There was *a lot* happening in last night’s incredible episode of HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” easily one of the single best hours of the show thus far. Titled “Jig-a-Bobo,” Season 1, Episode 8 was directed by series creator Misha Green, powerfully touching upon the real-life murder of Emmett Till, exploring what Atticus saw when he traveled through time, featuring one of the wildest sex scenes we’ve ever seen, unleashing a monstrous Shoggoth for an insanely bloody climax, and introducing two of the scariest villains we’ve seen on the small screen in years.
As you may recall, Misha Green had noted back in August that an episode of the show’s first season was inspired by Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Green offering up the following tease during a Television Critics Association panel:
“You’ll see we use Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger to tell what it’s like to be a young Black girl in America.”
That episode, it turns out, was last night’s “Jig-a-Bobo,” which saw George and Hippolyta’s daughter Diana cursed by two white police officers looking for her missing mom. The episode was a horror-heavy hour of “Lovecraft Country,” with Diana spending much of it running from (and ultimately facing head-on) an incredibly creepy set of twins. With long fingernails that resemble Freddy’s iconic bladed glove, the supernatural twins were only visible to Diana, and their arrival was ushered in by a group of jump roping white girls. Sound familiar?
As we learned from the creative team post-episode, the character’s names are Topsy and Bopsy, and their look is based on racist caricatures of the same-named Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Misha Green noted in a tweet last night about the demonic characters, “Nothing is scarier than real American history – minstrel shows and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Green again reiterated, “Reading the devil doll chapter in Matt Ruff’s novel and being a huge fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street, I wanted to create our version of Freddy Krueger.”
Topsy and Bopsy were played by dancers/actors Kaelynn Harris and Bianca Brewton, with Harris having previously appeared on “America’s Best Dance Crew” and in “Glee” and “Empire,” and Brewton having previously been featured in Footloose (2011) and Step Up All In. The creepy choreography was the work of Choreographer/Creative Director Jamaica Craft.
“I said give me a nightmare minstrel jig and what she, @kaelynnharris, and Bianca Brewton brought to the table was [bananas],” Misha Green said in a tweet last night.
As always with “Lovecraft Country,” it wasn’t just about bringing unsettling imagery to the screen but saying something about the Black experience in the process. This is where the show has consistently proven itself to be far more powerful, educational and important than the source material was able to be, and last night’s episode was certainly no exception.
Penn GSE Associate Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas explains in a thread over on Twitter, “What happened in Lovecraft Country last night was a brilliant metaphor for US Black girlhood itself. It unsettles us because it’s supposed to… All of us who were dreaming Black girls can relate to running away from that particular caricature in our storied imaginations.”
Diana isn’t out of the woods yet. And Topsy and Bopsy will return this Sunday night.
