Superstition, Season 1, Episode 12: Resurrection

Ok this was awful. Super super awful. It’s an offense to this excellent show that this is the episode that actually counts as the season finale. Thankfully, it’s not necessarily plot that is the problem -so let’s dwell on the plot before we have to reach the final battle which was plotted, choreographed, designed and embellished by five year olds.

The Dredge whispers in Calvin’s ear and eventually turns him to the dark side following the convoluted deal Calvin made last episode. Calvin fights despite being very very spooky and creepy - and it’s finally clear how far he’s fallen when he comes onto May. She tells him no - and he presses and starts to get forceful and the spectre of rape is in the air before Garvey interrupts. She tells Rus something is up (and Russ has also developed a supernatural database which could be useful as well. It also implies they’ve let Rus loose in their library)

May, and later Tilly, consult on this and believe Cal may be suffering from PTSD - since he is a veteran who was in a war zone. They do raise the possibility of possession though and do focus on PTSD. May confronts Cal and Cal realises he doesn’t remember anything. May thinks he should get help but he decides he’s a terrible person (he is appropriately devastated by what he nearly did to May), bringing up his dead brother and Dredge who called his soul Black.

Cal goes on to stab the Mayor - not fatally but definitely unpleasantly - and raids the alchemy room. He also has a creepy moment with Isaac when he shows off his new awesome runed bullets - which can kill absolutely everything which both impresses and slightly scares Isaac. But Isaac has a touching father some moment, especially since Cal seems to be trying to say goodbye. He does the same with Tilly which leads everyone to realise that Cal may be possessed and not just traumatised.

Cal also, finally confronts daddy-dearest. Isaac tries to talk Cal into giving up the ring - he’s realised what the cause is. Instead they fight and Isaac may be the better fighter but he’s unwilling to hurt Cal - so Cal wins. And slices open Isaac’s stomach and takes away some of his intestines as one does

Cal does try to fight against possession by trying to commit suicide - this doesn’t seem to work at all. So being possessed makes you bullet proof… He also steals The Dredge’s old host

The mayor is smart enough to speak to Isaac about his son’s stabbing rather than plotting revenge and he and Isaac are both very respectful and mildly menacing to each other.  They get together and decide to stop possessed Cal and try to figure out what he’s doing with this ghoulish scavenger hunt: apparently with the blood of an immortal (how many immortals are there out there that people have made a spell around them?), the blood of an Infernal and a blood of a virgin can all be used to resurrect an Infernal’s body - and make it indestructible. This will be bad.

And that virgin Cal’s using is his own daughter Garvey, which gives us the cringe worthy moment of a man asking his daughter if she’s a virgin. Nope nope nope nope.

Also, do abstinence-only advocates realise they’re leaving our children vulnerable to human sacrifice? Or, given its success rate, maybe they do and they’re secretly campaigning against teenaged virginity?

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 11: Back to One

It’s time for the Groundhog day trope. Honestly I find this worrisome that any show in its first season is pulling a Trope show: Groundhog Day, bodyswap, musical or clip show: usually it’s a sign of a scraping the bottom of the barrel of ideas.

On the plus side this episode spends relatively little time actually going through the loops since everyone remembers what’s going on pretty quickly and tries to figure out how to break them. The minus side is that the show presents these loops in a weird order, not beginning at the beginning of the loop means it takes a while to even piece together the actual chronology of the loop.

But to tease it apart:

Isaac is totally happy with Cal killing the djinn last week but if Cal’s going to run off with the weapon of last resort ring he should totally tell Isaac.

The demon mayor knows something is going on so contacts Isaac since both of them are in the not quite human category and Isaac is getting woo-woo headaches. Everyone else is feeling more and more fatigue with each loop which will eventually leave them unable to escape.

Things in the loop happening: Tilly has a standard autopsy. Russ and Garvey grow closer together and Bea decides to go through magic with them - introducing them to tarot. And running a spread that happens to produce a series of devil cards when there’s only supposed to be one which is ominous.

