Recapping and reviewing.

Chucky Season 3 is here so I figured what better time than the present to talk about Chucky Season 1 and 2. Spoilers by the way.

Before Chucky aired I was not at all scared that the show would be crap. Granted Chucky had already been in the territory of direct to dvd budget for years, so what’s the worst that switching to network television could do? If anything they’d probably have a bigger budget. Don Mancini was still around and most of the cast were reprising their roles. It should be smooth sailing, right? Right.

Chucky Season 1 introduces us to the main three of Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) and Lexy (Alyvia Lind). Jake and Devon are in lesbian with each other and Lexy is there to be the third wheel and also be in a relationship with Junior (Teo Briones) who I’m sure many of us couldn’t wait to see die. Naturally we got Brad Dourif back voicing Chucky, Jennifer Tilly as Jennifer Tilly possessed by Tiffany played by Jennifer Tilly. Wow this plot is getting ridiculous. Oh and Alex Vincent is back as Andy and Christine Elise as Kyle from Child’s Play 2. And Fiona Dourif as Nica from Curse of Chucky.

I actually liked the whole subplot in season 1 where you start out wondering why Chucky is so eager to convince Jake to become a serial killer, for him to move on to Junior. A sign of the show’s good writing that I honestly started questioning whether Jake would actually murder Lexy. And who can blame him? She spends most of the first season as a comically evil bitch. I get teenagers are basically sociopaths, but if there’s one thing to make you feel almost bad for Jake’s dad it’s her dressing up as him being electrocuted as a cruel Halloween joke.

And speaking of Jake’s dad, we get Devon Sawa in the first two of several roles playing Logan Wheeler and then Lucas Wheeler. We get to see flashbacks of Chucky growing up to learn that he’s always been a sociopathic serial killer in the making, eventually assisting in killing his own mother and going on a murder spree throughout the years. I’m normally not big on series insisting on explaining everything, and this is no different. Did we really need to know how Chucky got caught leading up to the first movie? Or how he learned of the voodoo spell? Seriously?

The real standout role here of course is Fiona Dorif who has to play Nica and her father and does it incredibly well. You can tell she’s been impersonating her dad for years by this point and loves the series as much as her dad does. Fiona has to simultaneously play a paraplegic terrified young woman but also a serial killer inhabiting the body of a young woman, and switch between both at a moment’s notice. She also has to play 80s Charles Lee Ray.

If there’s one thing both seasons share in common it’s the deaths. Child’s Play has never been bereft of inventive deaths and the show is no different. A lot of broken necks and decapitated bodies, but still each death is just as interesting as the last. I’m not sure how they’ve managed to go this far and still keep the killing fresh, but they do it. It’s funny to think that some of these actors were not so recently on Nick Jr. shows, like Carina Battrick as Caroline Cross, Lexy’s probably deeply autistic little sister.

Man Caroline Cross is a really talented child actor, because I really hated her over the course of the show. I’m still holding out hope that Zackary and Björgvin might find their acting legs, but they haven’t done so yet. Arthur emotes through pretty much every emotion like he’s constantly holding in a big shit, and Amarson comes right out of the school of Russian emotions. Lexy gets better as the season goes on, as does Junior. Fiona Dourif of course is the gold standard and Caroline Cross is in my #2 spot.

I know there’s a lot of debate on this, but season 2 in my opinion was a massive step up from season 1. It’s the first time I’ve been genuinely intrigued by a story beat, that being the multiple Chuckies and the weirdly shifting factions. It’s the first time I’ve been floored by a character death, assuming incorrectly that the adorable Nadine (Bella Higginbotham) could never be killed. And my personal favorite returning characters are Glen and Glenda, both played by Lachlan Watson.

Devon Sawa is of course back in season 2, going from dad to father as Father Bryce. You can tell that this character arc comes from the heart as Don Mancini wrote parts of the series based on his own experience being a gay kid bullied by his dad. Jake gets dealt as bad a hand with father figures as he does with constipation medicine. Seriously, someone get this kid a laxative so he can emote something other than anguished cramping. Glen and Glenda are both genderfluid and played by a nonbinary actor.

Oh and Fiona Dourif has to play a quadruple amputee this season. Have I mentioned this show is really weird? It’s too bad Lachlan is (presumably) out of the show completely as the characters are dead and GG is back in their doll body and probably won’t even be in the show this season. But boy are there a lot of twists.

So where does that leave us for season 3? Well Tiffany and Caroline are in New York City, as is Nica who is busy tormenting the two of them. Assuming Chucky didn’t kill her at the end of the episode. Jake, Devon, and Lexy are presumably going to be hunting down Tiffany and trying to rescue Caroline. Andy is somewhere, as is Kyle however while Alex Vincent is confirmed to return in Season 3 I don’t believe Kyle is listed in the credits yet.

Meanwhile where else would season 3 kick off but the White House. Devon Sawa is back as President definitely-going-to-get-murdered. We’ll see how it goes.