The Other Black Girl
During the final season of Riverdale Ashleigh Murray returned for one episode as Josie McCoy. She hadn't been a regular since season three when she fled to the short-lived Katy Keene. Her channeling of Eartha Kitt on Rivderdale was phenomenal. It was wonderful to see an actor who had been so overlooked on the show to come back and do a defining episode. So I looked up what else she's been up to and that's when I first heard about The Other Black Girl. A show that quickly was added to my calendar when I watched the first trailer. A show that after I watched a single episode I knew I'd be binging. If you took Severance, You, and The White Lotus, put them in a blender and came out with the smoothest most wonderfully unique concoction ever, that would be The Other Black Girl. This show isn't just horror, it's about identity and connection and community and, above all, books and what they mean to us. Our heroine for all time, Nella, got a job at Wagner Books, because back in the eighties they published Burning Heart by Diana Gordon. Burning Heart was the first book to make Nella feel seen and that's what she wants to do for other little black girls like herself. The book's editor, Kendra Rae Phillips, is who Nella wants to be, as she walks past her photograph everyday in the halls of Wagner Books. And yes, she took a selfie with the picture. But something strange happened to Kendra Rae, as we see in gloriously retro eighties publishing flashbacks, seriously, look at that spot-on retro publishing logo. Something strange that is starting to happen to Nella. But Nella thinks she finally has an ally. Someone on her side. There is finally another black girl in the office, Hazel. Though, of course, Hazel has ulterior motives, and as each revelation comes to Nella we see it on her expressive face. Sinclair Daniel is an actress to watch. She's going to be big if there's any justice in this world. As for those revelations? Well, she shouldn't have put so much faith in Diana Gordon, because Diana has been up to no good. She's basically created a pod people cult of young black women. I mean, the goal of her "organization" is noble, the raising up of black women, it's just the execution that makes it go all cultish. And the thing I love about that is she falls prey to what aliens always misunderstand about humans time and time again in science fiction. They don't understand that out pain and our trauma are what make us human. So to have a human create a "shortcut" to acceptance by removing rage and emotion to make a more pliable and therefore socially acceptable and upwardly mobile black woman is horrendous. An author is to mine the very depth of the human experience, and Diana wrote a seminal book, which I kind of wish was real, and yet, she is completely and totally out of touch. And I want to see her face her own ignorance. I don't know what I'll do if we don't get a second season. Because now that Nella is "undercover" at Wagner Books, I need to see how that mobile and flexible face pulls off pod person. Also I need more of her BFF Malaika played by Brittany Adebumola. I just need more of all of this. Now. Saldy The Other Black Girl was cancelled on May 10th. A day that will live in infamy.
You might be wondering, why is she including Wednesday on her list of adaptations, it's not like it was a book...or was it? I'm putting this in under a technicality, because while Charles Addams created the cartoons for The New Yorker for the most part, they were later published in several books from Addams and Evil to Dear Dead Days. In fact I have a whole bookshelf groaning under the weight of all my Charles Addams books. There's even a cookbook which isn't for the faint of heart. I am an Addams Family connoisseur, I don't just have books, I have licensed artwork, Funko Pops, I have the entire Department 56 Addams Family Village, minus Fester with his light bulb and Wednesday and Pugsley with the guillotine, I have all the action figures, minus Wednesday, to the cartoon series, the SNES Addams Family video game is my favorite video game of all time and I can't count the number of times I've beat it, I have an original movie poster from 1991, and I don't know how many copies of the film I've gone through on different media from VHS to the "More Mamushka" Blu-ray release. The Addams Family is the story of my life. I remember a writing assignment in seventh grade that was actually Addams Family fanfic. Therefore Wednesday, well, it had to be something special to actually become a part of my own special Addams Family canon. I mean, Tim Burton was definitely the right choice despite not making a movie I liked since 2005, as was Jenna Ortega who proved her acting chops to me with her turn as Ellie in season two of You and I swear if they don't bring her back for the final season I will revolt. And yet I was hesitant to watch. I did't want to be disappointed. All my friends were texting me how good it was and yet I delayed, I mean the show went viral, that couldn't be good could it? Me, the girl who in 1999 had a Tim Burton film fest and who ranks The Addams Family with Raul Julia as one of her favorite movies ever just couldn't get up the nerve to watch the series. Obviously I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't watched the show. And I enjoyed it. It wasn't phenomenal, but it was interesting and created it's own lore while at the same time paying homage to all the previous adaptations. The fan service was top notch, especially everything to do with the pilgrims, and if Christine Baranski doesn't get a role in season two I will weep. But here's the thing, the fan service is fun asides, or clever plot points, it never takes away from the whole. And Bridgerton could learn a lesson or two from Wednesday's modern cello covers. But what does take away from the show is the petty backbiting and a love triangle that's just too high school coupled with, but aren't both guys creeps? This makes it feel painfully YA at times and it detracts from the show. Just look to the 1991 version, that was rated PG-13, very close to the TV-14 of the show, and yet you never felt that it was childish. Perhaps with a teenage lead character it was bound to come across as childish occasionally, I just know they can do better, and I think Jenna Ortega agrees with me because next season there is going to be no love interest and more horror. Now that's what I like to hear. That and the sound of a well snapped finger.
Devil House by John Darnielle
Back in 2018 when I first heard about You I was instantly hooked by the idea that Dan Humphrey had finally reached the pinnacle of his evolution. He was nothing more than a stalker on Gossip Girl, so to actually end up killing the object of his affection, well, that was logical wasn't it? I applaud Penn Badgley for being willing to not just rewrite the history of what made him a teenage heartthrob, but to lean into the creepier aspects of Dan to become Joe. Season one of You was a powerhouse of stalking and bookish New York with Joe's bookstore and Beck's delusions of being an author, just throw in a rare L. Frank Baum book and a Salinger, and the book geek in me was as obsessed with this show as Joe was with Beck. Therefore I was a little hesitant as to how I'd like season two. Joe was being yanked out of his New York intelligentsia bubble and being transplanted in Los Angeles, the least Joe place I can think of. And yet... it worked. It REALLY worked. Joe meant to kept his head down and just survive and here he is being drawn into the world of Love Quinn and her co-dependent brother Forty. The stalking of Love is on a much more equal footing than with Beck. She herself has dark secrets and a past and somehow like calls to like and you find yourself rooting for these two crazy people to succeed. At the same time as this there's a part of Joe trying to be a social justice warrior. We saw this in season one with his care of the neighbor kid Paco and here he embraces his landlord's little sister Ellie. Because of these he gets pulled into the world of comedian and friend of Forty, Henderson, who is just as creepy on screen as off. So in barely no time at all Joe has forged new connections and a new life for himself, this time with people who are willing to back up his murderous inclinations. But we know that a happily ever after couldn't be on the cards for a killer... so the story continues and who knows who will be his next obsession. Could it be you? 