There are lots of references to Aunt Nancy and spider webs crawling in everywhere

At the end of each loop they find Aunt Nancy and the mayor has decided the best way to solve all their problems is to kill Aunt Nancy with a Hindu lightning artefact. Each time he arrives in time to kill someone random - Cal, May, Tilly - but none of which actually stops the time loop resetting over and over. Aunt Nancy continues to be insensible and staring at the memory crystal in front of her (we’ve seen these before)

Not knowing what to do, Cal accepts a deal with the Dredge in his ring - who guides him to destroy that memory crystal and collapse the time loop and save everyone

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 10: Green on Blue

We have something dubious and supernatural shenanigans going on at a boot camp. This concerns the local barman in LaRochelle since he’s a veteran like Cal and his nephew is currently in said boot camp running the risk of being eaten by something gribbly and nasty.

Cal tries to play oblivious when he’s recruited  but the barman has been in LaRochelle for a while - he’s also been barman for a long time so has heard a lot of drunken gossip. He knows what the Hastings do and what they’re up to.

Calvin’s in and they go speak to the commander/colonel who runs the camp. I assume they get this kind of personal attention because they’re veterans. The barman runs his mouth about hauntings and obviously is dismissed out of hand for being a damn fool. Calvin is more reasonable, discussing how they’ve had an utterly ridiculous number of missing recruits and it’s only a matter of time before the camp is shut down, they’re investigated and her career is officially wrecked. So she might as well let Calvin look around discreetly

Ok, part of me is a little leery here because she allowed these people to roam around her camp with very little reason at all. But I think this could be a comment on the world building - or maybe I’m just reading too much into it. I’ve said before that in a world where the supernatural exists then people are going to be less… cynical? Disbelieving? More inclined to believe that some nasty shadowy monster is eating their recruits.

Calvin also reads the riot act to bartender when he tries to go public after his nephew is attacked - you call the Hastings for help, you do it THEIR way.

She even had an experience herself when she was a recruit which she explains after they do some investigating and hear about electrically charged air and check in with Isaac and Tilly for some reasearch. They confirm that the enemy is probably a kind of djinn - a shiqq (and points to world building in doing a little more research rather than just saying “hey, genie!”). The colonel identifies a possible witness, and they find a recruit trying to kill himself but prevented from doing so by the shiqq. It seems likely he’s made some kind of devil-at-the-cross-roads deal to basically get him through training since everyone expected him to wash out. The shiqq tries to kill the bartender and Calvin jumps on him after the ring whispers at him

His demon ring is doing it’s best to seduce him to use his power, to “ally” and defeat their enemies. I’m not sure if that’s what happened here because he just kind of leaps at the shiqq and wins. So I’m going to assume yes and that the monster wasn’t just body slammed to death

But this monster of the week episode wasn’t the main point. We had two more intriguing side quests going on.

Firstly we have Tilly and her heavy history. She returns from her holiday early for various reasons but between her distractions she mentions her mother has died

And it’s apparent their hinted at fraught relationship was very very very fraught indeed. Which is even more fraught since her will asks to be buried at the Hastings family cemetery.

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 9: Uncle Bubba

This week we have Uncle Bubba interrupting Bea and Isaac’s alone time… and Bubba?

Hmmm

He’s amusing but he’s such a bumbling buffoon that he kind of makes me cringe for every second he’s on screen

He’s interrupting Bea and Isaac’s alone time because he thinks he’s being haunted by an evil clock. He warns Garvey and Russ not to touch it because bad things will happen

Russ, who isn’t in on the big secret, of course touches the clock. He and Garvey are sucked into demon clock world. No-one is amused by Bubba over this. Bubba explains who may have a grudge against him (he owes someone money and slept with their wife) and Isaac and Bea have absolutely no time at all for him referring to women as “bitches”. Because this show is twice as aware on gender and race issues than pretty much anything else out there

