That season finale of #LovecraftCountry ..................what was that?

It felt sloppy and I’m rather bummed but not surprised. I kept watching the show to see if it would turn around but knew it wouldn’t when we saw what happened to the indigenous character.

The writing, the music, the fight sequence, the story, all of it felt sloppy and rushed. I’m reading more about it now but ultimately it is a show created by a Black woman showrunner that sought to ‘spark conversations’ but ultimately felt like Black trauma porn.

Certain details popped, likely bc of Green + the writers room. But so many moments stick out in ways that felt like they were for non-Black folk and specifically white folk. I deal with racism irl. So to have racism and magic and graphic depictions of racist violence? It’s a lot.

I think the other audience might be Black folks who don’t know how white folks mutilated us, burned us alive, and did so many other horrible things. But if you’re read about it or heard ppl talk about it firsthand (oral history interviews)...seeing it as well is difficult.

As writers have pointed out, so many strings were left loose and wrinkly. And when you have a show with a primarily Black cast on a white network (bc all mainstream networks are white), there are much bigger implications.

What I mean is:

In a story with magic and racism that could have gone anywhere, they doubled down on a lot of oppressive logics. The physical violence, anti-Blackness, misogynoir, anti-fatness, colorist, and queer antagonism aren’t confined to just one character.

And to be clear: some folks loved the show. I really enjoyed the first two episodes and then it...shifted. Details w/o spoilers:

I didn’t need to see a Black person on fire, a real life pickaninney, r*pe by heel, violations of consent that aren’t really addressed, etc.

I didn’t need to see recreations of real life white violence nor new creations of white violence. The spit on the head? Emmett Till? Tulsa? The reenactment of his death? A white head on a Black person’s body?

I wanted the show to pick a struggle (violence of white supremacy or violence of magic at the hands of white folks) bc it was subverting the words of an racist old dead white man. But it picked both and combined them and in the process was deeply disturbing.

And not disturbing in the way Morrison disturbed us with Sula or Beloved or The Bluest Eye. Not that. Not Black characters given full humanity which also meant sometimes they did horrible things to fellow Black people.

Disturbed like: “why? What was the reason?”

The decisions these characters made...

Montrose’s own trauma and abuse didn’t justify anything.

Never dealt with the violence Tic enacted while in the military + the circumstances that got him to that point + remorse

I didn’t buy Ruby’s whole arc.

As Stevie wrote on his substack piece, I left most episodes feeling uneasy, disturbed, and disappointed. Sets, talent, costumes, makeup, effects, some of the music selections, originality (to an extent)? Great. But the execution fell flat and usually along lines of oppression.

There were some things I missed and caught when I read up. Some things were intentional and I just disagree with the choice.

But my issue is the unintentional. The show attempted to communicate certain things and just...didn’t. And it sometimes made it messier.

I’m not a Black girl + have never been one, but the intention of Dee’s ep—the world actively harms and often fails Black girls, including the family of those Black girls—is not what I received.

The viewer (me) has to do too much work to connect the dots to the show’s intention

And I’ve purposely read pretty widely in regards to author positionality since I’m an amab non-binary person. And I see praise in things I missed, like I said. But I also see some of my thoughts reflected back to me. And it’s disappointing. The potential was there.

I hesitate to critique Black works so harshly in public bc we’re still in a white supremacist ass world that is just waiting for us to fuck up. But I also know that the show generated a lot of buzz and my critical tweets aren’t gonna stop it from thriving.

I wanted better so I stuck around for all ten episodes. There were moments of beauty. Glimmers of originality. But as a whole? It was consistently inconsistent in writing, story, character development, and attention to *not* reproducing some of what it hoped to upend.

I also know that I’m a writer, not a TV writer. I don’t even write fiction, I write personal and academic nonfiction. So that’s important to know. That being said, I read a whole hell of a lot and consume a lot of media and I just wanted better.

The first episode got me really interested and that was one of the worst finales I’ve ever seen I also want to note that hella ppl make a tv show. So this isn’t on Green or the writers room alone. It’s on the execs, editors, directors, etc etc etc

but yes, the math just wasn’t mathing on the rules of this magic, this universe, and this world building