Lovecraft Country “Jig-a-Bobo”

One of the disadvantages of coming into a popular, acclaimed series like Lovecraft Countryis I get some advance warning of some of the creepier or more creative things the show throws at its protagonists.  Personally, I’m not that upset about that nine times out of ten, and that includes this particular episode which introduced some really freaky things.

If anything, I was anticipating them even more as a result.

See, as always, the show opts to follow a different character around while advancing the overall plot.  Yes, we get to see some more of that here in an episode set around Emmett Till’s funeral.  Emmett was a friend to young Diana, a girl whose father George is dead and Hyppolyta is missing.  Her cousin Tic and uncle Montrose are more or less making up, Leti’s pregnancy is revealed, and Ruby is getting more and more frustrated with Christina’s antics while still taking that magic formula to become a white woman.

So, really, standard stuff.  Tic and Leti are making trades with Christina, Tic and Montrose are trying to cast spells to protect themselves, and no one is telling Diana a dang thing about what’s going on.  Heck, Tic came back from the future with a copy of a novel his son would write titled, wait for it, Lovecraft Country.  These folks are trying to keep the orrey away from Lancaster but do use it to bargain with Christina.

Christina, a character the majority of the cast knows can’t be trusted, but they deal with her anyway because she isn’t overtly hostile to the lot of them.  Instead, she’s going to extreme lengths to make herself immortal.

That Ji-Ah comes in from Korea claiming to be, essentially, a Korean succubus who knows how but not why Tic is going to die, gains more trust from Leti and Tic than Christina who has been not-quite helpful says a lot about the state of race relations on this show, and possibly still in this country in many ways.

But that says nothing about Diana.  One of her comic books was left behind at the site of the time machine, and Lancaster uses it to find her and question her about the whereabouts of her parents and other things.  Diana, being a loyal daughter, more or less refuses.  So, Lancaster rubs some spit and chalk around, casting a spell.

And oh what a spell it is.  Enter Topsy and Bopsy, a pair of demonic things that look like the racist drawings that appear on things like the cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  They don’t talk.  They have claws.  They caper.  They move in a way that suggests they don’t really have skeletons.  And only Diana can see these freaky-as-hell things.

It doesn’t help that the only adults she runs in to are Montrose, who’s not exactly gentle, and Leti, who’s busy.  It doesn’t matter since as soon as Diana tries to tell Leti, she loses her voice anyway.

That Lancaster, he’s not a good guy.

He’s also probably dying.  Tic’s spellcasting worked…just not the way he thought it would.  He is under protection, but when the cops show up and open fire on the house, it only really kicks in when Tic himself is threatened by gunfire…and the shoggoth pops up out of the ground, killing most of the cops but mortally wounding Lancaster from the looks of things.

You know, that’s a lot of dead cops, busted police cars, and a ripped up roadway.  I’m not quite sure how Tic and Leti will explain this.

Then again, Monstrose tries to hold onto Diana, not seeing Topsy and Bopsy causing her arm to wither up.  Tic and Leti might have bigger concerns.

But man, those two things were creepy as hell.