S01.E08: Jig-A-Bobo

[paigow]

Airdate: Oct 4 / 20

Diana finds herself in Captain Lancaster's crosshairs; when a visitor from his past arrives, Atticus and Leti take steps to protect their future.

[ShellsandCheese]

Well this episode just made me lose respect for all of the adults in Dee’s life. They totally failed that poor child this episode. I mean I get that they are dealing with their shit but I was shocked at how dismissive Leti in particular was of her. 

[peridot]

I'm glad two major secrets were let out of the bag in this episode.  I really don't know why they didn't let Diana in on the secrets.  They should have realized that their secretiveness caused Hippolyta to do her own investigation, and they lost her to magic.  Diana is just as intelligent, and they should have told her.

Those demon girls were scary as hell, they kind of reminded me of "Us".  I was not expecting for that to appear as a result of Tic's spell!  How are they going to explain that to the neighbors?!

I thought Ruby's potion lasted for a day?  It seems her skin was ripping off after a short period.

Ouch at Ji-Ah and Leti. 

Edited October 5, 2020 by peridot

[Scarlett45]

23 minutes ago, ShellsandCheese said:

Well this episode just made me lose respect for all of the adults in Dee’s life. They totally failed that poor child this episode. I mean I get that they are dealing with their shit but I was shocked at how dismissive Leti in particular was of her. 

I thought that as well, but wasn’t that a part of the curse? So that she couldn’t tell adults about the cops?

17 minutes ago, peridot said:

I thought Ruby's potion lasted for a day?  It seems her skin was ripping off after a short period.

I think strong emotions cause the potion to wear out. I have to say the CGI in that scene looked amazing and Ruby’s breasts shone like stars! Lol. She’s gorgeous. 

[Indigo Luna]

Dee's plot line had such an "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" (I kept thinking about the Shiny Red Bicycle episode) and "Us" vibe to it! The little girls they had playing the spirits were amazing at being super creepy. 

[DearEvette]

Wow.  That episode was wild on every level.

I think everyone made some really bad decisions this episode.  But I think some of that is because you add anger + grief + frustration + a level of hopelessness + stultifying heat and you get a stew of bad decision making.

On a descending scale I was most upset with:

Ruby. Girl... I just... you hurt me this episode Ruby.  I think the background song of 'I Put a Spell on You' music behind her scene with Christina/William was very apropos.

Tic.  I think most of what I annoyed me about Tic is somewhat the same thing with Ruby.  Why they are so willing to trust Christina.   But given what we know of Christina, I believe even though she is basically in this for herself and her own power, she is more willing to help Ruby and Leti than she is Tic.

Leti. Again she knows better than to trust Christina and even she was willing to bargain with her.  I will say at least with Leti, Christina came through.

Montrose. Only insofar as what he did in the end with Diana.  I did like his and Tic's make up.  But he broke my heart when he said he always figured he'd die at the end of a white man's rope or at the end of a white man's gun.

All the adults.  I get what the show was going for.  I don't think we were supposed to take they were willfully neglecting Diana, but that everyone was mired in their own grief over Bobo's death and (wrongly) that she was safe from at least the supernatural stuff.  Sure we saw what she was dealing with with the 'Us' twins, , but Leti just saw her riding around on her bike with her baseball cap on. But still... I think it is disappointing they couldn't get out of their own heads to just take a minute to see if she was ok in the aftermath of her best friend's death.

Some other observations:

Ji-Ah's visit can't have just been this brief?  Right?  She has to have more to do.

I don't know if it is smart to have a guy with dyslexia read a complicated spell.  But ok.  LOL.

That night-time scene of Montrose sitting outside on the sidewalk talking Tic was gorgeous.  The set design in this show is just beautiful.

I was so grossed out by the cop spit.  Ick.  Just ick.

Whoever the actresses who played the 'Us' twins, need a round of applause.  They were creepy as fuck but their body movements were mesmerizing.  I'll bet they were dancers.

I am wondering if Christina is really not right in the head?  She comes across as coolly rational and manipulative.  The manipulative I'll give her, but I am wondering if her upbringing and her quest for power and immortality has actually made knocked a few screws loose.

Apparently that day of Emmitt Till's funeral was one of the hottest of that summer in Chicago.

