I am now fully on board with the cartoon hippies of Crystal Lake. I’m smoking their grass, I’m dropping their acid, I’m rockin’ their van till no one comes a-knockin’. They’re simply too funny to resist anymore.
Funny on purpose, I mean. To me, that’s obvious, because the show is funny on purpose all the time. Claudette droning on about how the power of prayer can spiritually replace her hymen because “Jesus has a hard-on” for her, Barry teaching the kids how to row with a paddle by saying “cup the tip, guide the shaft, in and out, in and out” over and over, the dark dark comedy reveal that Claudette’s pastor is a pervert — this episode alone has ample evidence of the show’s comedic chops. But you can also think back to the brilliant splatstick comedy of Pamela’s fight with the Bellflower thugs, or the bawdy read-along that introduced us to Rita and the rest of the townsfolk.
In other words, when this show wants to be sharp, it is. And not just in the comedy department, either: The gap between how seriously Pamela, Lee, and Grace are taken versus the rest of the cast remains pretty vast, which by now seems deliberate. The point is that if Crystal Lake is ever stupid, it’s stupid like a fox.
I mean, for crying out loud, they’re giving Harmony, the lead hippie, dialogue like this:
“The straight world’s no place for our kind.”
“Our souls are vibrating at the same frequency.”
“Everyone’s waiting for us. We’re building a new society.”
“I get the suffocating hypocrisy of our male-dominated society.” (“Right on, sister,” her friend chimes in.)
Everyone making this is aware they’re just doing the Dragnet hippie episode on the shores of Crystal Lake, and everyone’s having a whale of a time with it. So am I.
I reviewed episode five of Crystal Lake for Decider.
Tags: crystal lake, decider, horror, TV, TV reviews