#if supernatural was a hbo show they’d fuck

[unsurprisinglyren]

Me during all 15 season^

Imagine going into Supernatural expecting-Destiel. Now imagine going into expecting Supernatural-Wincest.

Now…imagine going into Supernatural with no ships in mind. (Me)

Me: at the end of season 1 episode 2 (come on guys we had to at least get past the first episode): THEY FUCKED.

Wendigo? End of episode 2 of season 1? The look Sam gave Dean? They fucked. End of story.

[samwinchestersfatknockers]

I wish they’d made supernatural even weirder. Like shit they could only have gotten away with on HBO weird. Graphic and obscene violence of a strange and sexual nature. Dean washing Sam’s dead body, holding him on a moldy mattress like he’s a baby again!! Sam and Dean open mouth breathing foreheads pressed together because sam almost died again levels of weird. Show me how Sam knows he can’t die, that Lucifer won’t let him. I want to see Sam eat a bullet, bleed himself out in a tub. I want to see Dean find out. Give me cold and ruthless Cas for longer. No one can ever kill their father in this show! I want to see them try! I want to see Dean agonise over his dads warning! Stand over Sam’s sleeping body with a gun! Lay down next to him, temple to temple and think about shooting!!! Sam has faith in god and then spends 10 years being tortured by him!!! What does that mean!!! Mark of Cain!! They are Cain and Abel, interchangeably!!! Sam already died in a field!!! Dean was already buried in one!! What does that mean!!!! I want violence and pain and enmeshment!!! They cannot live together!!! They cannot survive apart!!! Dean wants to tuck Sam in his chest behind his ribs!!! Sam wants to crawl inside Dean! He wants to run far enough away he can’t ever be found!!! Someone else said it but ! Make! Demon! Dean! Feed! Sam! His! Blood! SAMS BODY HAS NEVER BEEN HIS OWN!! DEAN HAS ALWAYS ONLY HAD CONTROL OVER THE THINGS JOHN LET HIM! They are so fucked up and we barely scratch the surface in that godforsaken show!!!!!

[cinematicnomad]

Possible controversial opinion time - I can't help but see parallels between Buddie and Destiel. The writers spent 11 years showing how much Dean and Cas meant to each other, and yet it culminated in whatever that abomination of an ending was. I'm still so disappointed and hurt. I feel Buddie is headed that direction. I just don't think the show will ever follow through. It's hard to stay invested when I'm pretty sure I'll just end up sad again.

prefacing this with my usual i'm-a-pessimist-at-heart-and-won't-believe-buddie-will-go-canon-until-it's-happening-on-the-screen-right-in-front-of-my-face:

as much as i love destiel (and oh man, anon, i FUCKING love destiel), i don't think these ships, or shows, or dynamics, are comparable. bear with me for a minute as i provide some really necessary context that i think people tend to forget when making these comparisons:

supernatural was a bush-era (white, straight, cishet) male power fantasy tv show. like, not even the tail-end of the bush presidency, it started airing in 2005 right around the start of bush's second term. we were pretty firmly in the middle of the bush presidency. queer characters on tv were few and far between (usually relegated to one off guest stars or premium networks like showtime or hbo etc etc), gay marriage wasn't even legal yet, don't-ask-don't-tell was emblematic of the ~*coexist*~ ideology, and in the realm of tv even if they weren't overtly homophobic or anti-gay, they were culturally complacent. tv writers felt v comfortable making derogatory comments about queer people just for the ~*laughs*~ (please go back and rewatch gilmore girls and just....wait for the homophobic jokes to pour in, bc holy shit, there are a lot of them) and supernatural fell in line with that pretty squarely (haha everyone thinks sam and dean are gay, the motel owners are always offering them a single queen bed, dean's totally compensating for ~*something*~, isn't it funny).

and supernatural, despite growing and evolving over 15 years, really did hold on to that demographic. supernatural was one of those random shows that appealed to both democratic and republican viewers, and the network, the producers, the showrunners, the writers, WHATEVER, were not going to alienate their conservative audience. because: money.