The last few minutes were nuts!!

This was a rollercoaster ride and fun as fuck to watch but really just brought up more questions.  So typical for this show.  LOL.

[Scarlett45]

11 minutes ago, Indigo Luna said:

Dee's plot line had such an "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" (I kept thinking about the Shiny Red Bicycle episode) and "Us" vibe to it! The little girls they had playing the spirits were amazing at being super creepy. 

They were very creepy! Likely have a background in dance, their movements were so eerie. 

 

9 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

Whoever the actresses who played the 'Us' twins, need a round of applause.  They were creepy as fuck but their body movements were mesmerizing.  I'll bet they were dancers.

I typed out my reply before I saw yours!

 

9 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

I am wondering if Christina is really not right in the head?  She comes across as coolly rational and manipulative.  The manipulative I'll give her, but I am wondering if her upbringing and her quest for power and immortality has actually made knocked a few screws loose.

I don’t think Christina is a “bad person” per se, but she’s very self centered and single minded. I think that exercise was because she did want to feel what poor Emmett Till felt, although psychologically it’s a lot different when you know you ARE NOT going to die (or stay dead). 
 

My Mom said she remembers her parents went to Emmett Till’s viewing. She did not go, she was too little (so her Mom said- of course she thought she was big enough). So sad. The entire scene reminded me that I had a drama teacher in HS who didn’t know who Emmett Till was until I told her- born and raised in Chicago.....14yrs old me couldn’t believe the disconnect. Different world I guess. 

[Indigo Luna]

11 minutes ago, Scarlett45 said:

They were very creepy! Likely have a background in dance, their movements were so eerie. 

Especially that last shot of the one girl walking into the garage and turning around and what seemed like her looking directly into the camera to stick her tongue out? The angle of the shot looked kind of made it look like she was looking off into the distance but there was a second of her looking into the camera and it was *very* effective. This was Misha Green's directorial debut and she did an amazing job. I hope she directs more in the future! 

[Accidental Martyr]

1 hour ago, peridot said:

Those demon girls were scary as hell, they kind of reminded me of "Us".  I was not expecting for that to appear as a result of Tic's spell!  How are they going to explain that to the neighbors?!

That’s exactly what I was thinking.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Accidental Martyr

[kay1864]

1 hour ago, DearEvette said:

I don't know if it is smart to have a guy with dyslexia read a complicated spell. 

Yep, I was thinking the same thing.

Atticus: (snatches book) “Dammit Pops,  it’s gahr-fflt, not fflt-gahr! Jesus!”

Edited October 5, 2020 by kay1864

[kay1864]

Yay for racist cops getting kilt.  Even more satisfying than death by Evil Elevator.

Ji-Ah said 100 men (or maybe it was Atticus)—did she take her hundredth victim? So she’s human now? 

Edited October 5, 2020 by kay1864

[paigow]

Tic has the equivalent of the 1985 Sports Almanac.  Too bad future George was not a sports nerd.

Everybody knows that the Winthrop house was haunted...a giant ghost killed all the cops...

Regular cops can enter the house...so the chicken goat blood only works against supernatural entities

Edited October 7, 2020 by paigow

[shoetingstar]

1 hour ago, Scarlett45 said:

I thought that as well, but wasn’t that a part of the curse? So that she couldn’t tell adults about the cops?

I think strong emotions cause the potion to wear out. I have to say the CGI in that scene looked amazing and Ruby’s breasts shone like stars! Lol. She’s gorgeous. 

She couldn't tell them with her mouth. However, if adults our carefully watching a child they can see or notice something is off.  I was very disappointed in Leti - she was right there and hadn't seen the girl since the funeral/wake. 

1 hour ago, peridot said:

I'm glad two major secrets were let out of the bag in this episode.  I really don't know why they didn't let Diana in on the secrets.  They should have realized that their secretiveness caused Hippolyta to do her own investigation, and they lost her to magic.  Diana is just as intelligent, and they should have told her.

Those demon girls were scary as hell, they kind of reminded me of "Us".  I was not expecting for that to appear as a result of Tic's spell!  How are they going to explain that to the neighbors?!

I thought Ruby's potion lasted for a day?  It seems her skin was ripping off after a short period.

