Lovecraft Country is one of the best shows of 2020 thus far.
Last year we had Watchmen taking American racial history and thrusting it into comic book lore and confronting it.
Lovecraft Country, with its genre hopping story has taken American racial history and thrust it into different genres, and in Episode 8 we are firmly in the horror genre space after last week's sci-fi "I Am" classic and, oh boy, does it deliver.
Let's dig in...
The episode opens with paying off one of the Easter eggs it hinted at in the Holy Ghost episode when we were introduced to Bobo playing the Ouija board with Diana.
Bobo was Emmitt Till's nickname and he was from Chicago.
The board did say Bobo won't enjoy his trip to Mississippi and history tells us the sad story of Emmitt Till's brutal murder after being wrongfully accused of sexual assault by a white woman.
Till was beaten and tortured beyond recognition and his mom had his casket opened so people could see what the white racist did to her child.
Sad part is, lynching may be over but black people are still being killed under false pretence by the police and racists to this day.
Every week we hear of a black person being killed under some dodgy reason in the US.
So poor Diana, brilliantly played by Jada Harris, is confronting realities of being black and living in the USA at her friend's funeral, with none of her parents around and the adults are nowhere to be seen.
A classic horror trope, especially from horror movies of the 80s, is how the parent generation is oblivious to what the kids are going through. It was seen in movies ranging from Nightmare on Elm Street - referenced in the show with the white kids skipping rope - to Child's Play.
Diana's arc mirrors that trope.
Poor Jada Harris is cursed by Lancaster and has to survive a horrific imagination of a racist cop, referencing the title of the episode Jig-a-Bobo, a reference to Jigaboo - a racist slur which was used in slavery to refer to black children, which was interchangeably used with pickaninny.
The imagined creatures, the two girls, are caricatures of Topsy and Bobpsy, two characters from Uncle Tom's cabin book which features in the episode.
The demon children are the embodiment of the racist caricature of black children: the hair and the big red lipstick that supposedly mimics big black lips, associated with stereotypes of the black children being wild and only good for eating watermelons.
One should mention the two girls who play them are really brilliant. The performance dance they did was brilliant and creepy at the same time. Michael Jackson would be proud.
One should commend the showrunners and script team for not turning Diana into a shrinking violet. Even though she tries to reach out to the parent figures like Leti who is too caught up in her own drama to notice her mortal danger.
Diana has the balls to confront Lancaster and finally the pickaninny on her own. Kid has got balls.
So what other drama were the adults facing that they didn't notice what was happening with Diana?
Atticus revealed he also got to travel to the future and came back with a book.
The book is a nice meta-moment for the series as it references changes to the book that the TV series has made.
So we now know that Atticus and Leti had a son and that Atticus wants to live to be part of his son's life and it's the son and not Matt Ruff who writes the Lovecraft Country book in the future.
This underlines why he is so nasty to Ji-ah, which I didn't like but I'm glad the series brought Ji-ah back so soon 'cause the series has shown how everyone keeps secrets from each other. Life would be so easy if they all just opened up.
Atticus was hiding Ji-ah, Montrose was hiding his sexual orientation and is hiding who Atticus' father is, whilst Leti is hiding her son.
Ruby, Christina... there are just too many secrets. But I'm glad that the secrets are starting to come out.
The show ended on a very big note - that action sequence and reveals. Atticus, spell working, seems to have his own personal monster and Leti is bulletproof so ja nee, I'm stoked for next week.
It seems like the team will go back to Tulsa in 1921, where the Book of Names is said to have been burned during that massacre where George and Montrose used to stay.
It looks like Diana might be turning into a pickaninny and it also appears that Christina's endgame is revealed in next week's episode.
Tulsa was what kicked off Watchmen and I'm glad that Lovecraft Country is going to do its own portrayal.
I cant wait for when our local television starts engaging with our own history in a similar way... but we shall get there.
This episode was gut wrenching on so many levels, horrifying and yet moving still.
Some great TV.
It felt like: Candyman meets Beloved in 1950s USA.
Verdict :
*****