9-1-1 just?? isn't comparable. the show started airing in 2018 and despite all the terrible things in the world, there HAS been progress in society and we can see that reflected in the show. we have several named main and regular queer characters on this show, who have plots and storylines that aren't just about their sexuality, who aren't used for the very-special-after-school-episode, but exist as fully rounded characters. hen is a main character and has been since e1 and we've gotten such beautiful storylines about her relationship with karen and their family and it is a jOY to watch on my screen compared to the types of (v limited) representation i saw as a teen in the mid-00s.

i mean...i think there are arguments to be made that bisexual representation still has far to go, and i have serious doubts that a ry*n m*rphy project will be the place to see any of that happen (he's biphobic af and i'm not talking about "oh there were some questionable plots in glee"), not to mention i still think that show creators have an easier time getting greenlit when pitching defined characters as queer from the outset compared to arguing for a character who was envisioned as straight-presenting at the start be allowed to evolve/grow/discover themselves through the course of the show (off the top of my head, characters who started out straight and came out several seasons after the fact...callie on grey's, willow on buffy, and marissa on the oc?). like i agree with you there! again, i'm a pessimist, so like i'm not telling you to be more positive or whatever?

but i just think that arguments that destiel and buddie are going to follow the same path lack a lot of nuance and tend to overlook some really important distinctions between both shows and the world writ large, and??

speaking of ship dynamics on their own, i'd just point to the fact that supernatural, for all that i loved about it, genuinely seemed to want to constantly run away from dean and castiel's dynamic? they spent entire seasons coming up with contrived ways to keep the two characters separate or to force them at odds with each other. like, ACTIVELY wrote plots and character arcs that undermined dean and castiel's bond at every turn bc the show didn't or couldn't address how much they mattered to each other. they'd give you like...breadcrumbs and then try to pretend like none of it mattered. (also this is when i plug that if you're not already you should 110% be watching bob weiss's destiel deep dive series on youtube)

on the other hand, whether or not buddie goes canonically romantic (which again! i doubt will happen!), 9-1-1 HAS canonically made their bond central to both characters and has repeatedly underscored just how much they matter to each other and just how involved they are in each other's lives. like, whether or not you think the writers will ever let them confess their romantic love for each other, the show DOES routinely center plots for both characters on their relationship with each other and repeatedly goes back to the same well to define just how much they matter to each other. s4 literally ended with eddie revealing that he made buck christopher's legal guardian like....they are doing the opposite of supernatural tbh.

this ran away from me so i'm just gonna publish this ask as is sorry

✨sleepover weekend✨

[runawaymarbles]

3, 7, 10, 13, 23

3)     TFW: Sam, Dean, or Cas stan? I wanna hear your dissertation :)

Cas. Because you know who you are, right? You have a mission, you have a purpose, but the people who gave you that purpose turn out to suck. But you can still do it! Because it was right all along even if most authority is sketchy at some level. Only nobody ever tells you shit, and human interaction is fucking weird and complicated and you always do it wrong even when you try to do it right, and you try not to care that everyone is secretly or not so secretly laughing at you. Because you are clearly better than them and stronger than them and more badass than them-- and you know what you’re trying to do and it actually is really fucking important but nobody is fucking listening so yeah, maybe you have to do some shady shit but at least it’s better than the literal end of the world and why won’t anyone fucking realize that? but you go overboard so then you spend the next several years trying to make up for it and continuing to make things worse because people won’t stop fucking with you and still won’t tell you what’s going on, and meanwhile you’re just trying to carry out your original mission (Save Dean Winchester) but you don’t know what that looks like anymore and also, he’s an asshole, but you understand why he’s an asshole and it’s impossible to hate someone who knows you that well and so you keep fucking trying but you are consistently screwed over by the writers and not allowed to grow and you’re pretty sure that they’re still laughing at you and you try not to care. 