Continued argument leads to Bubba and Isaac also being sucked into clock world

Clock world is spooky black and white with occasional clockwork people because they know all about the spooky. Russ wants to touch things and leap in while Garvey shows her far greater experience of random woo-woo - and of course Russ hears all about the family history so he won’t do silly things like not listen to Garvey

They grab the man who hated Bubba to fill them in about the clock. He’s not co-operative and Bea absolutely refuses to allow Calvin use violence to coerce him because that is not who they are. However she does use her cat to threaten him. What her cat does we don’t know but it seems to involve turning into a much bigger, scarier cat

Now more reluctantly co-operative the man explains that he trapped a poltergeist called Agnes in the clock and then fed her 80 odd souls to make her super powered. Agnes now thinks she’s god of her realm but still serves him

He’s right about all but the last part, as he too is sucked into the clock.

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 6: Dr. Dredge. MD

It’s time for Isaac to get back in town (after seeing some horribly rotten bodies) and reuniting with his family - first of all with Bea

Ok I am hearing Bea and Isaac talk in this scene and, of course, they’re this amazing, passionate couple who love each other immensely. But I kind of here a lot of subtext poking from Bea here which Isaac seems to be ignoring. Like she’s clearly unhappy James showed up unnannounced and he assures her it was just for their protection but seems to miss Bea’s issue with a) not knowing anything about James and b) James and Isaac has this whole history she wasn’t part of and didn’t know about. Isaac keeps dodging and seems to focus more about Bea saying Cal has questions but I feel that there’s an undertone here that Bea has questions too. He does say a reassuring “no-one ever knows me as well as you” which is nice but she says “no-one ever will” which… is slightly creepy? Like “there will never be a woman after me! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

This whole scene is sweet but I do have this undertone that Bea isn’t super happy with how much of Isaac’s life she may have been excluded from: and while he’s focusing a lot on Cal, he doesn’t seem to be equally focusing on her. Which is kind of my complaint about the show in general - Bea needs more attention!

But before we focus on Cal and Isaac let’s look at Cal and May’s oh-so-complex relationship. They have sex and Garvey nearly walks in on them and clearly knows what is happening and everything is AWKWARD

May freaks out and Cal tries to be understanding but May is clear that his platitudes mean nothing - he understands nothing, she understands nothing, it’s all too complicated.

And from there she has to go to a little town meeting about an upcoming awkward founder’s day. The main point of this is to establish that the Hastings are still pretty much hated by the whole town - but May awesomely speaks up for them because she has not time for the town’s nonsense

Can I also ask if these Founder Celebrations actually happen in America? I don’t think we have anything like that over here (largely because when a city is 1200 years old no-one has a damn clue who founded it, why or when)

Dr. Kim also speaks up for the Hastings and since he and May are old friends and possible ex’s they decide to have lunch

Unfortunately it looks like Dr. Kim is the new meat puppet for The Dredge (his old body has been found by the Hastings and Tilly studies it’s weirdness and finds she may be able to track the Dredge which could be useful). He has already visited Anansi and, in exchange for a shiny magic mirror, has taken all the memories she gained when she visited the Hastings. Despite this I still have my doubts over whether Anansi is a villain or just playing a long game with a possible alternative that she’s simply mercenary. She only helped the Dredge to what she had agreed to and didn’t step 1 millimeter outside that. It’s also worth noting that the Dredge didn’t even try to threaten her or coerce her: not out of friendliness which there clearly isn’t any but, but the way she turned her back on him, because she is Not To Be Messed With

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 5: Tangled Web

Time for a heavy handed flashback and the belief that putting a grown man in a baggy sweatshirt and a baseball cap you can somehow make him pass as a teenager: basically Isaac telling his sons that the ring of solomon is the family’s legacy and how they need to not touch it unless they’re fully committed to using it in ways he will never actually explain. Also stay out the damn woo-woo room.

Ok am I the only one kind of skeeved by the immortal telling his sons that he will outlive them that the family legacy is his personal jewellery? I mean there’s something there, right?

