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Written by creator Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation) and directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta), the aptly titled series premiere \u201cWelcome to Widow\u2019s Bay!\u201d introduces us to Tom Loftis, mayor of the titular town on an island off an unspecified stretch of New England coast. A former summer tourist himself \u2014 he had a shotgun wedding with a townie, leading to the birth of his son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) \u2014 Tom is convinced Widow\u2019s Bay has the potential to be \u201cthe next Bar Harbor.\u201d He\u2019s invited a New York Times travel writer, Arthur Lloyd (Bashir Salhuddin), to check the place up in hopes of driving up business.<\/p>\n
In the process receives virtually no help worthy of the name from any of the assistants on his staff: dolorous Patricia (Kate O\u2019Flynn), gossipy Rosemary (Dale Dickey), ancient Ruth (K Callan), or nebbishy Dale (Jeff Hiller). His mildly delinquent pothead son Evan adds to his agita, and to that of the slightly run-down town\u2019s sheriff, Bechir (Kevin Carroll). Between an anomalous earthquake and a strange fog bank rolling in off the ocean, even nature is refusing to cooperate.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s nothing compared to the consternation caused when Wyck cranks up the town\u2019s World War II\u2013era air raid siren to warn the townsfolk about the coming fog. It seems Widow\u2019s Bay has a long, long, looooooong history of \u201cbad things\u201d happening, things Tom is determined either not to learn about or dismiss as superstition and old sailor\u2019s tales. I mean, surely there\u2019s nothing to the legend of \u201cThe Fog That Stole Souls,\u201d or the zombies of shipwrecked sailors out to avenge a drowned captain\u2019s young bride. (Wyck and Patricia have a brief disagreement about age-gap relationships as a result.)<\/p>\n
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And all that stuff Arthur learns from town historical society worker Gerrie (Nancy Lenehan) about the cannibalism in the church, or the witch hunt? (\u201cGreat source of pride. We caught \u2019em, we burned \u2019em\u2026\u201d) These stories get so exaggerated over the years. And the serial killer called \u201cthe Boogeyman\u201d whose memory still haunts Patricia, one of his survivors? \u201cHe murdered teenage girls,\u201d Tom points out. \u201cYou\u2019re in your 40s, you\u2019d be fine!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s certainly nothing to the idea that those born on the island drop dead if they ever leave it, which Tom would know, since son Evan has definitely been to the mainland before, right? And it\u2019s probably got nothing to do with why his mom\u2019s no longer around.<\/p>\n
But Tom\u2019s skepticism is sorely tested when he\u2019s attacked by Shep (Tom Kemp), a boat captain who disappears overnight and staggers ashore sopping wet hours later. In the hospital alone with Tom, his eyes roll over white just like in Wyck\u2019s legends, and he viciously attacks Tom before collapsing again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The event rattles Tom badly enough to make a big scene in front of Arthur the travel writer later that night, begging townsfolk not to go out into the dark. \u201cThere\u2019s something in the fog!\u201d he screams\u2026moments before the lights come back on and the fog lifts. Arthur assumes he\u2019s going for a Salem vibe and assures him his town, which could be another Martha\u2019s Vineyard, doesn\u2019t need the haunted-house gimmick.<\/p>\n
Of course, Arthur doesn\u2019t know he\u2019s standing above several layers of tunnels and dungeons above a torture chamber and a sealed passage to the underworld or something as he says this. Neither does Tom, but I\u2019ve got a feeling he\u2019s gonna find out.<\/p>\n
Widow\u2019s Bay is like Stranger Things<\/a> if it had the smarts to be satirical. Dippold\u2019s expertlly targeted script draws on many of the same reference points as the Netflix blockbuster, though it\u2019s more Stephen King than Steven Spielberg. But it proceeds from the idea that unless you\u2019re a fake 1980s D&D kid, statements like \u201cthe fog took him\u201d don\u2019t really pass muster as an explanation for why one of your neighbors has disappeared, no matter how many horror paperbacks you\u2019ve read. It works backwards from there: \u201cOkay, so what would people who do find this an acceptable explanation actually look like to a normal person?\u201d The people of Widow\u2019s Bay are your very funny answer.<\/p>\n But none of this comes across as mean-spirited dunking on a harmless horror subgenre because of the superb casting of the show\u2019s lead. Long one of the best actors on television, Matthew Rhys is exceedingly good at seeming uncomfortable. In a drama, this is a quality that generates empathy: It\u2019s what helped sell his torment as a conflicted deep-cover spy in The Americans<\/a> and a frequently roughed-up detective in Perry Mason<\/a>, one of David Zaslav\u2019s most egregious HBO casualties.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a comedy, however, this is straight-man energy, of the increasingly frazzled sort that John Cleese used to radiate on Fawlty Towers<\/a>. I\u2019ve heard Widow\u2019s Bay described as \u201ca Stephen King town run by the mayor from Jaws<\/a>,\u201d but it actually does feel a lot like Basil Fawlty\u2019s Darkplace, or a giant Halloween episode of The Office: a pasty-faced, condescending jerk who desperately wants to drum up business can\u2019t stop getting in his own way, or stop his contentious employees from doing it for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most importantly for a comedy, Widow\u2019s Bay is funny as hell. A lot of the humor is just straight-up workplace comedy, really, but look at this exchange between Tom and Gerrie (haha):<\/p>\n \u201cRemarkable story. Forty-two passengers from the mainland embarked by sea to find a settlement they could call their own.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, no, 43 passengers embarked\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI, I, I think it\u2019s a little early for that story, Gerrie. But imagine arriving in an untamed wilderness. Blank canvas. Totally empty island.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cExcept for the teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe\u2026yeah, but the point I\u2019m trying to make here is that there were no people here, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n Or this one, between Dale and Tom and Rosemary:<\/p>\n \u201cSo I guess you don\u2019t want me to take him to the old hospital?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I don\u2019t, Dale, and I think you knew that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s perfectly safe to drive by the old hospital! You just can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n The weirdness keeps bubbling up all over the place, and Tom keeps scrambling to keep it from surfacing. It\u2019s a great set-up for situation comedy, one as old as the chocolate factory bit on I Love Lucy. It just involves cannibalism now.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com<\/a>\u00a0on Bluesky and\u00a0theseantcollins<\/a>\u00a0on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>. He is the author of\u00a0Pain Don\u2019t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cShut it down. Shut it all down. It\u2019s starting\u2026.Close the port. Shutter the businesses. Sound the siren\u2026.You refuse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[171021,88,270292,6842,96361,270293,270294,56601,15823,98402,92],"class_list":["post-624286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-dale-dickey","tag-entertainment","tag-hiro-murai","tag-horror","tag-jeff-hiller","tag-kate-oflynn","tag-katie-dippold","tag-matthew-rhys","tag-stephen-king","tag-stephen-root","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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