A child’s plaything

A review of Chucky season 1. (Unmarked Spoilers)

Chucky is the latest iteration of the long-running Child’s Play series. Each installment concerns serial killer Charles Lee Ray aka Chucky (Brad Dourif). Right before his death, he transferred his soul into a doll, eventually learning how to split his soul into multiple vessels at once. And now he’s back in his hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey. 

The previews promised the return of several characters from the films besides Chucky. You have Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), Chucky’s original owner and longtime nemesis. Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), who Chucky possessed during her last appearance. Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), Chucky’s lover, who has possessed actress Jennifer Tilly in-universe. And Kyle (Christine Elise), Andy’s former foster sister.

In the pilot, Andy appears briefly over the phone, and the lady in red at the beginning is Tiffany, though that’s very easy to miss. If you’re like me, then you’re going to be asking yourself where the f**k is everybody because that’s it for the first four episodes. The series takes its time establishing the new characters, which I can see the logic of.

Chucky’s new owner is Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur), an artist who glues together old doll figurines to make sculptures more disturbing than all the previous Child’s Play films combined. He’s also an outcast, dealing with regular mistreatment by bullies and burgeoning homosexuality.

Jake’s father, Luke (Devon Sawa), initially comes off as a bit of a buzzkill, but only for raising reasonable concerns. Like how they don’t have art camp money or Jake should make some friends. However, Luke quickly slides into abusive territory when the subject of Jake’s gayness comes up. Then he destroys his son’s artwork in a drunken rage, which is no great loss but still not a very nice thing to do.

Chucky ends up killing Luke at the end of the first episode, so Jake goes to live with his dad’s wealthy twin brother Logan (Sawa). Logan abuses his own son, Junior (Teo Briones), but in a much different way by pushing him to be a runner. Ironically, Logan is one of the few characters to treat Jake with kindness.

Logan’s wife Bree (Lexa Doig) is hiding a dark secret, which we’re led to believe is that she’s having an affair. Instead, it turns out that she has cancer, and instead of treatment, Bree decides that she’s going to spend how much time she has left with her family. Naturally, Chucky kills her right after she’s come to that decision. You know, while Chucky’s been an a*shole since the franchise’s beginning, that’s got to be one of the worst things he’s ever done.

Jake’s crush, Devon Evans (Björgvin Arnarson), is a character who had a lot of potential that’s ultimately squandered. Outside of his true-crime podcast, relationship with his police detective mom, and seemingly being in Hackensack’s only black family, Devon has little characterization outside of being Jake’s love interest. Coupled with the duo’s lack of chemistry, I found myself uninvested in their relationship.

Notably, Chucky is way more manipulative here than he usually is. During the second episode, after he kills the Wheeler’s maid, Jake confronts Chucky about it, and Chucky gaslights him into believing that he didn’t do it and that it was an accident. Though Jake eventually wises up, Chucky even briefly convinces him that he’s his only friend and that Jake should kill Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind).

Lexy is the mayor’s daughter and older sister to Caroline (Carina Battrick), who’s implied, but not outright stated to be on the spectrum. Lexy also bullies Jake, even mocking him over his father’s death at one point, despite the fact she’s dating Junior. At the same time, much like Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Lexy doesn’t seem to comprehend how awful she is.

After Jake sics Chucky on Lexy because he can’t bring himself to kill her, Lexy seems surprised to learn that she’d hurt Jake’s feelings that much. As they work together to stop Chucky, Lexy asks why he didn’t try talking to her. “I didn’t think it would make a difference,” Jake says. “So you went straight to murder,” Lexy asks in response. The most annoying thing Lexy does in the whole season is make that valid point.

Along the way, we’re treated to several flashbacks that fill in the gaps of Chucky’s past. Besides how he first met Tiffany, we see a teenage Charles mentoring this young kid (Ivano DiCaro) who ends up being Eddie Caputo (Neil Giuntoli). (Ah, man, that’s going way back to the very first movie. I didn’t see that one coming.) But most importantly of all, we get an origin story about how Chucky became a killer.

At first, kid Charles seems to be a normal little boy. Until he bites into an apple that he knows has a razor blade in it. That’s a pretty blatant way of the show saying there was always something wrong with him. But mental illness like self-harm doesn’t necessarily translate into…he killed his mom as a young child to help out the Hackensack Slasher (Christopher Cordell), the serial killer who already killed his dad. With foreshadowing like that, I can’t say I’m that surprised.

The flashbacks also take advantage of how Fiona Dourif looks almost exactly like her father by also having her play a young Charles Lee Ray. The results are impressive and kind of freaky. And in the present, when she’s Nica-Chucky, she’s got the laugh down. Unfortunately, her role as Nica is underutilized. 

