Chucky #8: F is for Finale

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

No words can describe my disappointment in this episode, and I need to start Hawkeye before it's over. So if you want to see what led to this inconsistent, gender-fluid genital-tease of a finale before I get to what else F stands for, go binge the first seven episodes at the app of your choice (USA Network or SyFy Channel) or through your local provider, and read all of my other Chucky-related coverage 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

Episode 4: Chucky #4: Just Let Go

Episode 5: Chucky #5: Little Little Lies

Episode 6: Chucky #6: Cape Queer

Episode 7: Chucky #7: Twice the Grieving, Double the Loss

You can't break what's already broken, but here's the break anyway....

It's unsettling to hear child actor Nick Fisher (who previously played a young Jeffrey Dahmer) deliver the "previously on fuckin' Chucky..." line, which is also probably one of the few things in the episode that prove interesting or compelling.

You know the finale is going to be fucked (F is for fucked, by the way) when the opening shot involves Junior and Chucky at the window of Junior's bedroom, watching Andy, who is across the street, ring the Wheelers' doorbell. It's entirely possible that Andy is just going door-to-door looking for Jake, and he ends up at Junior's house during an editing cut. But when Junior answers the door, it looks like the same door Andy was knocking on before. A cul de sac property is also a plausible explanation, but the scale of the house and the severity of wraparound necessary to make Junior's viewpoint of Andy have any kind of logical cinematography is impossible for...what did Logan even do for a living, anyway?

And the layout isn't the only inconsistent thing in this scene. Junior has quickly transformed from a huddled, psychologically damaged husk who mumbles GoGos lyrics, into a charismatic, joke-cracking psychopath. I mean, yeah, Chucky has been systematically destroying his family and emotional and psychological states for several episodes now, so it's not like Junior suddenly snapped. But the complete character shift from who Junior was to this diluted Chuck-alike persona feels like it came completely out of nowhere.

Then Junior invites Andy in for some, honestly decent suspense as Junior makes vaguely ominous hints and Andy searches the house for Chucky. But when Andy leaves and we find out where Chucky has been hiding, belief becomes so suspended as to hang itself, and with rope to spare. The bathroom in this apparently U-shaped sectional of a mansion that they live in has a toilet that is, at once small enough to be a child's training potty, yet large enough for a 1/4-human-scale doll to hide in underwater. Power of Damballah, my soggy, plastic ass. On top of that, after recounting some of his most iconic deaths ("weakness" to guns, fire, industrial fans, etc.), and while still dripping head-to-toe with literal au du toilet, Chucky offers to make dinner. That's just disgusting.

Fittingly to the big scene later in the movie (and milking the factory scene from Child's Play 2 for all it's worth and then some), the title sequence is composed of Good Guy dolls, still in their original packaging. But when it all comes together, the word, Chucky has some pieces missing. Could this be referencing Chucky's splintered soul? Or all of the dolls that Andy and Kyle have killed throughout the franchise? Or do the creators realize that the episode itself is a fractured, incomplete mess?

I believe it was Twenty-One Pilots who once said, "between student loans and treehouse homes/we'd always take the latter." Can you call it the latter when there are more than two choices? I just did.

Anyway, the Chucky that Jake brought home starts to attack him and Lexy, who are presumably still waiting for an Uber like morons, and who just scrabble away, screaming, like morons, are suddenly rescued by...Kyle? Wasn't she left in the middle of nowhere? I mean, yeah, she could have hitched a ride or stolen a car offscreen. But the gas station was a shithole. What are the chances of somebody coming along in enough time to drive her to Hackensack so she would arrive at nearly the exact same time that Andy got there? Hell, it's just as likely that she walked or teleported. It's almost like she doesn't matter as a character anymore, and she's going to die later. They even secured with the "picture of loved ones" trope in the last two episodes. Oh, and because of horror movie stupidity, instead of going to rescue Devon (who is a literal captive audience to an army of Chuckys wasting time with stupid, "funny" questions that amount to a forced commentary on abortion), Kyle sits them down for some exposition and drugged snacks, decreasing her chances of success and survival and taking the main characters out of their own story, all for the sake of personal grudges.

Meanwhile, at the Ray residence, Junior's character inconsistency continues as he realizes that his new friend to the end and the woman who did or didn't have an affair with his father (F is for fidelity, father, fakeout, and failure) are lovers, and he does absolutely no mental math on the subject. He does express a hesitancy to kill Devon. But neither Junior's true parentage, nor Tiffany's sexual history, are ever given any kind of payoff. Instead, we get our time wasted by the aforementioned Question & Abortion "comedy," a fight between Tiffany, the lead (?) Chucky, and Nica-Chucky that ends with Nica-Chucky unconscious, the lead Chucky dead, and Tiffany setting a bomb. We do get some interesting tidbits dropped during all of this, such as Tiffany revealing that she's the one who sold out Chucky to Detective Norris in the original movie, and that Glenda made the bomb.

