Tonight on ‘Lovecraft Country,’ the murder of Emmett Till frames an episode haunted by grotesque monsters and dark magic. Alan Sepinwall’s recap
has tended to be at its strongest when blending human monstrosity with the supernatural kind. “Jig-a-Bobo” has that combination in abundance, as Diana, Tic, Leti, Ruby, and Montrose all grapple with the brutal murder of Dee’s friend, Emmett Till, and with the inescapable reality that any or all of them can be killed at any moment, without any justification, in a society that still considers them something less than human due to the color of their skin.
In the wrong hands, trading on very real tragedies — some in the distant past, some from only moments ago — to underline the themes of a fictional horror show could seem in incredibly poor taste. But Green and her collaborators are using genre the way the great sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers have: as an elevated way to draw attention to the way we live right now. The show takes place in 1955, but it’s about today.
Other aspects feel rushed and sloppy in the way that this show can sometimes be. Leti’s anger over meeting Ji-Ah springs up much too suddenly. Her relationship with Tic seems to happen in fits and starts, so it’s never easy to tell exactly how she’s feeling about him . And the sense of betrayal she has about him not telling her that he had prior monster experience doesn’t fully track, especially since Ji-Ah until now has seemed wholly unconnected from Christina.
Before we get to the intertwined climaxes at the house and the garage, Green and company first give us a provocative sequence involving Christina. She has hired two men to attack her in a manner similar to how Emmett Till was tortured and killed, including wrapping her neck in barbed wire and throwing her into the lake. Her magic protects her and she is able to climb up onto the dock, where she first sobs, and then perhaps laughs at the feeling of being alive.
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