Lovecraft Country

[Palanan]

I'm surprised no one seems to be talking about this:

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Not sure what to think, on many levels.

I assume at some point someone is going full Deep One, given the dark hints about distant forebears.

[Dienekes]

Honestly. I heard about it, saw that JJ Abrams was involved and thought to pass. I’ve never really been a fan of his work since I first saw Lost. Star Trek and Star Wars have not disabused me of my belief he should not be allowed anywhere near the writing room.

But watching the trailer Jordan Peele and Michael Williams are involved as well. And I like both of them. So, I’m tentatively interested. But suspicious.

[gomipile]

I've been unable to watch HBO on anything but my PCs since they killed the HBO GO app and they haven't got a HBO MAX app for my TV-attached devices yet.

[Psyren]

I've watched the first episode and it's fantastic. A very stark portrayal of "man is the real monster" and unabashed look at the negative racial roots of some very prominent/iconic sci-fi properties (primarily the titular author but others as well.) This one will be on our watchlist for sure. (Damn you HBO for keeping me around after GoT thoroughly soiled my television.)

And yes, it's not called "Lovecraft" for show - the eldritch horror shows up reasonably quickly and the effects are very believable.

The main cast are quite solid, with the standout for me being Jurnee-Smollett Bell playing down-on-her-luck black sheep Letitia Dandridge; some of you may know her as Black Canary from the recent Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn movie. Naturally, being Black Canary gave her the chance to show off her singing pipes, and she gets the same opportunity here.

I've been unable to watch HBO on anything but my PCs since they killed the HBO GO app and they haven't got a HBO MAX app for my TV-attached devices yet.

Do you have a Firestick? Amazon has been very cagey around a HBO Max app, but there's a way to get it installed on there with only a few hoops.

[Mordar]

I saw a review that irked me, so I was a little concerned that the show would be overt message first, second and third...and story a distant fourth.

Instead, I've watched two episodes where the story was compelling and the truths that Psyren mentions are tightly and well-woven into the fabric of the story.

The three initial characters are (to me) clearly reflective of "investigators" from the Call of C'thulhu game (ex-soldier, journalist and a variation on the dilettante), and they have pretty solid chemistry. Every bit of the interactions among the characters and the environment on the way to (and in) Lovecraft Country are evocative of the localized Lovecraft stories, if slightly updated to be 50s instead of 20s.

After seeing the sneak peek for episode 3 I'm a little wary (it looks like they are shifting back away from the northeast), but it also made me wonder if this might not be an opportunity to present a classic CoC intro scenario in TV form.

I don't care for the modern music in the soundtrack...but that's about my only complaint at the moment.

Spoiler: Don't want to spoil!

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Disappointed we appear to have lost Uncle George...but IMDB says he is in 8 episodes, so perhaps not completely gone. Like him much more than I believe I will like Montrose - George is a better fit for the investigator element, and Montrose will just make it a soap opera.

- M

[Psyren]

Spoiler: Don't want to spoil!

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Disappointed we appear to have lost Uncle George...but IMDB says he is in 8 episodes, so perhaps not completely gone. Like him much more than I believe I will like Montrose - George is a better fit for the investigator element, and Montrose will just make it a soap opera.

- M

I feel the same way. Though he unfortunately seems to know more about what's going on, so he's the logical exposition source that the party (and us the audience) will need.

[Palanan]

Eh. Gave it a chance, wasn’t impressed.

It took me two tries to get through it, and while the basic premise is workable, I just didn’t find the story that compelling. Uncle George was by far the most interesting character, but I was more interested in his day job than his inevitable dark secret.

Which raises another issue:

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Uncle George travels far and wide looking for places of safety to include in his guide, and early on he made it plain how dangerous it is out there. Clearly he’s been in his share of threatening and terrifying situations, as he demonstrated at the end when he kept his cool even while shoggoths were attacking.

Given this, I’d think he has a highly developed instinct for danger, a sixth sense he’s learned to listen to when things just don’t seem right.