Ouch at Ji-Ah and Leti. 

They were a direct take on Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin aka the Picaninny stereotype. That was the book in the bathroom that Dee was looking at. I theorize there were 2 because allegedly Harriet Beecher Stowe  meant for Topsy to gain sympathy for the anti-slavery cause. However, she became a stereotype of an dirty wild black child that became a comedy staple in Vaudeville that still plagues black girls and women today. The duality of INTENT (a them in the episode) vs. unwanted results. 

But US may have been a Pickaninny reference as well! Never thought of it that way!

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/antiblack/picaninny/homepage.htm

Quote

The first famous picaninny was Topsy -- a poorly dressed, disreputable, neglected slave girl. Topsy appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Topsy was created to show the evils of slavery. Here was an untamable "wild child" who had been indelibly corrupted by slavery.

She was one of the blackest of her race; and her round, shining eyes, glittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over everything in the room. Her mouth half open with astonishment at the wonders of the new Mas'r's parlor, displayed a white and brilliant set of teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which stuck out in every direction. The expression of her face was an odd mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity. She was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and stood with her hands demurely folded in front of her. Altogether, there was something odd and goblin-like about her appearance -- something as Miss Ophelia afterwards said, "so heathenish..." (p. 258)

Stowe hoped that readers would be heartbroken by the tribulations of Topsy, and would help end slavery -- which, she believed, produced many similar children. Her book, while leading some Americans to question the morality of slavery, was used by others to trivialize slavery's brutality. Topsy, for example, was soon a staple character in minstrel shows. The stage Topsy, unlike Stowe's version, was a happy, mirthful character who reveled in her misfortune. Topsy was still dirty, with kinky hair and ragged clothes, but these traits were transformed into comic props--as was her misuse of the English language. No longer a sympathetic figure, Topsy became, simply, a harmless coon. The stage Topsy and her imitators remained popular from the early 1850s well into the twentieth century (Turner, 1994, p. 14).

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2020 by shoetingstar

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, peridot said:

I'm glad two major secrets were let out of the bag in this episode.  I really don't know why they didn't let Diana in on the secrets.  They should have realized that their secretiveness caused Hippolyta to do her own investigation, and they lost her to magic.  Diana is just as intelligent, and they should have told her.

Those demon girls were scary as hell, they kind of reminded me of "Us".  I was not expecting for that to appear as a result of Tic's spell!  How are they going to explain that to the neighbors?!

I thought Ruby's potion lasted for a day?  It seems her skin was ripping off after a short period.

Ouch at Ji-Ah and Leti. 

Diana is too little, too griefstruck with losing both parents and a friend and they had no reason to suspect that keeping her in the dark would hurt her as directly or as soon as it did.

It seemed like only Dee could see the demon girls as of now. Nobody on the L platform saw them in broad daylight, and neither Leti  nor Montrose did.

Ruby's potion doesn't seem to have a fixed length of time that it works. It seemed that she would revert back when life was "interrupting" her in the original episode where she first tried it, when she was she was experiencing friction between her white looks and her inner self as a black woman. So the first time she was dosed, she started turning back after what seemingly was about an hour or so in public, then she spent what seemed to be like a whole day being white enjoying people being nice to her, then she reverted back immediately after she interviewed  and got the Fields job that she never would have gotten if she had gone as herself. In her last transformation, back to Ruby in that episode, she seemed to trigger it consciously for the first time. So one could read it that she has mixed feelings about sleeping with Chrilliam on a lot of levels, or that she wanted to trigger becoming Ruby again mid-sex for whatever reason.

There was a lot going on, but I wish we had gotten more of the Ji-Ah/Leti/Tic plot. Tic is way too quickly dismissive of her, IMO.

46 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

I am wondering if Christina is really not right in the head?  She comes across as coolly rational and manipulative.  The manipulative I'll give her, but I am wondering if her upbringing and her quest for power and immortality has actually made knocked a few screws loose.

So far, it seems like Christina is at least not hostile to Our Heroes. She hasn't outright lied to them, as far as we know, and she has helped them a number of ways (saving them from the racists, telling Tic about the sigil, making Leti bulletproof). All this may be setting them up for a long con down the road, or might end as soon as she gets what she wants, but still.. And in putting herself in the position to feel even a fraction of what Emmett Till felt, even if she can't really truly feel it since a) she's older and white and b) she knew that she wouldn't die-die, says something about her motives. 