7)     What season should Supernatural have ended at? Or was s15 the right place to end? Again, dissertation required :) 

Here’s the thing. If they wanted to tell a good story, season five. If they wanted to tell a story I was willing to watch, season ten (but with the ending changed so it’s actually a season finale.) But because it went on as long as it did they got to do some weird bonkers stuff and if it ended any earlier we’d never have had our lives ruined by 15.18, so... yeah, sure, give us the fucking content.

That being said, the real answer to this question is “they should have given their slot to wayward sisters before they lost Claire’s actress to HBO.”

10)   Your favourite season and why. 

8, but mostly for sentimental reasons: it was the first season I watched live, and I had a friend on the other side of the country that was watching it with me, and the fandom was so full of hope at that point. And there was Benny, and Charlie, and Garth, and it was just a good time. There was so much good fic being written and good meta being written. 

13)   Arc: Your favourite arc. Get specific! 

Dean’s alcoholism. How it was getting steadily worse in the background during season seven when he was mourning Cas and then he had to detox in purgatory and you see him in season eight drinking coffee and whatnot. It was lovely and subtle and I really thought they were going somewhere with that, but it turned out they weren’t because. god forbid.

also, human!Cas. I wish that had lasted longer and they’d allowed him to actually, like, grow as a person and become competent at things instead of treating him like he was a baby until he became an angel again. 

23)   If you could forget all of spn, would you watch it again? Why/why not? 

No. I’d probably just watch a few clips and read fanfic, like I do for Merlin. The show is fifteen seasons long, a lot of those seasons are infuriating, and I simply do not have that kind of time.

Yes I am furloughed from my job Yes I have been home for nine months No I do not have time to watch TV Yes it has taken me like six??? months to watch RWBY but I’m working on it it is complicated

SPN ASK MEME

[aion-rsa]

Mr. Mercedes Director Jack Bender On The Show’s Peacock Move and Future

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Mr. Friendly’s Frosteez has a new driver scooping ice cream for the kids and smiley-faced tennis balls for the older crowd. A certain 2003 Mercedes-Benz S 600 sports a new color. And Mr. Mercedes has a new home. The Stephen King detective series will be getting a second life at Peacock. While Mr. Mercedes season 3 ended with a vague tease the serial killer at the heart of the series may be starting anew as the Supreme Electronix co-worker who took him out, Peacock is keeping the series exactly as it originally ran before Audience Network was shut down.

Based on King’s New York Times best-selling Bill Hodges Trilogy, the title character owes a debt to classic detectives. Brendan Gleeson brings a grizzled annoyance to his obsession over a case which will never go cold. Harry Treadaway’s serial killer Brady Hartsfield, aka Mr. Mercedes, the title character of the series, made an unexpected departure, but left Lou Linklatter (Breeda Wool) the keys to his wheels and some of his fondest memories.

Mr. Mercedes sticks fairly close to the Bill Hodges Trilogy source material, which explores the evils of the human mind, rather than supernatural suspense. A good portion of the books takes place in Brady’s head but the TV series’ opening scene, the crime which tortures the now retired detective, was based on a real event. In 2011, a woman drove into a crowd of people at a McDonald’s hiring event in Cleveland, Ohio.

Director Jack Bender is used to the twisted worlds of television. He started as an actor appearing on such shows as All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Mod Squad before moving behind the camera. Best known for his work on the groundbreaking fantasy series Lost, he also brought the groundbreaking comedy Ally McBeal to screens, and directed episodes of Game of Thrones. Bender spoke with Den of Geek about his work with Stephen King, the world of detectives and killers, and where the Mercedes is parked now.

Den of Geek: Does the move to Peacock come with changes?

Jack Bender: Mr. Mercedes was done originally for three years on direct TV for the Audience Network. Peacock has picked it up in their infinite wisdom to show the first two seasons. And then, sometime in the near future, hopefully, once the show has a terrific audience, they’re going to play season three. We did three seasons. And nobody has asked me at Peacock to make any cuts or changes, so I trust they’re showing the show in all its wonderful weirdness and twisted humanity.

