Chucky #4: Just Let Go

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster

Halloween is behind us, and the season of giving has begun. So it's time to forgive our own transgressions and those committed against us, and to be thankful for the blessings in our lives. In other words, sometimes, you have to "Just Let Go." Unless you're the hero of a slasher movie and you literally hold the life of your second-greatest enemy in your hands, but that's a story for a bit later.

But before I incorporate any more Chucky spoilers, go catch up with the series (or just re-watch it, if you're a fan, or a critic working toward more accurate articles--I am both) at the app of your choice (USA Network or SyFy Channel) or through your local provider. You can also catch up with this interesting critical journey of mine at the links below:

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

Episode 2:

Chucky #2: Give Me Something Good to Eat, and

Chucky #2.5: The Coming Of Rage

Episode 3: Chucky #3: I Like To Be Hugged

And now, the break.

The episode opens with an emotional Jake on his walk back from the cemetery, where he was last seen paying his respects to his mother and making peace with his father, mere feet from where Glen was born (and where the original Tiffany doll and the third Charles Lee Ray/Chucky--his human body died at the beginning of Child's Play and he got his first doll body, which was re-assembled in Child's Play 2, then he was re-molded in Child's Play 3 and killed again in Bride Of Chucky) died. I still think this was forced coincidence, but that doesn't cheapen the symbolic dichotomy between Jake and Glen, as both are "queer"--in Chucky's parlance--and both lost their parents in the same town.

On his return walk, Jake is passed by a few ERVs (Emergency Response Vehicles), and we find out that PMS is contagious because the windows of the local hospital are glowing red, too.

Inside the hospital, even the walls of the elevators are red. And for some reason, the hospital lighting is sectioned off into yellow, green, and blue, like we're touring the Microsoft Windows logo.

We follow Jake as he passes Oliver's grieving parents (cut with a strobe flash of his death at Chucky's hands) and down a greenlit hallway to a greenlit room where the surviving ravers have gathered, some of them injured. Junior is in another greenlit room, wearing a breathing tube and being tended to for smoke inhalation. But in a yellow room, Jake finds Devon, who is...perfectly fine. So...green bad, yellow good? I probably shouldn't read into selective color choices in a Chucky TV show beyond "PMS, blood, murder, sexuality, LOL red," but they were choices and it's kind of hard for me to not notice these things or how strangely they were assigned their respective themes. Mancini doesn't even explain it in the extended material, so either I'm a logic-stretching, pompous ass, or we're just supposed to figure it out for ourselves or completely ignore that it's happening. Good on him for not treating the audience like we're idiots....

Jake looks guilty, angry, sad, and confused at the sight of Junior and the others (Zackary Arthur's facial expressions are either so masterful that he can convey all of that in a few seconds, or it's an "act at the wall and see what sticks" method), but he gives Devon a melancholy smile and a wave before moving on to the ICU. Where Caroline is comatose, in a blue hospital room. But, why blue?

I need to stop fixating on that because this is where the good part of the episode starts. As he's staring at Caroline (who became collateral damage of his revenge against the entitled First Daughter of Hackensack), Jake gets jump-scared by Lexy, who is also there to check on Caroline. Jake is blatantly surprised to see Lexy alive, but as he isn't a true villain (yet?), he confesses to her that he knew about Chucky (and even that he sent Chucky after her) and suggests that sticking together is their best option. But unlike PMS, horror movie intelligence is not contagious in this show, so Lexy angrily shuts him out.

Back in the yellow room, Devon and his mother once more try to pump each other for information while having the "beware of Jake" conversation, which leads to Jake learning that Oliver was stabbed to death, and a title sequence of floating scalpels and syringes over red ambulance lights. Also, Devon is finally prompted to do his own investigation into the Chucky legend, which leads to our interspersed flashback for the episode, wherein we learn of teenaged Charles Lee Ray's literal Peter Pan complex, his proclivity for killing assholes, and his introduction to a young Eddie Caputo (the accomplice he would later blow up in the first Child's Play). Voice actor Tyler Barrish plays Charles Lee Ray as a teen, and he's sufficiently charming and creepy to fill the role, even getting a polished Chucky laugh in for good measure.

Meanwhile, the parents are at each other's throats, Junior is dealing with sports daddy issues due to smoke inhalation affecting his cross country future, and Jake and Lexy are sneaking into her burnt out house to find Chucky. As questions and distrust mount between the two, that "second-greatest enemy's life in your hands" spoiler comes into play for an episode title drop ("Just Let Go"), and Jake puts his personal grudge aside to save Lexy from plunging to her death while Chucky watches. The new, fire-damaged Chucky design is pretty awesome. It doesn't outright terrify like stitched-together Chucky, and it isn't the cool, Terminator homage that the first fire-damaged Chucky was. It looks somewhere between John Merrick and Two-Face having a stroke. It's bubbly and saggy and cartoonish, but unsettlingly asymmetrical. Maybe the camp factor was a little too high for me in full light, but it suits Chucky very well, and benefits greatly from the burnt out house's shadowy setting.

A police officer soon interrupts proceedings, taking Jake, Lexy, and Chucky back to the hospital. The cop goes about taking Chucky to Caroline's room, with Lexy in hot pursuit, while Detective Evans pulls Jake aside for questioning. Devon jump-scares Lexy to tell her his findings about Chucky, who is in the process of jamming the entire title sequence worth of used syringes (and one paralyzing scalpel) into the cop, who is an asshole because he steals candy from a vending machine and scavenges from Caroline's supply of brownies, cookies, and donuts. Then, because Chucky likes an audience, he pulls the plug on Caroline's life support, bringing Lexy, Devon, Detective Evans, Jake, the First Family, and the hospital staff rushing into the ICU.

Because this is a horror series where waist-high furniture can completely block everyone's view of a gruesome murder scene, and everyone chooses to stand on the non-murder side of Caroline's bed, it takes longer than it should to plug Caroline's life support back in and discover the large, savagely impaled human body that is hemorrhaging mango-habanero barbecue sauce from every orifice (including from under his fingernails, which was a nice, gruesome detail). And because this is Chucky, the episode ends with our titular villain coming to life when only the three teen leads are watching, and giving them all the middle finger.

Other than the pilot, this has been the best episode so far. Lexy is actually becoming a sympathetic character, Devon is actually intelligent and well-acted, Chucky's new damage design is creative, the characters are interacting on a level beyond background ignorance, and the action makes sense. My only problems with this episode were the selective coloration and the old, "if it's out of frame, it's invisible" trope that so many horror movies have used to mixed results over the years. I had some trouble with the SyFy app when I went to re-watch the episode, so I couldn't get this post done by Monday. I even considered waiting for "Little, Little Lies" and making this an extra-long, two-episode post. But late or not, here it is. Stay tuned for tonight's new episode, and I'll have my thoughts on that later this week.

Ticketmaster,

out.