I would have to think that growing up super-rich with a father who has all this power but absolutely zero time for you because of your genitals would leave you pretty scarred. Not to mention there has to be some tradeoff between magical knowledge and basic sanity.

[Chicago Redshirt]

39 minutes ago, paigow said:

Tic has the equivalent of the 1985 Sports Almanac.  Too bad future George was not a sports nerd.

Unfortunately for Tic, it's not quite that good. It apparently is an alt-universe history, which means on any given point, you can't rely on what it says. George Freeman II's universe isn't the same as Tic's, things have already unfolded in different ways in some respects, and may continue to do so..  

[Annber03]

All right, well, between those creepy as fuck girls and that really disturbing scene on that pier with the beating, I'm gonna have a few potentially spectacular nightmares tonight, so thanks, show. 

1 hour ago, Indigo Luna said:

Dee's plot line had such an "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" (I kept thinking about the Shiny Red Bicycle episode) and "Us" vibe to it! The little girls they had playing the spirits were amazing at being super creepy. 

I remember that "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" episode! I still need to see Us. I know it's been shown on some movie channel recently-will look to see when the next airing is. 

Kudos to the actress playing Dee, too-that end scene with her screaming and trying to fight off the spirits...damn. 

[kay1864]

28 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

All right, well, between those creepy as fuck girls and that really disturbing scene on that pier with the beating, I'm gonna have a few potentially spectacular nightmares tonight, so thanks, show. 

 Hey, you left off the flesh-peeling-off sex part!

 Can’t have an incomplete set of nightmares, now can we?  It is October now, after all. 

[thuganomics85]

Well, great!  The show has found a way to bring in creepy, demon girls who creepily dance and shuffle around into the fray.  Thanks, Lovecraft Country!  Wasn't planning on sleeping tonight anyway!

On some levels, it is kind of realistic that the adults would try and keep secrets from Dee, but they really should have told her all of this.  She already has shown herself to be pretty smart for her age, and it would probably have gone over better than, say, "Oh, your mother is totally just on a working trip right now!  She'll be back!  Someday.  Maybe?...."  Also, while I get everyone's desperation, you just know that everyone turning to Christina and giving her what she wants is going to backfire on them.

Still like how they can find ways to have humorous scenes and moments, like Montrose finishing the spell with an amen and sign of the cross, because, hey, it wouldn't hurt!  Also really like the scene between him and Tic on the sidewalk.  As I figured, Montrose is certainly a man who has done some horrid, maybe unforgivable things, but Michael Kenneth Williams really adds layers to the character.

So, was Christina recreating Emmett Till's death suppose to be her wanting to know how he felt or something?  Yeah, she's... night quite sane, to put it mildly.

That had to be the crazy sex scene I've ever seen.  And believe me, I thought I'd seen it all (and most of it on good old HBO!)

Ji-Ah is finally in Chicago and things are already getting awkward!  But, once again, I loved that Leti wasn't pissed about Tic's past relationship with her, but just pissed that he once again kept it from her.  Hey, I understand not sharing everything about your past sexual relationships with your current parter, but if you find yourself in the middle of a magic and monster adventure, maybe let the mother of your child know about the time you almost had your soul sucked out from a tentacle fox demon, who looks like that cast member from Real World: San Diego!

Figured something was going to go down at the end, and it being "Tic inadvertently summons a monster to massacre a bunch of trigger-happy racist cops" is certainly a satisfactory one.  Even though I suspect the evil captain biting it will end up benefiting Christina as well.

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

So far, it seems like Christina is at least not hostile to Our Heroes. She hasn't outright lied to them, as far as we know, and she has helped them a number of ways (saving them from the racists, telling Tic about the sigil, making Leti bulletproof). All this may be setting them up for a long con down the road, or might end as soon as she gets what she wants, but still.. And in putting herself in the position to feel even a fraction of what Emmett Till felt, even if she can't really truly feel it since a) she's older and white and b) she knew that she wouldn't die-die, says something about her motives. 