Will there be any further production on it if it does well?

Well, we talked about that and that is, potentially, in the offing but at this point there’s no commitment. David Kelley and I have had conversations regarding what season four would look like and some of our younger cast who would come back and what the story could be, because there is some story left there.

Stephen wrote three books, but we definitely have something in mind for a season four if the stars were to come together and we would do it.

Is that why the Mercedes got the yellow paint job?

David Kelley invented that. It was Holly’s way of getting over the trauma. It empowered her. First of all, she wanted the Mercedes and she didn’t want it to be ruined by the nightmare that it was used for by Brady Hartsfield. Although that was always Hodges’ argument, “How can you have that fucking thing around? It killed all these people.” Her argument was, “No, the Mercedes didn’t kill people. It was a weapon. Brady killed people. My memory of the Mercedes is my aunt had pride in it and used to take me for drives. So, it’s my way of healing.”

It’s interesting because Stephen King supposedly, and we’ve gotten very close and I never asked him this, but I think after the van hit him when he was out jogging that day and, as you know, it was very serious, practically every bone in his body was broken. Eventually, he bought that car and beat the shit out of it with a sledgehammer. So, I think it’s a very similar act of, “Fuck you, I’m alive. And goddammit, you’re not going to ruin this for me.”

Every horror fan in the world held their breath when he was hit.

Oh, yeah. It was just horrible. Did you ever read his extraordinary book? There’s a great book he wrote called On Writing, which is autobiographical. It’s the greatest book on how to be a writer and how to write and very specifically what he does, what his oeuvre is, what his process is. You hear the story of some amazing books and how they came to him and how he stuck with them, et cetera, et cetera. 

I’m very fortunate to have crossed paths with Stephen, and I’ve got another couple of projects in development with him. It’s just a real gift to not only have him as a friend, but somebody who trusts me with his material.

I love the references that you throw in, like having Treadaway’s character be a Ramones fan. How does the legacy of King play into the creative process?

Well, when David and I were developing the show, it was my thought that: I love the use of music, but I don’t really like it when shows just plug the song in over the montage. Look, everything is manipulative in art. It’s just obviously manipulative. It’s like, “You want me to feel emotion now,” or, “You want to make some comment.” So, I said, “What if Hodges is such a train wreck when we start the show there are only two things: He’s got a lousy relationship with his daughter, with his ex-wife. He’s a man on his own. Now, thanks to David, who invented Ida, he’s got a friend who he gets closer with, Ida Silver brilliantly played by Holland Taylor. But I said, “What if the only two things he takes care of are his vinyl collection and his tortoise that he bought for his daughter when she was little?”

Now, that was autobiographical. Nothing else in the show is. I actually bought, for our daughter, when she was about six-years-old, an African spur-thighed tortoise who was only six-weeks-old that we named Federico Fellini until we found out it was a girl and we changed it to Federica. Then, we found out no, in fact, it’s a boy. So, it has become Fred. So, I said to David, “What if Hodges has that tortoise?” David loved that idea. He became a part of the show, as did Brendan’s record collection.

I wanted to do little drops in there like we used to do on Lost, little Easter eggs. Obviously, Harry Treadaway seeing Pet Sematary, because I had this image of Brady driving in his car. And when he goes out on those computer calls, he has to be Mr. Straight and be a little buttoned-down good worker, but when he gets in his car, he fucking lets it loose.

It was great working with Harry on that because when we were first doing it, and it was early on in the shooting, Harry was kind of singing the song well. He’s got a nice voice. I’m going, “This is weird.” I said, “Harry, you’ve got to fucking stick your finger out the window and screw everybody and sing loudly. Just be Brady.” And then he let loose and he was brilliant. So, that’s where “Pet Sematary” came from.

