed that Braithwaite bankrolled Leti’s purchase of the house