Up until now she’s saved them/manipulated them because she’s needed something from them. At first it was to ostensibly to get Tic safely to Ardham so he could be part of her daddy’s ritual.  But she had her own end-game working in the background.  She still needed them after that tho.  She got Leti into that house for reasons, she needed the rest of the book of Names and she needed the key from the orrery.  Things she could not get for herself for whatever reason.   Now that she has her immortality, we wait and see what her real end game is.  

The only thing I really question is why she brought Ruby into this? And what her relationship really is with Ruby.  Also interesting she still cosplays as William when she’s with Ruby.  

Edited October 5, 2020 by DearEvette

[paigow]

Now that Captain Lancaster is dead, the observatory is in play again. Christina is best equipped to fix the "time machine" and bring back Hippolyta as part of another quid pro quo...

[Mia O.]

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Unfortunately for Tic, it's not quite that good. It apparently is an alt-universe history, which means on any given point, you can't rely on what it says. George Freeman II's universe isn't the same as Tic's, things have already unfolded in different ways in some respects, and may continue to do so..  

George Freeman II, why not Montrose? I wonder if Tic finds out the truth..

[FlowerofCarnage]

I honestly think if Emmett Till were a white child, Christina still wouldn't give a shit about his death! She doesn't see color when it comes to having a lack of empathy. 

It's HBO so of course they couldn't resist showing a sex scene between a white women disguised as a white man and black women disguised as a white woman. 

Anyone notice that the Tic's pet shoggoth is black and not gray like the others we've seen?

[kay1864]

9 hours ago, DearEvette said:

she needed the key from the orrery.  Things she could not get for herself for whatever reason.  

 Excellent point. Why couldn’t she have just broken into the house (especially as William), since it was for sale?  Or heck, just called the realtor and visited as a buyer? 

[edhopper]

Question for those who read the book. No spoilers, but are they doing the whole book this season, or does it look like they will extend it to more seasons?

 

[tennisgurl]

Meet the creepy dancing Us girls, who are sure to be the stars of my nightmares tonight! So so creepy, those girls are amazing doing all those movements like holy crap, and poor Dee is already going through so much. I know that everyone has a lot going on and that they want to protect her, but I so wanted someone to tell her the truth and to really reach out to her. Hell, the person who actually seemed to try and reach out to her the most was Montrose of all people, even if he didn't even get close to telling her the real truth. Even if Dee couldn't tell the anyone about the creepy dancing twins, it was still the day of her best friends funeral and she was clearly suffering, probably a good time to check in with her. They lied to Hippolyta too, and look how that turned out. 

Really interesting that the show took a bit of a meta turn with the Lovecraft Country novel that Tics son wrote in the future, which looked quite a bit like the novel that this show is based on, and the details that Tic mentioned as being different, like Dee being a boy and George surviving, are from the novel. Will we go even more meta and cut to the future and Tics son is talking to Jordan Peele about adapting his book into a TV series and he has some idea about changes that could be made? 

[carrps]

13 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

My Mom said she remembers her parents went to Emmett Till’s viewing. She did not go, she was too little (so her Mom said- of course she thought she was big enough). So sad. The entire scene reminded me that I had a drama teacher in HS who didn’t know who Emmett Till was until I told her- born and raised in Chicago.....14yrs old me couldn’t believe the disconnect. Different world I guess. 

I'm a white woman who was born and raised in Southern California, and I've known about Emmett Till since I was in junior high. The knowledge of how he died made a huge impression on me when I learned about it. I was like three when he died, so I didn't have contemporaneous knowledge, but I was young enough that it was a major impact on me.

 

12 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Ji-Ah said 100 men (or maybe it was Atticus)—did she take her hundredth victim? So she’s human now? 

That was my question!

[Darian]

I want to read George Freeman's book to see Diana's future. That poor child, but I can see her as a bestselling graphic novelist of any number of things. And Jada Harris is quite an actor. She, too, has a bright future. 

[DearEvette]

47 minutes ago, edhopper said:

Question for those who read the book. No spoilers, but are they doing the whole book this season, or does it look like they will extend it to more seasons?