So why does he seem so naive and unprepared when they visit the restaurant? It’s a different name and a very different atmosphere than what he was expecting—and yet he just blunders in, shrugs off any concerns and pulls out his notebook like he’s perfectly at home.

I would think the difference in the restaurant’s name, combined with the instant hostility when they walk in the door, would make him concerned if not downright twitchy, especially given the ugly stares when they drove into town. The fact that this experienced and highly savvy person didn’t pick up on any of this doesn’t feel at all true to the character.

[Psyren]

I was frustrated with him during the diner scene too. Tic and Lety immediately grokked that something was up, and he just gormlessly sat there. Makes you wonder how he managed to fill out his guide in one piece in the first place.

[Dienekes]

Saw the first 2 episodes. Yeah, I’ll agree with the criticism of George in that scene.

I liked it, but, I feel like this is rushed. Especially that second episode. That could have easily been 2 or 3 episodes worth of conflict that all gets wrapped up surprisingly easily.

Spoilers for discussing specifics.

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So they get to the creepy manor. There’s a mystery: why were they brought there? Why is their car fixed? What’s going on?

And the people around them all act so mysterious and vague. You think it’s going to be something big. But then they just tell them. With little prompting.

Ok. But then the heroes don’t remember the scary events. Why? How’s it happening? How are they going to plan what to do next if they don’t remember?

Then the main character guy just asks one of the villains to turn it off. So she does.

Then there’s the creepy illusory nightmare fights. Main character guy fights the girl I assume he was talking to in Korea last episode. George I’m assuming main characters mom. Main character gal fights rape-y main character guy. Exploring a theme of romance and corruption. All for the amusement of the rich white guys.

How will our heroes beat this corrupt conspiratorial society?

George knows it. He read it in a book. Off-screen. The villains literally gave him the means to trick them. Didn’t even require work.

They figure out where main character guys dad is being kept. In actually the best set up and pay off of the episode. How will they break him out?

They kinda break down a wall. Reference Count of Monte Christo to show he was already breaking himself out. It’s a bit weird. It does portray dad as having some competence to him. Helped of course because he’s Chalky White/ Omar fricken Little.

Only oh no. The villains shoot main character girl and George. How will they survive?

Main character girl is healed. Off screen. George is dying. He and dad say some final words and reference the dark past. Apparently George is main characters dad. I don’t really care about that bit. But I’m sure it will be referenced with some big moment between dad and main character guy with “You were never a father to me!” dialogue. As you do.

But now at the end of this rollercoaster the main character is strung up for the deep dark ritual. How will he escape?

The villains just... kill themselves. There wasn’t even an Indiana Jones moment where he figures out how to survive instead of them as far as I noticed. Nor an arc about coming to terms with magic and higher powers like Jones did. Maybe I’m misremembering this was a few days ago and my memory is crap.

They all just die. He lives. And he just runs away.

Now I need to point out. I still enjoyed it. I’ll watch the next episode. But I kept thinking these events would be more fulfilling if we watched our heroes try to figure out what was going on piece by piece. And suffer trials in each section of the process. Rather than have things handed to them half the time.

[Psyren]

I have to agree. I enjoy it. But episode 2 could have easily been two or three.
The dining room scene was worth it but still.

Episode 3 does slow things down a little. And we finally get an overarching plot/macguffin to hunt near the end.

[razorback]

I've been watching it and enjoying it for itself so far, but there are some odd gaps in thinking between three (four) people that one should have thought of.
My concern is that they have ideas for episodes that really don't have anything to really do with each other (episode 3) that they are hammering it to make it work with the overarching story. And I really hope this isn't the case.

[kinem]

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The villains just... kill themselves.

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The cultist was a high level Truenamer so it's to be expected

[Psyren]

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The cultist was a high level Truenamer so it's to be expected

Lol!

Though I think it was a Ritual with several crit failures and a hefty Backlash.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

Watch the first two episodes at a friend's place and found it kind of boring and predictable. Acting was kind of meh. I found some parts rushed and hammy at some points while seeing none of the cast have any real chemestry to make their characters believeable. While the plot so far presented was something solidly structured I wasn't impressed as it has been done before. I will give the production team some marks for good set design but the special effects were pretty bland for the monsters.