When Nica finally shows up with Tiffany in episode 5, it’s only to take five minutes catching new viewers up on what happened during Curse and Cult of Chucky. And that her possession didn’t completely take because there are periods where she’s able to regain control of her body. Do Nica’s struggles to regain control of her body go anywhere? Not really. 

Nica briefly poses as Chucky but gets found out by Tiffany immediately. But since Tiffany likes Nica more, she ties her up until she can find a way to deal with Chucky permanently. So Nica spends the whole season tied up or otherwise indisposed. The writers could have done way more with that whole storyline.

Tiffany says that there are times when she’s with Nica-Chucky, she can tell that Nica’s looking at her, not Chucky. While Nica’s distress makes it clear that it’s not meant to cast Tiffany as a good person, the word rape is never used. Much like Wonder Woman 1984, that’s two types of sexual assault double standards. Those are female-on-female rape and rape by magical means.

I’m sensing a bit of biphobia not only within the series but the franchise as a whole. Besides Tiffany, there’s Nica’s sister Barb (Daniella Bisutti), who, from the moment she’s introduced, you know is going to be the type of b***h who gets killed in every horror movie. The finale also reveals that Nica-Chucky has been sleeping with women and men. That’s the type of pattern that should change going forward.

One of my favorite aspects of the season is the callbacks to the movies. Jake demands Chucky talk to him, but without a fireplace, Chucky slaps him in response. The burnt hand Chucky from Cult says, “Hi, I’m…Charlie, want to play” in the episode reintroducing Kyle. Chucky says that guns are his kryptonite, along with fire, axes, and large industrial fans. Chucky tries to get Jake on his side by saying he was cool with his own queer kid. (oh, you liar)

What Chucky’s referring to with that last one is his gender fluid offspring Glen (Billy Boyd, Beans El-Balawi), aka S**tface, who was born at the end of Bride of Chucky, then became the main character of Seed of Chucky. S**tface is not a psycho killer, unlike the rest of their family, including Glen’s twin, Glenda (Boyd, Kristina Hewitt).

Many fans quickly noted that Jake’s teacher, Miss Fairchild (Annie Briggs), has curly red hair, just like human Glenda had at the end of Seed. She also looks like she could be a Douriff too. So, is Miss Fairchild revealed to be Glenda? Not as of the Season 1 finale. Yeah, the evidence supporting that theory was pretty flimsy, even if I was ready to jump to conclusions as soon as it was mentioned Miss Fairchild had a delinquent past.

After Chucky fails to make Jake a killer, he tries again with several other characters. He also murders the parents of a lot of people right in front of them. Why? Does it somehow tie into how he killed his mom as a child like I thought it would? Not even close. We find out Chucky wanted an innocent to murder someone to split himself into an army of dolls as part of this never mentioned before voodoo spell bullshit. A plot twist that just had me going ‘what.’

A recurring phrase throughout the show is ‘you’ve got guts, kid.’ The Hackensack Slasher says it about Charles. Teen Charles says that about Eddie. Chucky says that about Junior right before he finally murders his emotionally abusive father. Does that mean that Junior is going to become a notorious criminal himself? That would add a new, exciting dynamic to his relationship with Jake, Lexy, and the others that could span multiple seasons.

Instead, while killing his father was one thing, Junior hesitates to kill anyone else. Such as those he doesn’t know or likes, such as Nica and Devon. Then in the finale, Lexy convinces him to be good, and Junior dies taking a Chucky doll with him. Well, that cuts short a lot of potential storylines.

When Kyle finally shows up in ep. 6, it teases a little bit of friction between Andy and Kyle, the latter of whom seems disturbed that Andy kept the OG Chucky’s head alive to torture for four years. It turns out, being tormented by a children’s toy since the age of 6 isn’t good for your mental health. Andy also seemed to be holding off on telling Kyle about Nica’s possession.

I thought that was going to lead to this conflict where Andy was going to try to kill Nica to put Chucky down for good, and Kyle would try to stop him. Instead, the finale reveals that Kyle was aware of Nica’s possession, and the three of them never interact.

When Kyle and Andy finally make it to Hackensack during the last two episodes, do they team up with the new generation to stop Chucky once and for all? Nope. Kyle drugs Jake and Lexy to keep them out of danger before seeming to get caught in an explosion with Andy, seemingly killing them both, so the two of them barely interact with the show’s other cast members. Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted to happen.

Days before the finale aired, it was announced that the show had been renewed for a season 2, so that’s good. There are several characters from the films I want them to bring back. Glenda, if she’s not Ms. Fairchild, S**tface, Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), and Karen Barclay (Catherin Hicks). And for the love of God, have them interact with the new cast more.