In the present Cal and May do the totally unsubtle hey we ran into each other at the same cafe, what a surprise, we should all have lunch together and share lots of happy memories and pretend to be a family, right Garvey?

Garvey is not playing this game. Nice try. Do not pass go. Do not collect the last-16-years-never-happened card

So he goes home to find they have a house guest. Aunt Nancy who knows Bea (though she doesn’t seem especially thrilled to see her) and is an old friend of the family’s. Isaac mainly. She comes with dire warnings about Dredge, how it’s connected to some bad woo-woo in the past and if she doesn’t bring those memories to the surface, someone’s going to die. She also brings pie

I think more portents of doom would be tolerable if they brought pie. We should mention this to the union

Until Tilly arrives and she really doesn’t like Aunt Nancy - or, as she reveals - Anansi. The trickster god, collector of stories and generally person Tilly doesn’t trust or doesn’t like and should not be let in your home and you certainly shouldn’t eat their pie

To underscore this point Cal collapses after eating said pie. Anansi explains he’s been sent back in his memories to Arlo.

Bea joins the Not Pleased crew since Anansi is dragging up some very painful family memories for her story here but she still trusts her and tries to calm down Tilly - Anansi is powerful but involved in the unique place of this town. But Tilly isn’t easily appeased - asking how many more towns Anansi has left in her wake, broken and destroyed, collateral damage so long as she collects her stories. She thinks Anansi just sees people as characters, sources of drama not actual people. And when Cal gets into distress it’s she who wakes Cal up with a taser and reminds them that in Anansi’s memory visions you’re in danger and can still die

It seems Tilly has a lot of inside knowledge about Anansi and this is confirmed when she confronts her in the woo-woo room. It sounds like Tilly used to live with Anansi, Anansi calls Tilly “her favourite.” But Tilly says “yeah the Artful Dodger had nothing on me” which suggests the relationship wasn’t kind of ethically ideal. I hope more of this is revealed.

Anansi notes that the Hastings treat Tilly as family but Tilly is still keeping secrets - which Tilly insists is her right to do so so there are some revelations coming. Anansi also defends her whole memory game simply because it’s better this knowledge comes from her than Dredge

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 4: Through the Looking Glass

Time for a nice day in the life moment at the Hastings. They have an unclaimed body and are about to dispose of it. Something Tilly and Garvey are happy to do since the body is covered in vile racist tattoos, while Bea insists in giving the man a proper ceremony because he’s someone’s son

Bea is a much better person than I will ever be.

Thankfully the only person who shows up is the man’s son who promptly urinates in his urn. And lo, some people say you should not speak ill of the dead. I say if you leave a legacy which ends up with your loved ones wanting to piss in your urn, then that’s on you not on them.

So to the actual plot - May is raiding a drug ben in a squat in an old abandoned mansion and in the altercation she gets hit in the head - and has to be resuscitated. And her soul gets trapped behind a mirror. Because mirrors are creepy, everyone knows that.

She starts wandering through creepy mirror world (complete with red foliage and ominous emptiness), able to see into our world through other mirrors (this is the rule of mirror worlds, everyone knows this) but can’t make anyone hear here. There are also mirror world zombies who try to grab her but she’s saved by Mirror World Denizen Sarah who explains she took an overdose next to the mirror which is why she got sucked in. She can fight off the zombies with lights because light is bad.

In the real world, everyone’s all cut up about May: we learn Bea is May’s guardian after May’s parents died and obviously loves her like a daughter. The machines are showing no brain activity and the doctor is advising they say goodbye: May’s own wishes are recorded as “do not resuscitate”. Garvey is obviously in full denial and anger, lashing out at everyone - including the doctor and especially Cal. There’s a lot of powerful emotion here and it’s clear that they’re a family and through it all Bea is their backbone and foundation

Thankfully before they do anything drastic, Cal touches a mirror and the ring of Deus Ex kicks in letting him talk to May. They all gather round and begin to put together the woo-woo necessary to get her home (May also takes the chance to defend Cal to Garvey who is still so angry).

