This week's "Genre of the Week" episode, titled A History of Violence, is an archaeological explorer's adventure, which features Atticus, Letitia, and Montrose running through a series of deadly booby traps to locate a mysterious magical item in an attempt to arm themselves in the upcoming battle with the Sons of Adam, lead by the mysterious Christina and her evil-looking right-hand man William.
The explorer sequences are quite fun. The adventure genre elements creep up on the audience subtly with its musical score, which has a John Williams Indiana Jones sensibility to it. I was startled by the little musical motifs, at first thinking it was so clashing in tone to the previous episodes until the driving score and the louder musical moments blared in. I was pleasantly deceived.
It is a wonderful surprise in a pulpy kind of way to see our three leads suddenly morph into archaeological explorers holding flashlights in the dark figuring out clues from a map under a museum. Once again as the show's biggest flaw, the episode is always moving way too fast for the viewer to savour all of the fun that it is trying to give. There's no time to really set up the clues that they're figuring out so when we see the three characters figuring out a puzzle, so it only has the surface of the genre that it is borrowing from, but not the meat.
Just to tread back for a moment, the music in A History of Violence is bonkers. The episode starts off with Christina Braithwhite driving a car down the street with Rihanna's "B***h Better Have My Money" blasting along. Once again reminding us that this show does not adhere to any conventional rules. There's even a Marilyn Manson song too. Look out for that one.
I am not sold on the Atticus and Letitia love story as of yet. To quote from 1994's Speed as spoken by Sandra Bullock, this is a relationship solely based on intense experiences (which as we're told, they usually don't work out). There's an attraction, but no love yet. They're just too busy encountering danger every week to have any real moment with each other. It's literally "No time for love, Dr. Jones."
In fact, the supporting characters steal this episode. We get to learn more about Montrose, who's been a cipher in the show up till now. Also, Letitia's half-sister Ruby and Atticus' aunt Hippolyta smell something's up and are about to break the fabric of their normal reality and discover the magical world, which is something that I can't wait to see unfold.
It's difficult to expect any real depth from Lovecraft Country, at least not until the season ends and it is possible to analyse it in its entirety. It seems like the writers do want to make a commentary on race, sexuality, and other issues through its lead characters, but it is constantly being diluted by its story plots and all the genre fun that it prioritises first.
There's no way to talk about this without spoiling and I promise not to spoil here. What Atticus, Letitia, and Montrose find in the vault, in terms of social topics, just opens cans of worms that the episode just simply has no time to deal with, much less make any commentary. For that, the episode never truly earns its seemingly-heavy-sounding title, "A History of Violence."
Is it necessary to do a pulp genre every episode? Can we have a mid-season episode that just focuses on developing the characters?
The speed that these episodes move at together with the sheer amount of things that happen is too much for the writers to keep up with. All I can say is, I can only really enjoy it for the fun parts, not the social commentary.
The explorer sequences are quite fun. The adventure genre elements creep up on the audience subtly with its musical score, which has a John Williams Indiana Jones sensibility to it. I was startled by the little musical motifs, at first thinking it was so clashing in tone to the previous episodes until the driving score and the louder musical moments blared in. I was pleasantly deceived.
It is a wonderful surprise in a pulpy kind of way to see our three leads suddenly morph into archaeological explorers holding flashlights in the dark figuring out clues from a map under a museum. Once again as the show's biggest flaw, the episode is always moving way too fast for the viewer to savour all of the fun that it is trying to give. There's no time to really set up the clues that they're figuring out so when we see the three characters figuring out a puzzle, so it only has the surface of the genre that it is borrowing from, but not the meat.
Just to tread back for a moment, the music in A History of Violence is bonkers. The episode starts off with Christina Braithwhite driving a car down the street with Rihanna's "B***h Better Have My Money" blasting along. Once again reminding us that this show does not adhere to any conventional rules. There's even a Marilyn Manson song too. Look out for that one.
I am not sold on the Atticus and Letitia love story as of yet. To quote from 1994's Speed as spoken by Sandra Bullock, this is a relationship solely based on intense experiences (which as we're told, they usually don't work out). There's an attraction, but no love yet. They're just too busy encountering danger every week to have any real moment with each other. It's literally "No time for love, Dr. Jones."
In fact, the supporting characters steal this episode. We get to learn more about Montrose, who's been a cipher in the show up till now. Also, Letitia's half-sister Ruby and Atticus' aunt Hippolyta smell something's up and are about to break the fabric of their normal reality and discover the magical world, which is something that I can't wait to see unfold.
It's difficult to expect any real depth from Lovecraft Country, at least not until the season ends and it is possible to analyse it in its entirety. It seems like the writers do want to make a commentary on race, sexuality, and other issues through its lead characters, but it is constantly being diluted by its story plots and all the genre fun that it prioritises first.
There's no way to talk about this without spoiling and I promise not to spoil here. What Atticus, Letitia, and Montrose find in the vault, in terms of social topics, just opens cans of worms that the episode just simply has no time to deal with, much less make any commentary. For that, the episode never truly earns its seemingly-heavy-sounding title, "A History of Violence."
Is it necessary to do a pulp genre every episode? Can we have a mid-season episode that just focuses on developing the characters?
The speed that these episodes move at together with the sheer amount of things that happen is too much for the writers to keep up with. All I can say is, I can only really enjoy it for the fun parts, not the social commentary.