 

I haven't read the book, but Wikipedia does a nice outline of the interconnected stories in the book.  The show is doing a fairly faithful re-creating of the book except making it spookier and darker,with more meta-references to racial issues, and gender bending several key parts.   Ji-Ah's storyline looks like it is original to the show.  So it it seems like given the pace, this could easily be a one and done.  I also thought I had seen this categorized as a Limited series?

[carrps]

I forgot to mention a nice small bit: when the Cream of Wheat chef's eyes followed Dee in the alley way. Cree.Pee.

[shoetingstar]

So...during the episode I didn't the think The Pickaninny Twins were that scary. I was actually a little disappointed and side-eying folks. YET when I turned out the my bedroom lights and closed my eyes to go to sleep them Heffas popped up in the corners of my room. It didn't help that I checked out the show EVIL and it featured a Paralysis Demon. The last time this happened was during the Ring. When I looked across the room at my my tv suspiciously lol. Misha Green, you got me!

edit:

1 hour ago, carrps said:

I forgot to mention a nice small bit: when the Cream of Wheat chef's eyes followed Dee in the alley way. Cree.Pee.

Seriously! They taking all the stereotypical characters and making them scary. Aunt Jemima, Sis you migh be next!

Edited October 5, 2020 by shoetingstar

[carrps]

8 minutes ago, shoetingstar said:

So...during the episode I didn't the think The Pickaninny Twins were that scary. I was actually a little disappointed and side-eying folks. YET when I turned out the my bedroom lights and closed my eyes to go to sleep them Heffas popped up in the corners of my room. It didn't help that I checked out the show EVIL and it featured a Paralysis Demon. The last time this happened was during the Ring. When I looked across the room at my my tv suspiciously lol. Misha Green, you got me!

This is why Lovecraft Country is never the last thing I watch before going to bed. 😲

[shoetingstar]

1 minute ago, carrps said:

This is why Lovecraft Country is never the last thing I watch before going to bed. 😲

I've been doing it every Sunday with no problems. This one got into my subconscious somehow lol.

[carrps]

2 minutes ago, shoetingstar said:

I've been doing it every Sunday with no problems. This one got into my subconscious somehow lol.

I'm a wimp. Gore gets to me sometimes. 

[paigow]

16 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Atticus: (snatches book) “Dammit Pops,  it’s gahr-fflt, not fflt-gahr! Jesus!”

Instead of a protection spell, Montrose would summon Kahless from Stovokor...

[dankesean]

4 hours ago, edhopper said:

Question for those who read the book. No spoilers, but are they doing the whole book this season, or does it look like they will extend it to more seasons?

 

The show has been more or less off-book for a while, or at least it's really only been hitting the broad strokes of the book and changing the specifics. (Ruby uses the potion of white ladyness, but the actual results of doing so are quite different; Hippolyta uses the orrery and observatory to go to another world, but what's on the other side of the portal has absolutely nothing in common with the filmed equivalent) Ji-ah, as mentioned, is an element unique to the show.

But, that said, as far as the timeline of adapting the book elements, it's almost come to the end of the novel. (The Diana-equivalent character being tormented was the second to last chapter of the book.) So my assumption is that this season will loosely cover the more-or-less book plot in its entirety, and any hypothetical future seasons can use the characters and backstory established here to build off of. Or it could be just the one season, but personally I hope otherwise; they've done a great job with the divergences they've done, and I'm saying that as an enormous Matt Ruff fan.

[carrps]

2 minutes ago, dankesean said:

Or it could be just the one season, but personally I hope otherwise; they've done a great job with the divergences they've done, and I'm saying that as an enormous Matt Ruff fan.

Me, too. I was so jazzed when I heard at the end of last year that Jordan Peele was exec producing it for HBO.

[Joimiaroxeu]

That bouncy Bananarama song playing over the funeral was quite a juxtaposition of emotions. (Unless you pay close attention to the lyrics, I guess.)

You would think Diana would know better than to walk down a dim alleyway by herself.  I was expecting the spit moment with the cops to go a whole lot worse than it did.

I'm going have to put Ruby/Hillary and William/Christina's sex scene on the list of things from LC I need a massive brain bleach injection for.

Yeesh. I thought "I Put a Spell on You" was too on-the-nose though I did like this episode's version of it.

Was anyone else surprised Christina was able to go into a church without it exploding into flames around her?