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 3: Half Truths and Half Breeds

New character time - we have a bar and it all looks so old fashioned, I assumed it was a flashback for a while. We have a couple looking nicely pleasant and a man with a scarred eye and a lot of slurring and not-quite-racial commentary looking very ominous

They refer to each other as extended family - and then the scarred man, James, killed them both most brutally. And he manages to disarm the barman’s gun with a knife before sitting down, drinking and waiting for the police

The police arrive and May has James arrested before interviewing him because he gives everyone the extreme willies. He doesn’t have much to say, only chanting “they are coming” and demanding to speak to Calvin.

Calvin arrives and gets more cryptic from James, lots of “more are coming”, talking about the Herald’s call and how he drinks all the booze to try and dull it and then a cryptic poem about immortals which is clearly all about Isaac.

Clearly he’s supernatural, but since Calvin wants to keep all of this from May he plays ignorant after basically telling James if he wants to get out he has to free himself. Calvin then goes on to interview the barman after claiming everything is fine - oh and stands May up in the process.

She is not amused

James does release himself - with violence - and goes to Calvin’s house to hide out and he openly lies to May about him, challenging her to get a warrant.

All of this rather sours May on Calvin. She started this episode defending Calvin to Garvey, willing to meet with him to give him some tips and, when Garvey revealed the background info she’d dug up, assuring Garvey that that level of secrecy is common and understandable for a Marine (and I do like to see Garvey and May together) to officially being fecking done with Calvin and his secretive ways. Isaac worked with her, included her, shares information with her - and Calvin is just stonewalling.

Another family conflict is the briefly appearing Tilly who has a lot of questions about Isaac. Because finding out Isaac is an immortal makes her wonder how many more secrets he’s keeping and he keeps poking Bea about it. Bea is firm - Isaac has no secrets from her, yes she knows everything. She even used woo-woo with a goose tongue to prove it. Whether that works or not, Bea is clear, Isaac may be secretive with everyone else but he’s an open book to her

So, James. With much talk back and forth, partially in Spanish since James is Hispanic, we learn that James is basically half-infernal. And he and Isaac have been friends for a while - he even knows where Isaac keeps his hidden booze from their prohibition days. He says Isaac sent him to help look after things and kill Infernals while he’s away.

James also makes it pretty clear he’s not a nice guy. His Infernal side does drive him to kill people - he just channels that to kill Infernals. He doesn’t even try to claim he does it for the sake of goodness - just that he likes killing, loves killing.

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 2: The Dredge

After the pilot everything seemed to be terrible, the city was been torn up by snakey people, Bea was in a magical coma, Isaac was dead, Calvin traumatised and everything just falling apart. Add to this we now have May slowly beginning to panic as the town falls into chaos

Tilly shines through as the one on point - she keeps Calvin focused on keeping the land safe (helped by May) and helps May focus on getting Bea out of her magical coma; after which they can deal with everything else. Tilly is an excellent crisis leader

They use various woowoo with the collected coins, cupping and magic words to reach Bea and it all looks frightening and awful.

Bea is healed so that’s one bright spot, and greets the family after Calvin comes in from another awkward conversation with Garvey (he keeps calling himself her father, she points out father’s raise children - he’s a sperm donor. It’s all tense and complicated).

With Bea back they have to tell Bea about Isaac being dead… she keeps asking where he is as they euphemistically dance around it and think she hasn’t absorbed the truth until she says “I heard you, where is his body?”. She insists no matter what they say and shuts herself in a room with his body - and begins using Woo-woo. This woo-woo has a lot of Isis symbology (Isis the Egyptian goddess, obviously) and at the end of it Isaac is alive.

Bea comes out to tell everyone it was a close call and he’s sleeping. Everyone, especially Cal, isn’t exactly buying that on account of the whole decapitation and everything. This is not normally something someone gets over. Still she silences them for now and puts a pin in the conversation.

