Hippolyta goes on a magical mystery ride in “I Am,” which keeps up Lovecraft Country’s reputation for trippy visuals and incisive character development.
Lovecraft Country continues to be wild and unpredictable in the best way. Last week, when we were all watching Tic nearly die during sex at the hands of a nine-tailed fox demon living in the body of a Korean nurse, did we think we would be watching Hippolyta dance across the cosmos and fight Civil War soldiers in a scene that looks cut from Wonder Woman 5? No, we did not, and that’s how I like it.
“I Am” is divided into two halves: the normal episode and Hippolyta’s psychedelic mystery ride. The first half is solid and follows up on plots we left behind during the extended flashback to the Korean War. Ruby, who now knows Christina’s secret, demands to be told everything, which means she’s still interested in the power Christina is offering. If she wasn’t, she would have walked out of that house the second she found out Christina had been deceiving her. Throughout the episode, there are a few points where Ruby looks in on Leti as she’s talking to Tic, and I have a sinking suspicion she’s reporting back to Christina. This will not end well.
Speaking of Leti and Tic, they’re both having dreams of Tic’s ancestor running out of the old Braithwhite mansion with the Book of Names in tow. Now, my least favorite part of this show is the convoluted mythology, so let’s just take it as a given that the Book of Names is something Tic and Leti want — it’ll give them the power to cast spells — and that it makes sense they would go after it. They trace it down to a relative of Tic’s mother in St. Louis, which leads to Tic spending a thrilling evening of leafing through old photo albums and eating macaroni and cheese with an elderly distant relation.
Montrose is the one who gives them the info on where to find her. Fresh off his awakening at the drag ball, he and Sammy are getting a little closer, but the second Montrose starts fearing what the neighbors will say if they know he’s gay, he puts up his walls and starts retreating inside himself. It leads to a brutal confrontation with Tic where he screams at his son demanding respect, stripping off his shirt in a display of stereotypical manliness.
I almost wish a whole episode could be dedicated to these issues, cause I’m sure the show and Michael K. Williams would be more than up to it. Montrose is such a raw nerve, painfully insecure to the point where he’s always angry, something he passed on to his son. It’s a heartbreaking situation wonderfully played by these actors, and the only problem is that we don’t explore it in more detail.
But this episode belongs to Hippolyta, who stops by the ruined Ardham Lodge to find only more mysteries. Frustrated that her family isn’t telling her the whole truth, she toys with Hiram Epstein’s orrery, the one she found in Leti’s house in the third episode, and gets it to yield up a key to an abandoned observatory. She drives out there, turns the thing on, finds that it acts as some kind of inter-dimensional wormhole, gets sucked in, and things get weird.
In possibly the most Lovecraft-y thing to happen on Lovecraft Country so far, Hippolyta finds herself dealing with some kind of unknowable, imposing alien lifeform. They put her in a futuristic cell and give her the power to do and be whoever she wants; all she has to do is name it.
This sets up an imaginative odyssey of self-actualization, which isn’t very Lovecraftian but sure is fun to watch. Hippolyta becomes a backup dancer for Josephine Baker in Paris — the scene where she flabbergastingly watches as Baker entertains the crowd while she’s supposed to be dancing is hilarious — fights as a warrior as part of some kind of Amazonian tribe, reunites with her dead husband, and explores the cosmos in a delightfully campy spaceship drawn right out of 1950s pulp serials, or her daughter’s comics.
Once again, this show just does…not…quit when it comes to the special effects, with each of Hippolyta’s new lives more eye-popping than the last. As interested as I am in the characters, part of the reason I like watching Lovecraft Country is because I never know what it’s going to show me next.
For Hippolyta, the journey is a way for her to realize how reduced she felt living her old life, with her nice husband in a country that doesn’t respect her and a world that wouldn’t give her credit for her interstellar discovery. Through whatever magic is at work in that observatory, she explores not only infinite realities but also herself, finding a confidence and anger she’d long been out of touch with. When she returns to Earth, it will be as a new person.
But will that new person be able to deal with the fallout of her killing a cop? You see, the whole reason there’s an interdimensional hole in the first place is because she is interrupted at the observatory by the police; why they are there we don’t know. Tic, who figures out where Hippolyta is after Leti finds the orrery, intervenes before the cops can brutalize his aunt, and in the ensuing scuffle Hippolyta shoots and kills one of the officers. His bloody body features in the final shot of the episode, foretelling consequences. Is magic, confidence and inter-dimensional knowledge enough to stop a racist system bent on subjugating Black people? The final stretch of the season may explore that very question.
With these last two episodes especially, I find myself getting lost in this show. The images come so vivid and quick that it’s easy to simply stare and be carried away. And if that’s what they’ve been doing in the middle stretch of the season, think what they have in store for the finale.
Episode Grade: A
Bullet Point Country:
- I think Christina is an interesting character, but I swear she talks mostly in exposition. This week, she exposits to Ruby about how the man we know as William used to be her lover; apparently, the polyjuice potion she and Ruby have been taking is made from the blood of the people they turn into.
- Tic went into that dimensional rift, too, and came back out. I wonder what he experienced. For that matter, one of the cops got sucked in, as well.
- I wonder when Ji-Ah will turn back up. Sooner would be better.
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