Yeah, no, that whole business with Diana running around at night by herself on her bike did not work for me at all. Almost took me out of the show, even though I know back then kids weren't as overprotected as many of them are now.

Ditto comments upthread, I'm unsure whether the staging of the twin pickaninnies haunting Diana was supposed to be a call back to Us or The Shining or both.

Those spells or incantations or whatever sounded to me like people speaking in tongues in church. Is what they were saying actually from an IRL language or was it all basically gibberish?

So it's not just the house that's protected, it's Leti herself? Or is it the child she's carrying? Oy, shades of Rosemary's Baby.

A racist-eating monster that comes when you call for it. The hero we need right now but not the one we deserve. 😉

Quote

I am wondering if Christina is really not right in the head?  She comes across as coolly rational and manipulative.  The manipulative I'll give her, but I am wondering if her upbringing and her quest for power and immortality has actually made knocked a few screws loose.

There's probably a whole junk drawer of loose screws rattling around in Christina's head.

Quote

It's HBO so of course they couldn't resist showing a sex scene between a white women disguised as a white man and black women disguised as a white woman.  

At this point I think someone at HBO decided the Rule 35 addendum to Rule 34 needed to be invoked in this show.

[paigow]

5 minutes ago, dankesean said:

and any hypothetical future seasons can use the characters and backstory established here to build off of.

Game of Lovecrafts

[Broderbits]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

Game of Lovecrafts

Yeah, we need a spell to keep Benioff & Weiss away from this show.

[tennisgurl]

I kind of assume that "limited series" basically means "if the show is a decent hit the series becomes a lot less limited" and I think that this show could pretty easily keep going beyond the book. From what I understand they have already changed and added a decent amount of stuff, I can imagine that they could expand further. We already know that other supernatural beings outside of the ones connected with the cult exists, so what all is out there running around? 

I really hope that Ji-Ah isn't gone already, I feel like she has a lot more to do in this story. She came all this way and ate all those souls! Speaking of, did she say that she had eaten her 100 souls now? So what does that mean for her? Is she human now? This cant be it for her. 

[DearEvette]

2 hours ago, shoetingstar said:

I've been doing it every Sunday with no problems. This one got into my subconscious somehow lol.

Yeah I am right there with you.  There was something about these two that was more creepy than anything else on this show so far.  The blood and gore are just meh to me.  The Kumiho came close, but it was just shocking and gross. 

But these two -- the eyes that glowed sometimes, the jerky, body awkward movements, the fact that they were never still, their utter silence, the sheer malevolence on the faces, the fact that there were two of them who would appear out of nowhere could close her in and she was the only one who could see them -- ugh.  Just the type of creepy you could imagine drifting out of a dark shadow in your room at night.

[Annber03]

10 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

their utter silence, the sheer malevolence on the faces, the fact that there were two of them who would appear out of nowhere could close her in and she was the only one who could see them -- ugh. 

"Come play with us...."

[kay1864]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

Instead of a protection spell, Montrose would summon Kahless from Stovokor...

 A good friend of mine actually wrote the story treatment for the Kahless Next Generation episode! (his only credit in IMDb)

[kay1864]

2 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

So it's not just the house that's protected, it's Leti herself? Or is it the child she's carrying?

 The house is protected by the goat blood from the voodoo woman. Leti is protected by Christina’s spell that she cast in the church.

[Roxie]

Random, probably unimportant question:  What was the logo on Diana's baseball cap?

[DearEvette]

Chicago American Giants.  A Negro league team.

[Roxie]

14 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

Chicago American Giants.  A Negro league team.

Thank you!

[Chicago Redshirt]

13 hours ago, kay1864 said:

 Excellent point. Why couldn’t she have just broken into the house (especially as William), since it was for sale?  Or heck, just called the realtor and visited as a buyer? 

The real reason is "because otherwise the story wouldn't happen."

The in-universe fanwank I'll put forward is that manipulating Leti into moving in served a couple purposes simultaneously: 

1. It let Leti and co. be her canaries in a coal mine and run into any supernatural traps or other issues that old Hiram left in place, of which there were obviously some

2. Trying to explore the house and explore its secrets is going to take more time than just a simple break-in, because one can't just find stuff in there necessarily just by looking. (The orrery didn't reveal itself just to anybody, for example, even though presumably all the people who lived there and all the other people who partied there had as much a chance to spot it as Hippolyta.)