[IRollTwenties]

Seems like a lot of the criticism is "why didn't they focus on X Y and V more? Why so rushed?" and as you continue to watch the show you realize that what happened in episode 2 isn't the most important thing or the main driving force behind the show.

[Mordar]

I think Episode 3 was kind of a backslide. Too much coincidence, a little too Xanatos-y, and it really made me feel a sequence in the earlier episodes was really deus ex machina.

Spoiler: Xanatos ex machina?

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The haunted house with the necessary pages to advance the secret society's goals just happens to be in the same town that the main characters come from was a bit too much of a stretch for my preference (Chicago was never "Lovecraft Country"). The masterful machinations of the Daughter of Adam felt a little too hamhanded, but I can certainly overlook that...until it brought to mind the rescue of G/A/L when they were leaving the diner.

The silver Bentley just pops up out of almost nowhere to save them. No issue at the time, thought maybe it was because they were being shepherded to Ardham. But that doesn't really wash with the sequence with the hick sheriff and deputies. G/A/L could have been shoggoth food extremely easily, or popped by the sheriff even before the shoggoths appeared. A mighty high risk to take for the Sons of Adam. Maybe the Shoggoths were under control the whole time, or were just not to eat Atticus...but not how it felt. Thus the Daughter appearing in the final scene of Holy Ghost felt like a pop-in that was supposed to make her look powerful and mysterious but instead made it look like hamhanded writing to me.

All of that said, I liked most of Holy Ghost, and I did think it felt like an homage to the Haunted House scenario in many of the Call of C'thulhu edition main books (likely all personal bias, but it is close enough for me to pretend it is the case).

The series does really feel like a party playing through a CoC investigation/campaign...and I like that, even if it does require some additional suspension of disbelief/acceptance of unusual narrative leaps.

- M

[Psyren]

Seems like a lot of the criticism is "why didn't they focus on X Y and V more? Why so rushed?" and as you continue to watch the show you realize that what happened in episode 2 isn't the most important thing or the main driving force behind the show.

I get that and agree - and I think the show is great just to be clear. I just would have liked some of the plot points to be given room to breathe. It does feel like what they're building toward is going to be far more impactful than anything that came before, which would explain the rush to get there.

[Tyndmyr]

I was frustrated with him during the diner scene too. Tic and Lety immediately grokked that something was up, and he just gormlessly sat there. Makes you wonder how he managed to fill out his guide in one piece in the first place.

I agree, and George in general seemed like an interesting character that was sadly underused. The whole guide is fascinating plot, and hey, let's have more of that, right? Yeah, I know Lovecraftian stuff is the A plot, but there's room for more. George is more interesting than the whole daddy issues plot that I mostly just don't care about.

Episode 3:

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I eventually mostly came around on this episode by the end, but most of it felt jarring after the previous episode. It's...kind of a jump from where we left off in episode two. Is this a flashback? No, apparently not, but instead a flash forward to another, sort of related thing?

I still have no idea why the main character is alive from the manor incident, when everyone else died. It seemed...convenient.

The texture and setting of the show is really well done, but the primary plot seems a little messy. I'm still watching, and sort of curious. There's enough good in the show that maybe it'll recover from the initial rough edges, as some shows do. We'll have to see, I guess.

[Mordar]

I agree, and George in general seemed like an interesting character that was sadly underused. The whole guide is fascinating plot, and hey, let's have more of that, right? Yeah, I know Lovecraftian stuff is the A plot, but there's room for more. George is more interesting than the whole daddy issues plot that I mostly just don't care about.

Episode 3:

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I eventually mostly came around on this episode by the end, but most of it felt jarring after the previous episode. It's...kind of a jump from where we left off in episode two. Is this a flashback? No, apparently not, but instead a flash forward to another, sort of related thing?

I still have no idea why the main character is alive from the manor incident, when everyone else died. It seemed...convenient.