Weaving songs, both Brady’s character choices in the songs that came from Brady’s world along with Hodges’ world was definitely part of the language of the show season one, and then it continued through season two. People really dug that. Very eclectic choices of songs. It was part of the language and it said something about their characters. I always wanted them motivated in what they would listen to.

What was your involvement on HBO’s The Outsider?

No, I didn’t do The Outsider. What happened was Stephen gave me the book and I was developing it with Richard Price and the company. It was one of those Hollywood stories where somehow things got derailed. So, from afar, I was an executive producer, but creatively, chose to have nothing to do with it.

Do you approach a Stephen King detective story differently than a regular detective story?

Well, that’s interesting. I think everything I do I approach differently. See, I first got to know Stephen on Lost because he was such a fan. And then I joined and exec produced and directed many of the episodes for the first two years of Under the Dome. We were talking about finding something to do together, and one day in the mail came these two massive Manila envelopes, which were the galleys from Mr. Mercedes. I went, “Oh, my God.” And he didn’t tell me it was coming.

So, I read it and I loved it and said, “Yeah, I want to do it.” That was the beginning of this. But what I thought was so interesting was not only was Stephen King writing in the detective genre, and definitely he was using the detective metaphor all the way back to Chinatown and period detective stuff, is that it’s kind of a hat rack that Stephen hung the story on, which is the retired detective and the one case that got away. That’s kind of a standard detective trope, but in Stephen King’s hands, it becomes something very different. What I always saw the show as being was Stephen King writing about the monster inside the characters, as opposed to the monster outside the characters, which I loved. I said, “If I get lucky with the right cast,” and boy did I, “and I convince David Kelley to write it.”

I had worked with David all the way back to Ally McBeal and a bunch of things. I said, “David, nobody writes twisted better than you.” Big Little Lies hadn’t come out yet. I don’t even know if they’d shot it. I said to David, “When you write dark and twisted, nobody does it better.” I said, “You’re going to dive into these characters and it’ll still have heart and humanity, but they are really people who have been twisted by the world and their genes and everything else.” David wrote it.

In fact, when we first started and I said, “Stephen, I want to do this, but there’s this one actor who’s born to play Hodges. I don’t know if you know him. He’s this Irish actor named Brendan Gleeson.” He said, “Do I know him? I love him.” We mentioned all his movies and that became our dream. His agents and managers said, “Brendan’s not going to do a series, blah blah blah.” There were some people in Hollywood who said, “No, he’s not well known enough. What about this person, that person?” Well, as fate would have it, we got Brendan and let him be Irish. He’s just brilliant.

Also true of Harry Treadaway. I was convinced by our casting director to look at his film and he just was brilliant. Our whole cast was. We ended up, I mean, just with some extraordinary luck with Jharrel Jerome, who went on to win an Emmy. Justine Lupe, Holland Taylor, Kelly Lynch, Breeda Wool. I mean, it’s just a great great cast. I always felt that the success of this show lay in the performances. I very much wanted to frame it, stylistically, directorial, to take time for those performances, which we did.

What does Hodges owe to the classic detectives like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe?

Well, I think Brendan would say there has been, all the way back to Chinatown and Jack Gittes and Nicholson. I think Brendan, like all great detectives in film history and in novels, they’re all wounded people. He found the wounds in Hodges, the flaws in Hodges, played them all the way from him. Not being able to take a leak first thing in the morning, episode one, and looking like shit from the night before falling asleep in his Lay-Z-Boy.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I think that the Stephen King character of Bill Hodges will stand the test of time as one of the great detectives because he’s got real depth, real flaws, and real humanity, like all these people, and a lot of scars. And Brendan shows those very bravely and with heart and humor.Mr. Mercedes will stream exclusively on Peacock beginning Oct. 15.

The post Mr. Mercedes Director Jack Bender On The Show’s Peacock Move and Future appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3nv7oU3

[aion-rsa]

Lovecraft Country Episode 4 Review: A History of Violence

https://ift.tt/3baPa4w

This Lovecraft Country review contains spoilers. The episode is available to stream now on all HBO platforms.

