Spoilers follow for Chucky's second episode, "Give Me Something Good to Eat," which aired on Syfy on Oct. 19.
After a premiere which got things off to a strong start, Chucky resets the status quo with a more plodding second episode. “Give Me Something Good to Eat” finds Hackensack reeling from a pair of grisly murders carried out by Chucky (Brad Dourif), who’s still playing his cards uncharacteristically close to his chest. Where the premiere did a good job of introducing its new setting, this week it seems less adept at moving both the characters and the overarching story forward.
It’s a week on from Luke’s shocking death at the hands of Chucky, and Jake (Zackary Arthur) has moved in with his wealthy relatives across town. It’s not Jake’s tragedy, but he and Chucky’s ventriloquism performance at the talent show has Jake’s classmates buzzing. It’s enough social cachet to get him an invite to the big Halloween party. You know the one: impossibly massive mansion, parents away for a weekend in London, dozens of drunk kids, the one we never got invited to and we’re not still bitter about — that mansion. It’s clearly not Jake’s scene, but some encouragement from crush Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) gets him to roll the dice on attending. Jake and Devon’s budding relationship is still in its early stages, but Arthur and Arnarson’s chemistry and quiet admiration for each other is one of Chucky’s strong suits. For being set on Halloween, and for as popular in Hackensack Devon claims it is, this week’s episode doesn’t really use the holiday as more than window dressing.
“Give Me Something Good to Eat” spends more time with Junior (Teo Briones) and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Woods), as Chucky’s targeting of Lexy starts to raise flags with Jake’s cousin. This subplot, while being useful for fleshing out Junior and Lexy’s home lives, drags the episode down. Their paper-thin relationship and mutual disdain for Jake make it hard to sympathize with Junior’s conflicted feelings about his dad’s management of his athletic career, or with Lexy’s feeling invisible to her parents. It’s especially tough to feel bad for Lexy, whose Halloween costume of Jake’s dad mid-electrocution was astoundingly cruel. At this point, Chucky’s use of Breakfast Clubian teen archetypes feels like cutting corners on creating unique characters, so it’ll be worth keeping an eye on whether the show uses those tropes as a springboard to do something new. Either way, developing side characters enough to where the world of the show feels lived in while not straying too far from the story’s slasher roots is going to be a tough line for the show to walk.
The series continues to make good use of Chucky, even though his big, early kill was a bit underwhelming thanks to a truncated build-up. “Give Me Something Good to Eat” does drift a little more towards the campy Chucky of the ‘90s, with Chucky sneaking off to the big party by putting a mask on and going trick-or-treating to blend in. But the most interesting thing about Chucky so far is that, despite the fact that we’re learning more about Charles Lee Ray’s history, the doll is being used squarely as a way of exploring what’s going on in lead character Jake’s head.
The episode’s best scene is a simple conversation between Jake and Chucky, where Jake’s sexuality prompts Chucky to share that he’s a father to a queer kid himself, a callout to 2004’s Seed of Chucky, which makes me wonder how they’d update Glen/Glenda for a world just slightly more attuned to gender identity politics than it was 17 years ago. Chucky’s acceptance of Jake (“I’m not a monster, Jake”) represents an earnest connection between the two, held in tension with the fact that Chucky is using Jake’s insecurities against him, pushing the kid towards the self-righteous brutality for those who “deserve it” that he’s become an expert in.
Chucky as an avatar for another character’s emotional journey is a dynamic the Child’s Play series has dabbled in, but it’s working here better than it has in past installments, thanks in no small part to Arthur’s strong performance. Chucky’s return to his hometown is still shrouded in mystery. The episode opens on a flashback to Charles Lee Ray’s childhood, showing him happily taking a bite out of an apple he knows has a razor in it (because he’s crazy, get it!?), but with nothing to connect this vignette to the main story, it ends up feeling redundant. We already know Charles Lee Ray’s out of his mind; eating sharp fruit belabors the point a bit too much. Here I am criticizing a show about a serial killer who voodoo’d himself into a doll for excess.