Rod and Karen review Lovecraft Country episode 5: Strange Case
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2181: Reverse Dolezal
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I think it would have been funny to film the person who had to clean up all that loose skin meat whenever Ruby and Christina shed their bodies. Eww.
After watching several times (and apologies if you mentioned this on the show Wednesday because I didn’t tune in until an hour into it) I noticed Ruby’s transformation during the stiletto incident was relatively easy compared to the others. Maybe the rage? Also , while Hillary is holding the vial and then squeezes it, it looks like there is a scar on her thumb where Ruby got cut during her tryst with William
Hey y’all, on that Montrose storyline, (for context I’m a queer Black man) I read that as a full on DL narrative. That’s why initial sex scene felt so visceral to me. It was like he was seeking to punish and exorcize himself and Sammy to an extent. You could feel the hate that he had for himself, the hate that he had for the world…even the hate that he had for Sammy for existing in the world with some measure of freedom. It basically put me in the mind of the men who seek out and sleep with trans women and then turn around kill them when anyone finds out or even insinuates that they have an attraction. Someone harboring that much self-hate and rage is always dangerous to anyone who gets too close.
For the scene at that pageant/ball, Montrose was basically acting like what we refer to as “trade”. They’re apart of the community, but always a part from the community. There’s always a separation there, bc they so scared of being found out they never let their guard down, which again is what makes them so dangerous to trans women and femmes. Michael K Williams was so damn brilliant because he’s communicating all this without saying a word. You could see Montrose fighting himself to be free. The hesitance was palpable. Even when he let go for a moment, culminating in him kissing Sammy in that space, for me that tear was him acknowledging to himself how fleeting that moment is and, I think, how undeserving he feels having it. It was a brilliant sequence.
Shout out to the show for portraying that experience with such care and nuance. Also shout out for featuring queens Shangela (she has an HBO show called “We’re Here” that super great and is a RuPaul’s Drag Race alum), Monet Xchange (another Drag Race alum), and Daryl Stephens (starred in Noah’s Arc, the earliest black-centered LGBT network show I can think of. Sidenote: the creator of Noah’s Arc, Patrick Ian Polk is an exec producer on P-Valley). This was one of those times that you know there had to be specifically Black queer voices in the writer’s room to catch the nuance.
I was walking to work listening and a couple things struck me:
I think the reason Ruby has the appearance of the racist woman from Ardham is the potion needs the blood of the person you transform into. Helps explain why Christina refers to William in the past tense.
Rod’s racist white woman voice is now Alpha from walking dead.
The butterflies were from the specimen display next to the mirror. He reanimated them. Not scary or creepy at all. Nope!
She referred to him as past tense when she explained who he was. I should really proof read these…