The next day I can only assume all the snakey possessed people have been dealt with as Calvin has time for another talk with Bea who tries the “some mysteries are better unknown” tactic which Calvin is not buying. Instead she says Isaac should tell them - and Calvin takes a moment to express the grief and horror he felt at nearly losing both of them.

He also tries to talk to May about Garvey to which she sensibly tells him that there’s no quick fix here; and he should listen more than he talks. While Garvey herself is getting friend/crush/possible boyfriend Russ to dig in the dark web to see all the info on Calvin he can. Which is that he’s had a very bloody tour of duty and that his last 3 years are super classified. Russ is also creepy and boundary pushing around Garvey.

Calvin continues the surreal tour of not-mentioning-the-immortality when he compares the new arsenal with Tilly. Again he makes a strong point that he has been a marine and he hasn’t forgotten everything from when he fought monsters at 18 - he constantly has to push against the idea he’s the amateur but I’m glad how he does it. He isn’t an arsehole about it, he just quietly reminds everyone he’s not a rookie and not to treat him like one

We finally get some insight into the whole alive thing when Isaac and Bea talk - coming back from the dead hurts more each time but Bea has tricks to make it easier and less traumatic. It’s clear that while Bea helps the process, Isaac comes back from the dead without her. She’s worried by how quickly Cal is chasing back into the fight with lots of reassurance that Cal is more than capable of stepping forward while Isaac heals. They also connect for some happy post-death sex which is heard through all the thin walls but Calvin manages to be mature over

Superstition, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

We open with a flashback and two kids running from badness in a cemetery. There’s lots of spookiness, lots of people with glowing red eyes as they run back to their parents who are locked, loaded and ready. But one child dies

The children were brothers Calvin and Arlo with Arlo being dead

Fast forward 16 years to Calvin returning home to the house after being in the army for the last decade or so - which shows just how much he wanted to run. He enters his family home and funeral parlour (the family business alongside monster hunting) and is lovingly welcomed home by his mother, Bea. And grudgingly respectfully welcomed by his dad Isaac but mainly because Bea gives him a Look.

They also interrupt a funeral but who doesn’t want a long term reunion scene (especially if it distracts from the creepy funeral where the body has been taxidermied). It’s also a nicely surreal homecoming as Bea neatly sums up how they’re renovated the house while also mentioning the anti demon measures they’ve taken - and doesn’t that perfectly encapsulate their lives? But Isaac makes his hostility clear, saying that Calvin “walked away from his life here” while Bea is quick to step in and make it far clearer she’s not standing for Isaac driving off her son.

So that’s all nicely awkward

So time to catch up with the bad guy. A man in black is using woo-woo to make snakes bite people (in a snake handling church so they kinda were asking for it, to be honest) and handing out a nasty snakey coin to one of the survivors.

In the aftermath we meet May, the Sheriff trying to bring some order to the chaos and getting the lady, Jessica home. Only at home Jessica becomes more snaky and then kills her room-mate via many many many nasty snake bites. They move her to a cell, in the dark because she can’t stand the light - and she sheds her skin. Definitely more than your average police force is expected to deal with

Thankfully May is in the Know and works with Isaac and family who she invites round to interview the snaky lady. Well, she invites Isaac round - Calvin doesn’t have clearance and is still very much persona non-grata (and Isaac makes another big display of putting him in his place). In fact, May is the only member of the police force in the know so even Isaac has to be sneaked in and out. They do find the coin and come with strict instructions not to touch it (almost too late) from Tilly

Whose Tilly? Tilly is a sassy goth coroner who looks like maaaaaybe one of the writers has been watching too much NCIS. She also performs the autopsy on the dead woman and finds she has been bitten by, pretty much, all the snakes ever despite no snakes being found on the scene. She works out of the Hasting’s house because they’re subcontracting space to the city morgue and it’s helpful to have a pathologist/woo-woo expert on staff.