Lovecraft Country Episode 4

Christina pulls into the Northside in her silver Bentley, unscathed, backdropped by Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money”, perfectly capturing her vibe of wealth and privilege and lack of fucks to give. A mood. Neither the destruction of Ardham Lodge or Tic’s ill-advised murder attempt have slowed her down, and she’s up to her usual cryptic nonsense. She’s looking for Hiram’s orrery, apparently the key to his time machine—because why not?— and has upset the local wizard wannabe, Captain Lancaster. Now, she has to contend with Winthrop’s branch of magical miscreants on top of playing whatever game she’s playing with Tic.

In “Whitey’s On The Moon” Christina was very delicately manipulating her father and Tic for her own agenda, under the guise of helping the Sons of Adam reach their goals. With Samuel apparently out of the way, she is now openly engaging in a power play, which is fun to watch even if I do hope the primary focus remains on the Black characters.

Christina’s arrival on Leti’s doorstep kicks off a National Treasure-like adventure for Tic n’em to find Titus Braithwhite’s hidden pages from the Book of Adam before Christina, or any of the 34 remaining lodges do. After some resistance, Montrose agrees to help Tic and Leti on their quest, given his research into Dora’s history, and into the Order of Ancient Dawn. The dynamic between Tic and Montrose, and the undercurrent of violence, makes them fascinating to watch.

Tic, Leti, and Montrose find Titus’ vault entrance in a Boston museum, and follow its north tunnel, across a chasm, past a death trap, beyond a puzzle door, and through miles of increasingly flooded passageways to Leti’s elevator— in the northside of Chicago. Magic, amirite? Some viewers will take issue with how little time is spent on the puzzles and code-breaking, which are the funner aspects of a “treasure hunt.” With Montrose’s knowledge of the bylaws and all their fictional references, they breeze through obstacles like a disappearing plank.

In last week’s episode, Leti’s elevator descends beyond the basement into a tunnel of death, and now we know where the tunnel goes. If there was a question of whether Leti was aware of her white neighbors’ bodies, her reaction seeing one float by should assuage any lingering concern that she knew—but her casual acceptance that they’re back in Chicago could be seen as too convenient. It’s reasonable to assume the other tunnels they didn’t take have equally puzzling endpoints, and the possibilities of what those hold are chilling and exciting.

Tic, Leti, and Montrose find Titus’ vault, and Tic unlocks it, revealing a chamber full of the remains of Indigenous people. When they attempt to remove the Titus’ pages from the hands of a corpse, Yahima (Monique Candelaria), is reanimated. Yahima tells tale of translating for Titus before refusing to continue. We know all too well that “exploration” often means exploitation, and it comes as no surprise that Titus murdered their entire family to coerce Yahima to translate his scroll. It’s even less surprising that he would imprison them, in life and in death. Lovecraft Country is awash in unsubtle homages to colonialist and racist harm.

Back in the relative safety of Leti’s home, Montrose slits Yahima’s throat. Montrose is a tortured man, and is made more so by the weight of the knowledge he’s learned about the Order of Ancient Dawn. As a Black, queer, man, he is already up against hate from racists and homophobes. And now he knows that an already unfair world is even more unfair, that magic gives advantage to those who would seek to harm his own, even without the additional power magic affords them. His son, forever entwined with magic and the legacy of the Sons of Adam, is always in danger because of his forebears. Montrose is heavy with fear, and Michael K. Williams embodies this with a superb performance. Fear drives him to destroy the bylaws and the only person alive capable of reading pages from the Book of Adam.

Read more

TV

How Lovecraft Country Uses Horror to Tell Black Stories

By Nicole Hill

Culture

Link Tank: How the Horrors in Lovecraft Country Are Bigger Than the Supernatural

By Den of Geek Staff

This episode expands the world of Lovecraft Country and gives us a sense of how vast the narrative is. As Leti tells Tic when he insists she and Montrose take the elevator to safety, “it’s not only just getting dangerous, he got kidnapped, I died, can you stop acting like this is only happening to you!” Tic has been seeing himself as the lone protagonist, the singular hero, but he has never been facing this alone, nor is he the only one who has been affected.

