IT: Welcome To Derry (HBO Max)

King has a tendency to admire movie adaptations that he thinks are better than his books. But this isn’t just better than IT. IT was a shitty book and I’m betting deep down King knows it. What I would find problematic if I were him is that it’s better than MOST of his great books. Not all of them. But King had a great premise and turned it into a shitty book. This show takes that great premise and turns it into one of the best King-adjacent projects EVER. Writers have pride. If I were King I’d feel a bit resentful.

Ironically the IT movies, despite not having the shitty ending the book did (deliberately, I believe) were hit and miss otherwise. I might have expected an IT prequel series to be awesome if it came from this huge creative visionary who tends to have a magic touch with established franchises (say, Noah Hawley). Nope, it’s still from the same dude who directed The Flash movie.

Let me tell you the show’s genius. I don’t think it will be sustain past this specific season, but it’s genius because the horror genre’s biggest fault is the victims doing stupid shit. You’re screaming at the screen or the TV for the dumb idiot to run outside instead of upstairs. Show some fucking common sense!

This show does an appalling thing that it can do, just because folks are familiar with what a cesspool Derry is not just from IT, but from King’s later works like Gwendy’s Final Task and 11/22/63. And every time the black characters do a correct, morally righteous thing, the audience deep down wants them to hush up and move on.

Isn’t that the absolute worst instinct you can instill in a viewer? They say horror is inherently conservative genre, and I’m not 100% sure I agree with that. I think what many people confuse for conservatism might simply be down to crappy writing. In fact that seems likely to me.

But THIS?! That! That!

I LIKE the Hanlons. I know that the people of the town of Derry are just as evil deep-down as IT. So it galls me when Mrs. Hanlon breaks up a fight with some white boys beating on a kid my mind is screaming “Move on and mind your own damn business!”

Frankly, I am not even sure this is even a GOOD button to push. But it’s an uncomfortable one, and I think good horror needs to make people uncomfortable.

Speaking of Derry people being shitty, last week I mistook Marge for annoying, but harmless. Now I’m thinking this is the girl who in a crowd filled with people stands up and points at a cringing woman and shrieks “SHE’S A WITCH!” before they descend upon her. And I’m thinking Marge is not just the first person to yell that, she’s the person to put the idea in their heads in the first place.

And this IS Derry. The chances that she’ll remain a comical character in this specific town are about nil.

I mentioned if I were King I might resent this show. The idea that the U.S. Army is searching for Pennywise to weaponize IT in the Cold War is better than anything he possibly could have done with this premise, including Dandelo in The Dark Tower. King has about a half dozen books better than this show (so far). But lord, not many.

It blows my fucking mind. Do you know what kills me? In his youth, King as a nonfiction writer was a total snot. I couldn’t stand his Author’s forwards, and the book Danse Macabre is a fucking joke. The guy curses to be edgy instead of doing it to be realistic. He’s an elitist boogersnot who while supposedly standing for small-town America always portrays them as dumb hicks. But the thing I loathe most about Danse Macabre beside the shitty prose is that King takes this huge dump on how worthless television is.

I’m a TV guy. I know how shitty it is. Believe me. One of the harshest criticisms I can level at a project is saying “That was television.”

But… But… The truth is I’ve always seen the value there and King was such a pretentious piece of crap in his 20’s and 30’s he could never imagine the possibilities you COULD do with television under the right circumstances. It never occurs to him there could potentially be value there. If I were King, and I made those dumbass opinions I WOULD feel resentful for a TV show not just eating the lunch of the book I wrote it was based on. But for eating my lunch on most of my other stuff too.

I do have to keep in mind that as great as this has been so far it’s still television. And television rarely sticks the landing. King wasn’t actually wrong about much of it sucking. The thing is it sometimes (rarely and wonderfully) CAN stick the landing and we’re all better in rare cases it does.

Will Welcome To Derry be one of those TV shows (at least for season 1)? After these two near-perfect episodes I am rooting for that to be the case. 5 stars.