Lovecraft Country “A History Of Violence”

Well, the previous episode featured a lot of angry and disfigured ghosts.  Will we get anything as awesome as the ghost of a man with a crying baby’s head this time around?

No, but we’ll get some more weird stuff anyway.

Arguably, Tic Freeman is the ostensible main character for this series after his role as central figure in the first two episodes, plus his prominent role in the third.  However, I don’t think Lovecraft Country is that sort of show.  Yes, Tic is important to that screwy order of white supremacist sorcerers, but that doesn’t mean he’s the hero of the show.

He might think he is, but he can share that title with some of the others.  Leti comes to mind after what happened to her in the third episode, and this episode shows she can continue to hold her own.  We also get a bit more insight into Tic’s father Montrose, the man who just wants to forget the whole thing happened even if it did cost his brother George, Tic’s uncle, his life.

But then there’s Christina Braithwaite.  Yes, the Sons of Adam excluded her because she was female, but that doesn’t mean she wants something in the best interest of the African American protagonists of the series.  Her boyfriend William may be hanging around, looking to seduce Ruby, but that’s not going to get too far just yet.  Besides, William is played  by actor Jordan Patrick Smith, and I’ve been watching him as Ubbe on Vikings for a while now, and it’s weird seeing him cleanshaven and not somewhat grimy.  Well, as grimy as anyone ever gets on Vikings.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Leti and Tic went on a mission.

See, Tic went to the library to find out more about the Sons of Adam.  Leti got approached by Christina personally (in a nice touch, she couldn’t enter Leti’s house).  Both figure they better get Christina the pages of the book she wants, but neither really want to because they know it would probably be bad.  And this show can be quite amusing when it wants to be, ergo here where Tic and Leti argue in the local library and one kid gets really frustrated since he just wants some peace and quiet to read.

Leti, though, had one good idea:  why check the books when Montrose probably already looked them up and read them for the relevant information anyway?

See, Montrose doesn’t want Tic to look into this stuff because he suspects (probably correctly) that there’s a good chance his son will end up as dead as his brother if Tic doesn’t let all this stuff go.  But there’s no shaking Leti or Christina for different reasons, so he will also go with Leti and Tic to Boston to find the pages hidden in a museum there.

More comedy abounds as it means they need to borrow George’s widow Hyppolyta’s car.  That means she’s coming too.  So’s her daughter Diana.  No one told them why George really died.  Oh, and another guy hitches a ride too, and again, no one told these people the real reason for the trip to Boston.

As it is, there is something in Boston that Tic, Montrose, and Leti find, namely a series of tunnels under the museum that include the bodies of Leti’s missing neighbors.  Oh, and a few corpses of Native Americans guarding the pages in what looks like an old ship’s cabin.  And one of them revives into what looks like a hermaphrodite that speaks his/her native language.  Tic understands her.  The others don’t.

Now, there’s more here, but I think the above statements about Tic setting himself up, consciously or otherwise, as the hero causes interesting reactions from Leti and Montrose.  Leti doesn’t like it because she’s in danger too, and she can handle herself.  Montrose doesn’t like it because he doesn’t want Tic to get involved with this stuff at all.

Which would probably be why, after the pages are retrieved, Montrose slits the hermaphrodite’s throat to keep Tic from learning more…

Oh, in other news, that no-good cop is the head of the local order of the Sons of Adam, and he wasn’t too pleased to see Christina in town either.