The texture and setting of the show is really well done, but the primary plot seems a little messy. I'm still watching, and sort of curious. There's enough good in the show that maybe it'll recover from the initial rough edges, as some shows do. We'll have to see, I guess.

I thought the Guide was a good vehicle for covert and overt storytelling. It might not be lost now, but it kind of feels like it is no longer an option, right?

While I don't think what you spoilered (at least line 1 and 3) didn't require it, in "open text" I'll just say that it took them a little while to explain the gap, but they did slide it into conversation.

As to your last comment...I was hoping for a bit more exploration of the Lovecraftian nature of the world, but now I'm concerned that it is going to be like a CW superhero movie. All special powers in Smallville and later Flash were the result of a singular event (Meteor Freaks and Accelerator Freaks?). If that is the case here then the show runners have completely missed an essential element of Lovecraftian fiction.

Still, I'll be ready to watch Sunday night!

-M

[Bartmanhomer]

I watch all the episodes so far and it's based on a novel.

[DavidSh]

I don't have HBO, but I just read the novel. It's divided into to chapters that emphasize different characters, different supernatural events, and different aspects of the African-American experience of the 1950s. At times it feels more like Harry Dresden than H. P. Lovecraft, especially after the connections between events become more clear.

[Psyren]

Latest episode was great. Focused on Lety's sister Ruby, and like all good sci-fi, works just as well as a standalone short story as it does with advancing the meta-narrative.

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Ruby wakes up alone from having spent the night with William - in the body of a white woman. This results in some decently harrowing altercations once she's out on the street, but she herself is never actually in (much) danger, highlighting the night and day difference between walking the world in her own skin and that of someone with far more privilege than she could ever hope to have. After being reunited with William, a gut-wrenching scene in which he tears her out of the white skin she was in follows, and she wakes up once more herself. William then gives her leave to do whatever she wants - leave (with a stack of money he places on the stand) or take more of the magic potion to live as a white woman longer. Or even both. Ruby takes the potion and leaves the money.

Without summarizing the entire episode, Ruby uses the potion to achieve her heart's desire - her dream job at the department store in the white part of town. The potion's short-ish duration is an excellent device as it provides three key features that make the episode work - plenty of Lovecraftian body horror between transitions, tension in every scene where she isn't alone, and Ruby getting plenty of screentime even in an episode whose core premise is a white actress playing her character. As things come to a head, we see a dark side to Ruby's character that is at once brutal, and understandably human.

Over on the main cast side of things - Tic immediately discovers what Montrose has done to Yahima and nearly beats him to death, and it's hard for me to feel any sympathy for Montrose. Leaving the racist cult as the only magic users in the setting is not remotely sensible Montrose! The very explicit confirmation of Montrose's sexuality seems to have been meant to humanize him, but I find it hard to care about anything to do with him when he's being such a horrible human being on top of being nearly criminally stupid.

Looks like next episode is a flashback - one that suggests Tic's involvement in the core plot events may be even more orchestrated than he (or we) realized.

[Mordar]

Latest episode was great. Focused on Lety's sister Ruby, and like all good sci-fi, works just as well as a standalone short story as it does with advancing the meta-narrative.

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Over on the main cast side of things - Tic immediately discovers what Montrose has done to Yahima and nearly beats him to death, and it's hard for me to feel any sympathy for Montrose. Leaving the racist cult as the only magic users in the setting is not remotely sensible Montrose! The very explicit confirmation of Montrose's sexuality seems to have been meant to humanize him, but I find it hard to care about anything to do with him when he's being such a horrible human being on top of being nearly criminally stupid.

Looks like next episode is a flashback - one that suggests Tic's involvement in the core plot events may be even more orchestrated than he (or we) realized.

I liked episode four, and Ruby's episode 5 focus. Both had some nice Lovecraft vibes, four in the CoC RPG fashion, 5 in the good weird fiction fashion. I think they are doing a wonderful job managing the sanity-challenging elements of the original genre.

Felt episode 5 was a little HBO-ed Up (tm) but I guess they really wanted to hammer home the metamorphosis theme.

Snipped some of the spoiler, and very much echo what remains.