Ruby, for instance, is estranged from Leti. And outside of their brief attempt at sisterly bonding and cohabitation, Ruby is completely removed from Ardham and the Sons of Adam. Yet, even Ruby’s limited proximity to Leti makes her of interest to Christina and William. When she goes to apply at a department store for the upteenth time, she finds another Black woman —who applied “on a whim”— has been hired instead. She drowns her sorrows in booze and blues, at Williams’ invitation, and laments her circumstances. When she has sex with William —questionably ignoring his satanic-looking body art/modification— we know that there’s an ulterior motive, but Ruby doesn’t know magic exists, or that there’s reason for her to be pawn.

Tic behaves as though he’s the center of this universe, but we see magic touch everyone. Take Hippolyta. She has never trusted the story she was told about George’s death, and has sensed a wrongness about it. At Leti’s housewarming party, she is drawn to the orrery, which she takes; the very same magical orrery Christina and Lancaster are looking for. When she and Diana are driving home from Boston —without Tic n’em who took the magic tunnel route— she’s drawn to Ardham, and changes course, straight into the shoggoth’s den. We can call it instinct, but Hippolyta seems attuned to magic. Tic may not be the only person with an intrinsic magical connection.

It would be easy for Lovecraft Country to rest on a Chosen One and leave all of the heavy lifting to its male lead, but it’s clear Misha Green has a bigger vision for the show, and seems eager to give each character an opportunity for heroism. 

What makes this episode so compelling is how it introduces magic to the characters who have so far been on the periphery. Ruby and Hippolyta are both beginning to glimpse the real world, the magical world, and the story can only be elevated by their full immersement into magic and the complex structures of powers that surround it. Lovecraft Country continues to broaden its scope, while maintaining its sense of intimacy. The satisfying way it marries character-driven drama and sci-fi spectacle continues to enthrall.

Additional thoughts:

On Montrose: As of this episode, Montrose is queer-coded but not explicitly queer. In episode one, George tells Tic that Montrose got the worst of their fathers beatings. In episode two, George remembers Montrose greeting the league baseball players when they’d leave for the season, and Montrose recounts the beatings he got for that. Both implying that part of the abuse was their father’s response to Montrose’s perceived softness. In this episode, Tree suggests to Tic that Montrose is “getting close” with Sammy, who we met in episode one being intimate with another man.

Tree should be fought upon for being messy, in regards to both Montrose and Leti.

On Yahima: Yahima is Two-Spirit, which is an Indegenous-American umbrella term for a unique gender identity that can encompass intersex and transgender identities, but doesn’t always. Visually, Yahima reads as a trans or gender non-conforming person, and as such, the camera’s gaze repeats familiar, harmful patterns in media that sensationalize and otherize trans/intersex bodies. Yahima is also violently killed, which is another, unfortunately common trope.

There is something to be said about normalizing non-standard expressions of gender, and including characters who just happen to be intersex could be powerful. But that inclusion cannot come at the expense of those being reflected. Lovecraft Country makes a point of naming injustices, but the storytelling in this episode doesn’t justify Yahima’s inclusion, and the potential harm to trans/intersex viewers may be an injustice in itself. As always, intent < impact.

On Tic & Leti: I both like the idea of their relationship and am exhausted by it. It’s hard to determine whether they are bonded by shared attraction or shared trauma, and even if it’s both, it feels a lot more of the latter. Keeping them platonic feels like the more subversive choice but there is power in opening yourself to another person.

Ruby, girl, I get the appeal, but what is you doing? 

Hippolyta. Sis. Please.

The post Lovecraft Country Episode 4 Review: A History of Violence appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3bz7hBk