1x08 Jig-a-Bobo

[6.7/10] My running complaint about Lovecraft Country is that the individual weekly main stories have been good, sometimes even great, but the attempts at serialization and dribs and drabs of continuing stories or side bits have been less than great.

Unfortunately, “Jig-a-Bobo” is essentially all ongoing plot threads and side bits. It frankly feels like a dumping ground for pieces of the larger arc that needed to go somewhere, but didn’t really have a place to go on their own. So instead, we get this patchwork quilt of different plot developments and monologues that isn’t as strong as other outings from the series.

It’s a shame, because this is really Dee’s episode, or at least it should be, and her piece of it is the best part. For one thing, Jada Harris does an incredible job selling Dee’s traumatization at knowing (and smelling) what happened to one of her young friends, who just so happens to be Emmett Till (something I didn’t pick up on in his appearance during the haunted house episode). She communicates the anger and shock of it, the fear and disorientation when the cops harass her, the determination to beat the supernatural curse that Chief Lancaster put on her.

Her experience dramatizes the dread and anxiety that you could be next in a visceral way. Add onto it her fear that she’s lost both her father and now her mother in a short amount of time, and it creates a sense of psychological horror mixed with real life injustice that cuts through everything else in the episode.

That’s all before the sheer craft of it, which is exquisite. Again, the combination of racist imagery with a virtuoso, chilling performance from the two young dancers who play Dee’s supernatural attackers really stands out. Their movements are uncanny in a disturbing way, but also impressive, and the sound design to evoke them is right on point as well.

But that’s pretty much where the high points end. There is something moving and horrifying in the dramatization of what happened to Till and the reaction of the community to his barbaric murder, but frankly it feels tacked onto the proceedings. The intentions are clearly good, with the show trying to educate the uninitiated and make the communal reaction come alive. And yet, it feels kind of cheap to realize that as a sidestory amid other interpersonal drama and tales of magic battles, rather than making it the centerpiece of the episode or even the season.

We get Ruby’s overwritten monologue, and we get the bizarre scene where Christina tries to experience what Till went through in order to develop empathy (I guess?), and before that we get a gross and kind of unnecessary sex scene between the two where Ruby becomes Hillary and then changes back again. You can feel the show straining for profundity and artisness in all of this, but it doesn’t really work.

Then there’s just the clunky plot mechanics of everyone’s interactions. Again, the serialization on this show has been really janky, to where cause and effect, and how much time has passed, and how one event leads to another is not terribly clear. So we see Tic give Christina the key in order to learn how to do a spell (presumably so he can protect Leti and their baby), while Leti gives Christina the negatives of the pages from the spellbook in order to protect Tic. (Shades of O. Henry!) We learn that Christina wants to sacrifice Tic on the vernal equinox to become immortal, so at least now there’s a goal in mind. Christina’s literal immortality vs. Tic and Leti’s familial immortality. But the lore deposits are awkward and the scenes don’t really click.

Oh yeah, and Tic is a total asshole to Ji-Ah! Which I suppose is to be expected, but still makes him feel cruel and hard to like. At least Ji-Ah gets a good barb in when he accuses her of killing one-hundred men, and she retorts, “It’s in my nature. What’s your excuse?”

We do get a good scene with Tic and his dad. Montrose is a good character, even in weaker episodes, and I like his explanation of both him and his wife wanting a family and sharing familial love, even if they didn’t share romantic love. It’s sweet, as is him participating in the spellcasting out of a desire to protect his grandson. It remains awkward that we’re told rather than shown what Tic witnessed in the future and how he understood what it meant for him and Leti, but the scenes of him and his father help keep things going well.

Overall, this one feels off, often like it’s a bunch of scenes from disparate episodes patched together. But there’s still some good material in Dee’s story that both horrifies and conveys the themes and emotions of the episode better than the rest of what’s there.