Spoiler: Leti shoulda let him finish

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That explicit confirmation showed that he isn't a good human. The show sequence later was better, but it is too late for me.

The big reveal at the end wasn't much of a big reveal, and I'm going to be disappointed if what you say about next episode is true. If, however, it is another flavor of weird fiction, not directly tied to the Sons of Adam, I think I'll like it better.

- M

[Dienekes]

Last episode was somewhat mixed for me. The Ruby bits were fascinating, wonderful body horror. An interesting look into her character and our villain. While I got pretty bored during the Montrose sections. Maybe this plot line will be more interesting when they actually go into the oppressive nature of society put upon the characters in question. There’s an interesting story to tell of the oppressed also being themselves oppressors to a marginalized subgroup.

But watching a guy get laid and then go to a dance was not exactly thrilling. And I more or less stand by Psyren that so far Montrose has been so thoroughly unlikable he’s been more directly opposing the main characters actions than the actual villain.

[Tyndmyr]

I also have mixed feelings about this episode, and where this show is going as a whole.

Montrose doesn't make a great character for me. He's not very sympathetic. I realize the whole "burn the books" part of cthulhu horror is something of a trope, but his motivations do not seem to make sense for the situation. If you want to burn the books to save everyone, fine. That doesn't match with attempted memorization. That implies another motive which is...not followed up on. So, basically, the dude is a bit of a jerk who largely is an obstacle without contributing a lot that's fun, or even being an appealing villain. I liked the uncle a great deal more.

Ep 5 spoilers:

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The body horror stuff was a fun concept. I expected there to be more actual horror and less gore, though. Maybe the person who's form she's taking is chained in the basement or something. I believe there's an implication that this may be the case, but we don't get to see it.

I was less enthused by the twist. First, it was pretty easy to forsee. My immediate assumption was "oh, obviously this dude has done this before" so, uh, there we go.

Secondly, it plays hell with motivations. Blond Magic Lady who is behind apparently everything has...a *ludicrous* amount of power. Both nigh arbitrary magic and money. So why the hell does she need Ruby enough to put on this charade? And why is Ruby not more curious? The magical person saying "Oh, I will need a favor from you, but it's so small you definitely don't need me to explain it to you"....really? Someone couldn't act more suspicious if they tried. Not even the craziest D&D party would fail to sense a trap from that.

There needs to be a little more mystery than just Blond Magic Lady being mysterious and pulling literally all strings.

Episode 4 did have some really nice Call of Cthulhuesque visuals, though.

[WinterKnight404]

I've been watching this and trying to reserve judgement until I've seen more of it but I'm about at my wits-end. I don't see anything clever or intellectually stimulating about this program. There are several moments that just don't make logical/rational sense, which I know is common to most horror themed programs, but are just ruining the show for me. I'll focus on just one episode here but there are several plot-holes and stuff that asks for too much suspension of disbelief.

Spoiler: It's all nonsense!

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So, they drive outside Chicago to go to a museum to open a tunnel that leads BACK to Chicago and just happens to run underneath the home that Laticia purchased and apparently never bothered to ride the elevator to the bottom floor of except to dump the bodies of the three white dudes who broke in...

In order to open the door to the tunnels in the museum, Montrose, somehow, instinctively knows that they have to wait for the moonlight and the moon just happens to in the perfect position in the night sky and the clouds happen to part on the very night they happen to be there to cast a focused beam of light onto the statue.

They get into the tunnel, Atticus states that they have a time limit due to a chance of flooding, then they come upon a seemingly bottomless and topless pit in the middle of the tunnel. Wouldn't any potential flood water fall into the pit? They get across and somehow Montrose just photographically memorized the exact few pages of the book before he burned them to know the correct pattern to get through the puzzle door. Then they are magically transported hundreds of miles to get back to Chicago before the non-nonsensical flooding truly begins. Then they rescue a mysterious prophet (who comically gets TKO'd by Atticus because she was screaming) and who is then killed by Montrose... I'll stop there.

This show is giving me a The Mummy, National Treasure, and American Horror Story vibes. I don't like any of those LOL.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, the logic has continued to drift away.

