WiC Watches—The Terror: Infamy
Kiki Sukezane as Yuko – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Episode 201: “A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest”
The Terror: Infamy is a ghost story, and the premiere episode makes no bones about it, charging out of the gate with a rapid succession of supernatural motifs: a seemingly possessed woman named Masayo Furuya dresses in traditional finery and commits brutal suicide; the lead character, Chester Nakayama (Chester Mio) hallucinates the gory laceration of his own arm; an eerie gust of wind knocks Masayo’s casket over and her body rolls out and her ghostly image flickers in Chester’s camera lens.
After the sufficiently eerie title sequence, we discover it’s 1941, and some members of the Japanese-American fishing community on California’s Terminal Island fear that some old Japanese spirits have followed them from the old country. The elderly Yamato-San (George Takei) brings up the specter of the bakemono, a kind of ancient malevolent spirit.
As the story gears up, we see the Japanese-Americans struggling against brutal racism in their community. We also get to know Chester’s Latina girlfriend Luz Ojeda, played by Cristina Rodlo — their onscreen chemistry is instantly electric. There are miscegenation laws on the books in America at the time, and now Luz is pregnant. Masayo brews up a home remedy for Chester and Luz designed to make Luz miscarry, and thus free the young couple from their “mistake.”
Chester comes into conflict with his parents as he yearns for a life as a photographer outside Terminal Island, while they hold tight to the close-knit community they’ve formed far from their homes in Japan.
Chester finds images of a blurry woman in his photographs of Masayo’s funeral, and her husband momentarily glimpses a young woman in a kimono (Yuko Tanabe, played by Kiki Sukezane) before he is mysteriously struck blind. Yuko later mysteriously appears to Chester and reads tea leaves for him in one of the most engaging and unsettling sequences in the episode.
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama – The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
“A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest” does a great job of establishing the time and place of the series. It’s a bit heavy-handed here and there, pouring on the supernatural sauce, but it’s still a good watch. And Infamy excels most in its quietest moments, which is a very good sign.
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The episode ends with the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the world shifts beneath everyone’s feet. Yuko proves to be something terrible and other than human, but she/it also might be protecting Chester and his family. Powerful themes and horrors are rising, and it definitely makes the viewer eager to find out what happens next.