“Something Got Daddy in the Lake”
By 
We haven’t talked much about it here but for the last two months I’ve been absolutely obsessed with Widow’s Bay...
Widow’s Bay arrived as a fully formed jackalope, so complete and natural in its combination despite its utter strangeness. The magic trick of creator Katie Dippold’s series, about a mayor named Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) who tries to bring tourism to his totally cursed island community, lies in its hard-to-describe tone. It’s an effortlessly brilliant comedy with the joke density of a sitcom, but it’s also effective horror, delivering enough legitimate scares to give pause to anyone recommending it to a comedy-loving scaredy-cat. Yet to label the show “horror-comedy” is insufficient. The defining Widow’s Bay moments happen where the two genres live in the same breath, each heightening the other — such as the Run card game in the second episode, “Lodging,” a simple and ingenious gag whose punch line prompts both a laugh and a thrilling chill down the spine. That laugh/dread carries all the way through to the finale, which lands in a genuinely tragic place: Tom has essentially failed to rid Widow’s Bay of its curse, leaving his son trapped on the island. But as viewers, it’s hard not to feel some delight in knowing we get to return to this hilarious and terrifying island now that Apple has renewed the show for another season. (The writers’ room is set to reassemble shortly.)
There are moments in the show that are genuinely terrifying, and they’re bracketed on either side by moments that are absolutely hilarious. There’s a mystery-box aspect but that’s not really the focus; beyond Matthew Rhys as Mayor Tom Loftis nobody on the show seems that interested in figuring out what’s going on or trying very hard to stop it, which makes me think that Widow’s Bay will avoid the Lost/X Files/BSG problem of lore-layering-as-substitute-for-plot. The setting is backdrop for careful, well-thought-out character building, and also sets up some moral quandaries that the characters need to take seriously despite the absurdity. A fun time all around; give it a chance if you haven’t already. Also… Kate O’Flynn and Stephen Root. Not to be missed.
Photo Credit: By PhilipRomano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=192676820