Speaking of the bomb, Andy somehow gets into the basement of the Ray house undetected, and rescues Devon. Devon is able to escape, but coincidentally, Kyle chooses that moment to come in the front door, tripping a rather sophisticated-looking laser sensor, and blowing up the house, and supposedly wasting what potential Andy and Kyle had left in the process.

Between the exploding house and Junior, Tiffany, and Nica getting away to enact "the plan," Tiffany (and the army of Chuckys that, though they are parts of Chucky's soul, don't possess Chucky's ego, or express any malice toward Tiffany for beheading their leader) manages to somehow get all of the dolls back in their boxes and onto a delivery truck, in broad daylight, without opposition. Also, despite hating Chucky enough to stab him through the heart and saw his head off with a butcher knife, Tiffany is still totally onboard with "the plan."

What is the plan, you ask? The plan is as painfully obvious as it was in the last episode: ship an army of Chuckys (which shouldn't exist because Andy said in "Cape Queer" that the doll in Hackensack was the last one) across the country (which he had already been doing during the events of Curse Of Chucky, as it was revealed in Cult Of Chucky, and Andy and Kyle had already pretty much put a stop to that by "Cape Queer"), under cover of Tiffany donating "Jennifer Tilly"'s private Good Guy collection to disadvantaged youths at the Frankenstein benefit. Except for one "little, insignificant" child who will live a happy, disadvantaged life to make Caroline happy at the expense of the Mayor's reputation, thousands of dollars of charitable donations, lost property rental fees, widespread PTSD, mayhem, and numerous deaths by stabbing. Congratulations on killing off at least one of my favorite characters, rendering two more unconscious, and turning one into a selfish bitch. The other three in my top six are Chucky, Nica, and Devon, in case anyone was wondering.

Oh, and by the power of not having any photographic proof of surviving familial connections, Andy lived through being at the epicenter of a house exploding on top of him, and carjacks the truck of Chuck, only to be held at knifepoint by Tiffany ("the doll, not the human").

This brings up another inconsistency: we learn through exposition that Chucky has to use Good Guy dolls to split his soul because of the "identical vessel" rule. But what about Nica? Or the fact that in Seed, they were animatronic puppets, not actual dolls? Or Chucky's stitch-face doll from Curse? Or that Tiffany shouldn't be able to exist in a human body and a doll body at the same time? A franchise that has maintained the same creative voice (Don Mancini) for as long as this one has, should have more consistent lore, shouldn't it?

And speaking of Nica, her potential gets literally cut off at the knees (and the elbows) for a few seconds of shock value and to satisfy Tiffany's apparent amputee fetish. Again, way to squander a beloved character!

Anyway, at the benefit, Mayor Cross ends up eating husband's-blood-covered popcorn (another of the few awesome moments in this hour-long kerfuckle), Caroline sits and watches the movie while people run and scream and get murdered around her, Lexy and Jake square off against Junior and Chucky, respectively (with Lexy and Junior's confrontation based on twisted love being the more interesting, as Jake vs. Chucky is just Zackary Arthur making constipation faces while he fakes struggling with a puppet), Junior and Chucky inadvertently stab each other to death, and Jake reunites with Devon, walking out of frame together while Frankenstein's credits roll with cheesily uncanny timing in the background.

Later, Jake, Devon, and Lexy pay their respects at Junior's grave (because if a sociopathic killer-by-proxy like Jake and a bitchy social terrorist like Lexy can redeem themselves, Junior deserves to be honored, too. Hell, with as much as Chucky put him through, maybe Junior deserves redemption even more than they do). In yet another waste of a potentially interesting character, Miss Fairchild is just standing in the background of this scene, watching. Is she Glenda? Why was she even in this series? Who gives an F is for fuck? It's time to cut away from any potential source of interesting information for a "big twist": the series was the real flashback all along! Like some infuriatingly stupid Tales From the Crypt homage, Chucky sits in a chair with a book, which is supposed to be the story we've been following for the past two months, and he basically says, "you wanna know what happened to everybody? Well fuck you! Check out all the people I killed and how cool it looks! The end." Yes, that is in line with the kind of thing Chucky would say and do (perhaps one of the only consistent characterizations in the episode, let alone the entire series), but it still gives the impression--from a fan perspective, at least--that what we have seen over the past eight hours or so amounted to nothing. Interesting characters are killed, crippled, drugged, or otherwise have their potential squandered, while uninteresting characters have entire kitchen sinks of inconsistency thrown in at random in an effort to make them feel worthwhile, before they, too, are killed off. Some of this can be excused by the reveal of a second season, coming next year. But like the title says, F is for Finale. And for what the finale did to the series as a whole.

Ticketmaster,

Fuck.