Lovecraft Country Season 1 Recap And Show-Inspired Gourmet Candy
I love, LOVE the HBO TV show, Lovecraft Country! It is seldom that we see a sci-fi series that has a majority Black showrunner (Mischa Green), cast, and crew, that is why Lovecraft Country is riveting to me, and a cut above the rest.
WARNING: It is kind of hard to describe the show, but I'll try. It is a blend of sci-fi, horror, and adventure.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not seen the show, I'm letting you know right now, I've got spoilers on spoilers on spoilers. It's not my fault you haven't finished watching it yet! Hurry up and watch so that you can come back to read this! (If you are only here for the gourmet chocolates, scroll down to the bottom past all the spoilers.)
The gist of the premise behind Lovecraft Country is this: a fine a** dude named Tic (real name Atticus) is on a bus coming home from the Korean War to find his missing (and no good) daddy, Montrose. The story is set in racist AF 1950.
Anywhoo, Tic heads to his Uncle George and Aunt Hippolyta's house on the south side of Chicago to get help finding his dad. Nobody knows where Montrose has wandered off to.
When Tic arrives in his hometown, he runs into his nerdy school chum, Leticia Effin' Lewis. She is all grown up and has turned out to be a bad mama jamma who doesn't take any crap from anybody.
Leticia (Leti) has a mean and grumpy ole sister named Ruby. Ruby can sing her buns off, though, I'll give her that!
Uncle George has a small business called the "Safe Negro Travel Guide", which is an homage to the Green Book (click here for info). Tic tells Uncle George that Montrose sent him a letter stating that Tic's mom is part of a secret and special legacy. They had no idea that legacy included dark magic, racist heathens, a time warp machine, and Taylor Swift! More on that later.
Uncle George, Leti, and Tic head off to Ardham, Massachusetts to trace Tic's mama's roots and hopefully get some answers about this "secret legacy".
Along the way, they run into monsters, a.k.a. the townsfolk and warlocks, who are all racist. The trio had to scram!
There were also some creepy, crawly Shoggoths, too. They are in the original book by Matt Ruff who was a racist dude that wrote the real Lovecraft Country book. I can't describe the shoggoths very well, other than to say they'd need a special kind of toothbrush to get all of their pearly whites cleaned up!
They each have a mission to navigate through their racist worlds and save the family tree. Oh, there's a portal involved, which leads to some time traveling and parallel universe hopping by Uncle George's wife, Hippolyta. Homegirl got sucked into the portal and ran into Josephine Baker, God Is A Black Woman, and the predecessors of the Dora Milaje! She had quite the adventure and ended up coming back with a smooth, blue new hair do'!
Hippolyta's tweenage daughter, Dee (Diana) got "got" by one of the bad guys and he put a horrible curse on her. She ended up being chased by 2 little possessed girls who apparently stopped by N'awlins to take a few "bounce" dance lessons from Big Freedia before they showed up to give Dee the creepers.
Shout out to the beautiful, mysterious, and lonely creature/Korean chick named Ji-Ah (who saves the dang DAY!). She acted her A off in this show. Mad respect!
The ending of the show is quite sad and depressing, and it's all because of Taylor Swift! I'm not talking about the real Tay-Tay, I'm talking about the fact that every time Christina Braithwhite shows up, I would yell, "What do you want NOW, Taylor Swift?!" (She reminds me of her so much!) Just so we're clear, Christina IS the bad guy (no pun intended)!
Oh, did I mention Ruby turns into a white woman? As I alluded to earlier, this show is trippy!
And somebody dies at the end. There had better be a Season 2 in the works!
I still have questions that need answering:
- Is Uncle George dead-dead or is he coming back?
- Exactly HOW MANY people has Dee killed because she choked out "Taylor Swift" like it was nothing but squishing a bug?
- Is Ruby dead-dead or is she just in a coma?
- What is going to become of baby George Freeman and is he going to write a sequel so that we can find out if he brings Tic back to life?
- Is this REALLY the last of all the racist warlock people (and I already know the answer to that is a resounding, "HECK NO!")?
******LOVECRAFT COUNTRY CHOCOLATES******
After I watched a couple of episodes of Lovecraft Country, I discovered there was an official HBO podcast for the show, hosted by Ashley C. Ford and show writer Shannon Houston, and I have listened to every episode. I also joined one of the many Facebook groups dedicated to talking about nothing but the show. It was in the group that I heard about the Lovecraft Country chocolates.
Luxury chef, Phillip Ashley, created six unique gourmet chocolates to give much respect to the show. Chef Phillip resides in Memphis, TN. You can find the Lovecraft Country-inspired gourmet candy at his chocolate boutique PhillipAshleyChocolates.com for about $30 a box. You will have to pay a bit extra for the shipping because they send it out in a special ice packaging because as we all know, chocolate melts in the heat. It is worth every penny!
Lovecraft Country Season 1 stars Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollet, Aunjanue Ellis, Courtney B. Vance, Michael Kenneth Williams, Wunmi Mosaku, Abbey Lee, Jamie Chung, and Jada Harris, with a special guest appearance from my man, President Fitz from Scandal, Tony Goldwyn.