Chucky #2: Give Me Something Good to Eat

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster

This has been a tough few weeks back in school. I'm starting my last year of an online Bachelor's Degree in Accounting by doing a retake plan for a class that I failed last term, which is a class that I had to take a new version of because I didn't complete the follow-up class to the original version of it before the software changed. To force a bit of tie-in humor, you might say I tricked myself because I spent too much time smelling my feet, and now I'm stuck with no good-to-eat treats and my metaphorical pants around my ankles. As such, I haven't been in the mood to do much writing, so your treats (if you feel that way about my coverage of the USA/SyFy dual-network series, Chucky, that is) are much delayed in the giving.

To avoid spoilers, download the app of your choice from the above links and get caught up with the first two episodes, including the misnomed "extended cuts," which include cast interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, rather than additional episode content.

You can also catch up with my coverage of the franchise at the following links:

Welcome to the Dead Parade #12: Chucky Gets Chyerminaydit (Child's Play 1-3, Bride, and Seed)
Just the Ticket #69: Breaking The Curse of Chucky, Sequel-itis Cured? (Curse) NICE!
Welcome To the Dead Parade #14: Chucky's Cult Following (Cult)

Episode 1: Chucky #1: Deth By Misadventure

And now, the image break....

One of the things that tends to ruin a beloved franchise is the creators' eventual "need" to explore (and in due course, explain--often over-explain) previously mysterious aspects of their main character(s), such as retconning plot mechanics or delving into a villain's origins. The outcome is usually disastrous, as in the case of the joint Alien/Predator franchise and the original six Halloween films, which provided underwhelming prequels, contradictory continuities, pseudoscientific "explainium" reasons for uninteresting minutiae, and contrived and/or convoluted and/or downright insane character origins. Which is how we got Xenomorphs being genetically engineered by a mentally unstable android with too much time on his hands, Predators injecting themselves with the spinal fluid of their prey and hunting an autistic super-genuis, and Michael Meyers being an unstoppable slasher villain because of a corporate, pagan incest cult.

As of the first episode's framing device, the Chucky TV series appears to also be doing this. In flashback, we will be getting glimpses of Charles Lee Ray's formative years as the series progresses, and we have already been told, through young Devon Evans' "HackenSlash" crime podcast, that Hackensack, New Jersey (the setting of the series) is the contrived convenience where Chucky grew up and began his murderous career. Not only that, but Chucky's dialogue seems to be painting him as kind of a morally grey, uninhibited version of Dexter Morgan, that Chucky has some kind of twisted code behind his killing, thus potentially ruining the tried-and-true formula of just having a mindless killing machine who happens to be on a collision course with a stock group of blatantly unlikable, optionally promiscuous idiots in need of a collective bludgeoning with whatever weapon-shaped Darwin Award is close at hand. The randomness and archetypal simplicity of horror movies is what makes them scary, not some ass-backwards psychoanalysis that could be better left to the average YouTube therapist. We don't need to know that a young Charles Lee Ray's first (maybe) act of cruelty was to intentionally kill a worm by biting into the rotten part of an apple. But in the opening flashback of Episode Two (ironically titled, "Give Me Something Good to Eat"), that is exactly what we are given.

Perhaps I should give points here for the writers not blatantly identifying this scene as piece of Garden of Eden, temptation of the Serpent (sometimes also referred to in old texts as the Wyrm or Wurm), Forbidden Fruit symbolism, thus allowing content creators like myself to draw that conclusion ourselves. But in the spirit of "explainium bad, mystery good" that I have established, did we really need that scene at all?

Following Lucas Wheeler's electrocution by Chucky, Jake Wheeler has moved into his uncle, Logan's house. Some of his abusers from the first episode have deigned to show him sympathy in the wake of his tragedy, with one even inviting Jake to the neighborhood Halloween party--on the condition that he brings Chucky with him. Lexy (the requisite bitch-queen of PMS--that's the initials of their school, remember?), on the other hand, continues to wear her proverbial "Please, Murder Me!" sign with gleeful abandon, even after learning that her younger sister is a huge fan of Chucky.

Speaking of Chucky, he kills the Wheelers' maid by pushing her onto a dishwasher rack full of more improperly stored butcher knives than even the average rich person should have to their name. Despite having an argument in the same room as the body and looking in the direction of the dishwasher multiple times, Jake and Junior (presumably Logan, Jr. because English naming conventions and children) take quite some time to notice the crime scene before calling The One Police Officer In Town Who Responds To All Murders that these things tend to have. Yes, said character has a sidekick and several uniformed extras accompanying her, but none of them is a main character. Props for assigning the trope to a successful woman of color, but a trope is a trope, and conveniently, Devon Evans is her son, so I might be killer at TVSins. I'm not going to ding anything because that's their thing and I don't plan on getting sued, but you all know where the sound effect goes. She later responds to the home of a woman to whom Chucky, pretending to be a trick-or-treating child in a Hello Kitty mask, gave an apple with a razor blade in it. This not only gives purpose to the flashback, it further cements the old Child's Play plot device of drawing suspicion to Chucky's "owner."

But none of these are as interesting from a character or comedy standpoint as Chucky's interactions with Lexy's younger sister, and with Jake.

Chucky attempts to bond with Jake after the maid's death by lying to Jake and presenting himself as a killer with a code who only targets assholes. In itself, this isn't interesting; it's just an evil liar lying about doing evil. What makes this exchange interesting is when Chucky tries to manipulate Jake by being honest. Not only that, it's the piece of information which he chooses to be honest about: that Chucky has a son who is like Jake in a way. Jake, as was established in last week's episode, is gay. Glen/da, as we discovered in the bonkers, uber-meta clusterfuck that was Seed Of Chucky, is (Chucky's words in this episode) "queer..., gender-fluid." Yes, as a comparison, it's a glorious oversimplification of the LGBTQ+ community that I, as a heterosexual cis-man, cannot personally begin to fathom. But it's still nice to get a Glen/da reference out of it, and it (temporarily, at least) imparts some much-needed chaos to the "sympathetic character dilution through psychoanalysis" vibe that the series is clearly going for. And Chucky playing a bloody first-person shooter and debating the morality and entertainment value of real-life murder with Lexy's kid sister is surreal and hilarious in a way that the Econ 101 Thanos gag from What If...? failed to capture. I mean, that stilted, child-actor line delivery combined with the morbid but poignant subject matter and everything that is Chucky...it just works in that Slither, "you damned Republicans are the reason I'm this hungry!" kind of way, and I'm grinning and chuckling (pun not intended) to myself right now just thinking about it.

There were definitely a lot of stupid creative decisions at play (more unintended punnery) in this episode that spoke to wasted potential down the line (not to mention the requisite but still infuriating character stupidity). But in return, Chucky got more screentime to do what he does best: chew scenery and kill people in hilariously gruesome ways. And it doesn't look like we'll be running out of characters or scenery-flavored bubblegum any time soon.

I didn't get around to posting the new Ticket Stubs last week for the reasons I mentioned previously, so Stay Tuned for that and more Chucky content coming soon (new episodes air every Tuesday at 9pm PST, simulcast to your app of choice).

Ticketmaster,

out.