3. Christina wants Our Heroes to get more involved in the magical world so that she can use them for bigger better things/so they realize they have to turn to her.

4. By using Leti as a catspaw, Christina stayed off of Lancaster's radar and got to tweak him about blacks moving into a white neighborhood.

10 hours ago, carrps said:

I forgot to mention a nice small bit: when the Cream of Wheat chef's eyes followed Dee in the alley way. Cree.Pee.

In I think last week's thread I was just talking about how I grew up on Cream of Wheat rather than grits. Now I'm going to have to pick some up since I haven't had it in decades. 

8 hours ago, shoetingstar said:

Seriously! They taking all the stereotypical characters and making them scary. Aunt Jemima, Sis you migh be next!

I think we saw Aunt Jemima in a previous episode. I don't think we've gotten Uncle Ben yet.

This made me look up the restaurant chain Sambo's. Apparently it was created in 1957. The last one literally just changed its name this year in the wake of George Floyd.

7 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Yeesh. I thought "I Put a Spell on You" was too on-the-nose though I did like this episode's version of it.

.....

Those spells or incantations or whatever sounded to me like people speaking in tongues in church. Is what they were saying actually from an IRL language or was it all basically gibberish?

....

At this point I think someone at HBO decided the Rule 35 addendum to Rule 34 needed to be invoked in this show.

They had another version of "I Put a Spell on You" when Ruby first hooked up with Chrilliam. So it is our second boop on the nose.

What is the reference to Rules 34 and 35 mean?

I assumed it was just gibberish. But Tony "Samuel Braithwaite/Fitz from Scandal" Goldwyn said otherwise:

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/lovecraft-country-tony-goldwyn-interview

Quote

Oh, no, they actually wrote a language! Oh, shoot, what is it? It actually is a language and I'm trying to remember what it is. The dialect coach created this language with Misha Green. It's like some ancient Celtic language or something like that? Some runic tongue. So they took these words and I just memorized the sounds and worked with this guy on how he phonetically wanted to pronounce the stuff. And then I would get obsessed with, what if I'm not doing it correctly? Because who knows the difference? But I find that kind of stuff really fun, and especially to be able to just cut loose in this absurd way that I did.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Chicago Redshirt

[Poohbear617]

Okay I loved this episode but I have a couple of quick questions if somebody can help.

After Hippolyta took the orrery we saw it there at the guidebook office. Then it appeared that she had it at her home where she was working on it so it's the cops knew hippolyta had been at the time machine wouldn't they go and look for the orrery at hippolyta's house instead of going to letty's house?

My second question is about Ruby. She was saying to Letty that she got the job at Marshall Field's is she talking about the job that she got as a white woman and is she still doing that job or did she go back and get it as a black woman I was a little confused if she still working at Marshall Field's as a white woman considering she attacked the store manager I'm not sure if she killed him or not but how could she go back either way if he was alive.

 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

18 minutes ago, Poohbear617 said:

Okay I loved this episode but I have a couple of quick questions if somebody can help.

After Hippolyta took the orrery we saw it there at the guidebook office. Then it appeared that she had it at her home where she was working on it so it's the cops knew hippolyta had been at the time machine wouldn't they go and look for the orrery at hippolyta's house instead of going to letty's house?

My second question is about Ruby. She was saying to Letty that she got the job at Marshall Field's is she talking about the job that she got as a white woman and is she still doing that job or did she go back and get it as a black woman I was a little confused if she still working at Marshall Field's as a white woman considering she attacked the store manager I'm not sure if she killed him or not but how could she go back either way if he was alive.

 

 

The cops do not necessarily know that Hippolyta had the orrery at all. They know that Dee's travel comic was found at the observatory. They plausibly could have known of the Freemans through their adventures at Ardham, and had an easier time of linking the comic to the right Diana Freeman. than if it was found with no additional context.

Ruby is talking about the job she got as Hillary, and she no longer is doing that job. Keep in mind that Ruby hasn't told Leti about any of this so it's news to her, even though it's old hat to us as viewers.