Lovecraft Country

[JGP]

Just setting this up as it's set to premiere tonight.

I've always dug cosmic horror. Pairing it with Black characters/experience and setting it in the 50s [given Lovecraft's racism] seems like the perfect mix to me. I haven't read the book, but this has been on my Must Watch list since I first heard about it.

Will someone feed the Shoggoth? No idea how far they'll take it-- I'm coming in blind and really excited to watch tonight.

 

Edit: I've been remiss in not including a trailer for those who may have missed it.

 

[RedEyedGhost]

I'm really looking forward to this.  Started reading the book a couple of days ago, only 20% through, but it's good so far.  The prose isn't the best in the beginning, but it has either improved or I have adapted to it.

[KingintheNorth4]

Just watched the premiere. It's safe to say that I'm hooked.

[Corvinus85]

I haven't read the book, nor do I have much familiarity with the Lovecraftian mythos. Why is that region called Lovecraft country?

It's good so far. Remembering that Jordan Peele has his name as an executive producer helped digest the crazy swerve at the end better.

[Nictarion]

I dug it. Especially Jurnee Smollett  I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else other than Friday Night Lights. 

[JGP]

[low whistle] 

She was in Birds of Prey too.

---

Great opener. I hope the racialized and segregated background [background is not the right word] remains throughout. Wasn't expecting them to dip their toe into the eldritch quite so soon, but I'm not complaining.

I'm in.  

 

[RedEyedGhost]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Why is that region called Lovecraft country?

Because that's the part of the country where Lovecraft set most of his stories.  

 

2 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Wasn't expecting them to dip their toe into the eldritch quite so soon

Me too.  There was a very similar scene in the book, but it was kept very vague with what was actually attacking the deputies.  

[red snow]

I imagine the answer should be no, but does one have to be well versed in Lovecraft lore to enjoy/understand the show?

[Martini Sigil]

Great opener... I love the juxtaposition of real world and science fiction horrors... and I especially loved where thy left off heading into next week...

I only knew Jurnee Smollett from the (too) short lived tv show Underground... I've yet to see Birds of Prey although it's just come on HBO... she has star written all over her. 

[hauberk]

Saw it, dug it.  

I haven't read much Lovecraft, but I played a fair amount of Call of Cthulhu has a lad.  I feel like, in some ways, that both altered and enhanced my expectations - Sepinwall describes the end scene and identifies the reveal and it is not what I expected it to be, largely based on our Storyteller's descriptions when we made Sanity Checks.

2 hours ago, red snow said:

I imagine the answer should be no, but does one have to be well versed in Lovecraft lore to enjoy/understand the show?

Overall, I think that they're going to tell everyone what they need to know.  

[RumHam]

I really liked it. I'd like to think getting chased out of town with people shooting at you for trying to eat at a diner while black was a little over the top, but I can't really say. 

Not really sure why the cops took them into the woods to execute them either. Part of what made the encounter with the first cop so chilling was that he was going to murder them legally. Plus if Leti's brother knew about the "animal attacks" in those woods you'd expect the local police force to be aware. 

But yeah it was really entertaining and I like the characters. 

[JGP]

I thought for sure Uncle George 

Spoiler

was going to get bit. 

I was preparing myself to deal with being upset.

 

And I agree with Hauberk, I don't think you need to be well versed in the Lovecraft mythos. I haven't read all of his stuff, but I never felt it was rigidly built or minutely detailed. 

edit: Yeah, ok, definitely not. Was doing some other reading [reviews and such] and they're all referring to the creatures in E1 as Shoggoth [purses lips]

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I really liked it. I'd like to think getting chased out of town with people shooting at you for trying to eat at a diner while black was a little over the top, but I can't really say. 

Not really sure why the cops took them into the woods to execute them either. Part of what made the encounter with the first cop so chilling was that he was going to murder them legally. Plus if Leti's brother knew about the "animal attacks" in those woods you'd expect the local police force to be aware. 

But yeah it was really entertaining and I like the characters. 

I felt that, too, but now I think it likely happened to travelers, even in northern states. I had never heard of sundown counties/towns, but they were a thing, even in the northern states. 

[JGP]

Mmn. The Green Book wasn't a thing for nothing.

[Nictarion]

7 hours ago, RumHam said:

I really liked it. I'd like to think getting chased out of town with people shooting at you for trying to eat at a diner while black was a little over the top, but I can't really say. 

Not really sure why the cops took them into the woods to execute them either. Part of what made the encounter with the first cop so chilling was that he was going to murder them legally. Plus if Leti's brother knew about the "animal attacks" in those woods you'd expect the local police force to be aware. 

But yeah it was really entertaining and I like the characters. 

Wasn’t it because they had safely made it to the next county? 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

5 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I felt that, too, but now I think it likely happened to travelers, even in northern states. I had never heard of sundown counties/towns, but they were a thing, even in the northern states. 

I'm guessing this is not taught in history classes (high school) in the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns or gray towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. Entire sundown counties^[1] and sundown suburbs were also created by the same process. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown.^[2] The practice was not restricted to the southern states, as "(a)t least until the early 1960s...northern states could be nearly as inhospitable to black travelers as states like Alabama or Georgia."^[3]

[hauberk]

6 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I felt that, too, but now I think it likely happened to travelers, even in northern states. I had never heard of sundown counties/towns, but they were a thing, even in the northern states. 

Not just sundown towns, there were (even into the 90's towns that proudly declared themselves to be tri-kappa communities.

[Nictarion]

I didn’t know about the Tulsa race riots before Watchmen either...

[Zorral]

Sundown towns, getting chased out with guns and lynch mobs, etc. -- o you betcha it was biz as normal in them there good old days which work tirelessly to have back.  And as before the War of the Rebellion, during the War of the Rebellion, all through Jim Crow, and through the Civil Rights Movement it never stopped.  And in in fact in many places such as Mississippi it never stopped after the official legal gains by the Civil Rights Movement either -- they just had to be far more down lo about it.  But now it's all up front and public again., blessed by the Führer of the Win.

 

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Wasn’t it because they had safely made it to the next county? 

Oh I just assumed that the joke was that other county was also a sundown county so the cop had radioed ahead to the neighboring jurisdiction.

I also knew nothing about the Tulsa thing until Watchmen. 

I guess I figured things were a little better in the north at this time. like still blatantly racist, but "kill you if you look at my wife wrong" but maybe not "assemble half the town to kill you for no damn reason in broad daylight" racist. But I really don't know what it was like. As I said I'd LIKE to think that scene was a little much, but for all I know it's based on an actual occurrence.