Okay Matthew Rhys, You're Just Showing Off Now. In A Related Story, Widow's Bay is Awesome

 

 

I'm not unaware when certain TV shows hit the sweet spot between critical and cultural hits. So of course when it became clear that Apple TV's new series Widow's Bay had managed to crack the cultural phenomena I last associated with the first two seasons of The Bear I took notice. But there were other shows on my to-do list. So I didn't get involved.

Then the Astras showed it love and I was intrigued but I made it clear I wasn't going to deal with it during my picks for Best Comedy and I stuck to that vow. Then in the last week both the Dorian Awards and the TCA each gave it a lot of nominations. So I compromised. I wasn't going to list in my decision making but I'd watch the first two episodes and judge for myself.

To be clear this is not the kind of series such as Adolescence or Ozark that I was going to need to be dragged kicking and screaming into watching. It had several of my favorite actors associated with it, including the incomparable Matthew Rhys. It's a given that Rhys was going to get nominated for the Emmys this year for his incredible work in the limited series The Beast In Me and that he'd be intended the show as a nominee along with his wife Keri Russell, quickly rising in the odds for Best Actress in a Drama for her work in The Diplomat.  The series had several actors I admire immensely for their work in other shows most notably the incredible Stephen Root and such familiar faces like Dale Dickey. I suspected the buzz was incredibly well earned.

And having gotten to the first two episodes by the end of this week I know why everybody loves this show. A large part of it is because of the work by Rhys as Tom Loftis, the mayor of the title town who hates this job and the people in it, only won the job because he ran unopposed (the implication is that nobody wants to hold this position) and is now determined to make Widow's Bay the next Nantucket.  The only doubt I had about this show going in was whether or not Rhys could do comedy. Rhys is one of the greatest actors in the 21^st century when it comes to TV but the one thing he hasn't done in twenty years is comedy, even by the loose standards of Widow's Bay, which is clearly a mix of both horror and satire.

That small obstacle was overcome when the mayor came wafting into the town angry and more concerned about the fact a reporter from the Times was coming then that one of his citizens had disappeared the night before.  One of the first questions Loftis is asked is: "Why are you mayor if you hate this town so much?" Tom deflects by saying: "And let someone else run it?" Every moment we spend with Tom I'm reminding of that cliché Eddie Murphy said about white people in horror movies: "You see blood in the toilet; you go get Ajax."  In Widow's Bay everyone in the town is very aware of all the bad things about it but haven't moved – in large part because of the wives tale that those who go to the mainland die not long after leaving. Tom denies these tales and says he's gone to the mainland many times – but he stresses in the pilot he wasn't born here.

Rhys compared his character as the Mayor in Jaws the man whose trying to drum up tourism just as boating accidents become prominent in the small town.  Rhys plays Tom as someone who absolutely would be the voice of reason in most places but because everyone else knows this is a horror movie is the biggest prick imaginable. This is particularly true every time he clashes with Wyck (Root) the town elder, who makes it very clear that a terror is coming to Widow's Bay. "Is that worse then a haunt but better than a fright?" Tom scoffs.

Root, as anyone who watched Barry knows, is an expert at playing between horror and comedy, often within the same moment.  As Wyck he makes it very clear he knows what Tom is: it's not that he's self-righteous, it's that Tom is a coward, full of big talk and no action. Wyck has been through it in a way the much younger Tom hasn't, but the incredibly arrogant Tom pretends there's nothing to see here, even as the strange just piles on.

When Tom shares his memories of this town (in keeping with the satire, he's only open with a ghost) he makes it clear that his father was a local and married his mother and they got divorced young. He ended up staying here on the summers and he makes it very clear that Mr. Loftis was verbally abusive to him and told him horror stories. Because Tom is very much a man of the 21^st century he blames what Mr. Loftis told him on alcoholism. It never occurs to him for a moment that the reason Mr. Loftis got drunk was because of the horrors he might very well have seen on this town.

And while I've described this show to make it sound like a horror film, it's actually hysterically funny from the start. When the reporter from the Times shows up early Tom is appalled to know he's been brought to the Historical Society. He gets there just in time to be told why this town is called Widow's Bay and then spends the next several minutes desperately trying to drag him out before he looks to closely. A highlight comes when the reporter says: "Did church people resort to cannibalism." "What? No?! Where's you see that?" Tom says. The reporter then points to a paper with the headline "Church people resort to cannibalism." Tom then spends the next several seconds trying to polish this saying: "They didn't immediate get there" before sending the reporter to go to certain places on a map that won't give him the wrong impression. In Widow's Bay that's basically four places.

Kate Dippler, the showrunner, has also cast Widow's Bay full of the kind of character actors who have the faces and voices that scream 'some weird shit is going to go down'. So far in addition to Root and Dickey, I've already spotted Christian Clemenson, K Callan and Jeff Hiller as townspeople and while none have had much dialogue their faces and expressions are in the sweet spot between 'wide-eyed yokel' and 'going to get killed by axe wielding murderer'.  And Kate O'Leary, Tom's secretary, adds incredible comic power by the sense that she clearly doesn't know the right thing to say but cares about this town.

It doesn't help Tom that every line out of his mouth is designed to insult the townspeople. When O'Leary's character tells him about how when she was sixteen she was assaulted by a killer known as 'The Boogeyman' and this has scarred her for life, a frustrated Tom says: "Well you're in your forties now. I'd say you're safe." Tom gets into a loud yelling match with Wyck in the second episode about how haunted the inn is and Tom eventually shouts :"F--- you, you dumb hick!" Unfortunately there's a very large crowd gathered around. Tom knows he's stepped in it so he goes out of his way to agree to stay at the inn that night and do every myth related to it.

It's in this episode that it helps that the main director behind Widow's Bay is that immense talent Hiro Murai, who ever since he collaborated with Donald Glover on Atlanta has been one of the great forces for surrealism in television. This is his first venture into horror TV directly and you can tell he's perfect for it during the night at the inn which absolutely plays like something not far removed from 'Teddy Perkins'. Tom stays in the Captain's Suite and turns on the TV which seems to show an old recording of Widow's Bay. "I'll show you around," the man on the screen says. Then the man wanders offscreen but the camera stays put. Of course Tom starts changing the channels and nothing but the footage is there and eventually the old man resurfaces and the screen blows out. Tom ends up going to the game closet which has a group of bizarre games in them, including a card game that just says RUN. He draws four straight cards that say: "NOT YET" and then one that says "RUN".

Widow's Bay  has all the things I love about any superb TV show in its first two episodes. It's a pastiche on the genre but it has immense respect for it.(The title itself is clearly a satire of Stephen King's Salem's Lot and there are countless easter eggs in the first two episodes alone to the master.) Like many of the characters the viewer doesn't know how much to trust what they're seeing early on, though the later we get it makes it clear that the horror is real. It's superbly written, directed and acted by some of the greatest forces in the medium. And it’s a far more genuine satire of the horror movie experience then we get these days from Scream which has long since become a ghost of itself.

Only the first seven episodes of Widow's Bay are eligible for consideration by the Emmys for this year. And it's unclear if the Emmys will be willing to give it the recognition it deserves: historically the Academy rarely gives enough recognition to shows that debut this late in the season (the show debuted in late April and only aired its final episodes earlier this month). But I'd have no objections if Rhys and the writers and directors were among the nominees this fall. I wouldn't go anywhere near the town of Widow's Bay but I gladly watch all of the scary things that happen there.

My score: 4.5 stars.