It's kind of a shame. The setting is so rich, with a great plot, it'd be absolutely amazing.

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So, uh, apparently Atticus had his first otherworldly encounter in the Korean War, when he dated a tentacle monster who ate souls on the regular.

This kind of makes his whole denial of the horror stuff at the beginning of the season...not make sense. Also, why would you not maybe mention this to your family once you realize you're living in a horror world?

There's a lot of "I lied to you to protect you", but we never see that actually working. Lying to people only ever sets them up for problems in this show, and there is not a great deal of reason to expect otherwise. This ends up just being frustrating, as everything you think you know is continually set aside for the latest reveal that makes no particular sense.

Also, holy crap do they not work together well. The mom goes on an epic journey of self discovery and while it takes her forever to remember her dead husband, she literally never remembers her, yknow, actual child she abandoned. At a certain point, when people are causing enough of their own problems via blind stupidity, it becomes harder to empathize with them. A *lot* of horror has this problem, and making protaganists dumb always runs this risk. Horror is far more effective when people do the smart thing and are still in danger.

[Bartmanhomer]

The first season is getting bonkers.

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The young girl was possessed by a demon and the witch performed an exorcist on the young girl.

[Psyren]

So... who saw the finale?

Spoiler: Major spoilers

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Spoiler: Seriously, turn back if you haven't seen it

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RIP Atticus. And given how massively the world has changed in the final moments, I'm not expecting another season either.

Christina's devolution into supervillain was a bit disappointing. She wants to live forever... why exactly? She already has a ton of power being a blode white woman in the 1950s who also happens to be a sorceress. I was hoping there'd be some new revelations here but no, she just wants it because she's a power-hungry bad guy.

And Ruby was killed off-screen apparently? And Dee has a bionic arm now and finished Christina off? And Kumiho was just kinda there until it was prophecy time, but they didn't explain at all how she could disrupt Christina's superspell.

I don't mind too much where it ended up but it was all a bit of a mess. Probably better to end it here after all.

I don't see how this gets a second season, nor am I too sure if I want one. It works... fine as a standalone.

[Tyndmyr]

The finale is a frigging dumpster fire.

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So, uh, the whole nine tailed fox storyline was literally just to, uh, hold two people via tentacles? That seems to be not super impressive.

Likewise, the whole Ruby plot just culminates in...an off screen death, I guess? Lame. There's been a lot of buildup for not much payoff.

Christina doesn't seem to have any motivation to be the villain of this tale. There does not seem to be any reason why they couldn't say "sure, we won't give you the whole book, but we'll work with you to find a way that doesn't involve killing one of us". Insisting that Atticus die seems...dumb?

The rules of magic seem to be getting ever more arbitrary. The curse is reversed....except for this arm. Why will never be explained. Also, it's now suddenly a robot arm, for no reason whatsoever. Why does the kid have a robot arm and hench-shoggoths and love strangling this woman that's never actually done anything to her?

Why did we go from Leti being invincible to her invincibility being revoked to suddenly being invincible again? Did the show literally just forget about the previous scene? Why doesn't Christina use invincibility more often? Yeah, she needs to revoke it for the ritual, but why is she driving around risking car accidents when there is apparently no downside or limitations to being invincible?

Why did they make such a big thing about the power of a spell being so tied to everything else, and then pretty much just ignore that? How does a spell that targets only one person target all white people instead? That seems obviously like a far bigger deal. And the existence of race-targeting spells seems like a potential fridge logic thing anyways. There are kind of a lot of magical racists in this show. How come none of them ever tried something like that?

Why does Christina heal at all? Did the immortality work or not? It looked like it worked. If the power was stolen in order to enact magical racism, how did her ritual still mostly function? What we've seen thus far is that if anything goes wrong with the ritual, everything falls to pieces, the pieces explode, and then everything is on fire.

So, it doesn't really make sense why anything happened, how it happened, and I can't really see any consistent way for this show to move forward, given that they've offed most of the interesting characters. This is genuinely a huge disappointment.