Marcos_El_Malo

Season 2 is almost perfect. It’s two tales of terror intertwined. One is the Japanese Ghost story brought to America by immigrants. The second is the historical terror wrought upon those immigrants (many were American Citizens) by a racist government. The ghost story aspect is good spooky fun and culturally grounded. It gave flesh to spooky stories told to me by family. Most importantly, the historical aspects were dead on. Everything rang true, every detail matched up to the family stories about that horror, of being caged like animals without trial based on your physical characteristics and country of origin. And making the best of it. And remaining loyal patriotic Americans despite it, even, as some did, giving their lives to defend our country and democracy worldwide. I’m giving this a 9 because there are a few places where the script dragged. That’s just me being honest—the pacing problems were few, but they’re there imo. Performances were good to great, with the standout being George Takei, portraying the old fisherman and community elder. (Honestly, the performance was uncanny because he looked, talked, and acted like my late Uncle Michi, although Michi was a teen at the time of the camps.) One other aspect I really appreciated as an Angelino was the intersection of the story with Mexican culture, and later blending in of Mexican folklore with the Japanese folklore. This was done well. I shudder to think of the hash that lesser writers could have made with it. The writers obviously have a profound understanding and love for Los Ángeles, and I freaking dig that.

I wasn’t a fan of the original. Never seen it. I did watch the first half hour of the pilot, before exiting in disgust. Honestly, I really wanted to love this show. It seemed like it would be right up my alley. The production design (Maria Coso) is fantastic as is the cinematography and costume design. More latinx representation? Addressing gentrification? L.A. history? Noir? I am totally down. Others have complained about the over abundance of plot threads. A well written script might have been able to weave those threads together, but this is not well written. The use of the Arroyo Seco Parkway instead of the more commonly used Chavez Ravine was encouraging, making me hope that there would be some depth here. But no. Within the first half hour, it became clear that the pilot’s writer had a very superficial understanding of Los Angles culture, especially Los Ángeles Mexican American culture. It’s as if he **** some significant historical highlights from Wikipedia, sprinkled in some high school Spanish vocabulary, and called it a day. It’s as if some white guy latched on to an injustice against minorities without bothering to learn much (beyond reading the Wikipedia article) about that minority. I realize that part of the job of the writer here is to take a spooky supernatural element and push it into a blood chillingly unfamiliar form, but the writer NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND the cultural elements with which he is working. Anything less is doing a disservice to the culture. Insulting it, or worse. I can’t be more specific without spoiling the plot, but I’m basically unhappy with the characterization of an important Mexican holiday that is conveyed by Mexican American characters themselves. When your own characters are that ignorant of their own culture, you’re not doing your job as a writer. There are a fair amount of Spanish surnames on the cast and crew list, so I suppose we can be happy about the jobs. I just really hate it when minorities get exploited like this. You want a better ghost story with more authentic minority cultural representation, go watch The Terror: Infamy.