<\/p>\n
On this week\u2019s flashback episode of the Apple TV horror\u2013comedy miracle Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em><\/a>, it\u2019s 1702, and Sarah (Betty Gilpin) is on a ship headed to the titular island, having been granted a reprieve from spinsterhood because widower Richard Warren, the island\u2019s founder and Lord Protector, has five kids and needs a new wife. The first islander Sarah interacts with is a weirdly pleasant wagon driver who picks her up at the pier. He praises Sarah\u2019s soon-to-be-husband for making the trees bloom and the winters milder. Trying to joke a little with the guy, Sarah says, \u201cHe controls the weather, does he?\u201d (Gilpin\u2019s self-conscious delivery is perfect.) The driver\u2019s reply is to quote Warren himself: \u201cNo. But a cold breeze cuts half as quick when you\u2019ve got a warm home and a strong coat.\u201d The man\u2019s excessive positivity immediately gives you the creeps, especially when he proceeds to drive the cart right past a villager\u2019s cabin where a man is sitting up in bed, looking sick unto death. A woman in the cabin sees Sarah staring and closes the door; it\u2019s marked with a scarlet \u201cX.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not already watching Widow\u2019s Bay,<\/em> you really should be. As its growing legions of fans know, this is a show that refuses to submit to the sameness that marks streaming TV, offering instead a distinctive point of view that\u2019s so confident, it dominates your attention. You cannot second-screen with phone or laptop while watching Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em>. You\u2019d miss slapstick set pieces, on-point cultural references that work without being annoying (harder than it sounds!), props that each nail a single perfect in-universe joke<\/a>, and dialogue showcasing the cast\u2019s excellent comic timing. All of this fun stuff is highly necessary, because without it, you\u2019d be scared out of your wits. Bad things are afoot in Widow\u2019s Bay\u2014at every turn, there\u2019s a cabin with an \u201cX.\u201d<\/p>\n This week\u2019s twin episodes of Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em>, coming two-thirds of the way through the first season, are a turning point for the show, and a good illustration of its deft approach to plot, theme, and meaning. We get \u201cOur History,\u201d the Sarah Warren flashback episode directed by horror genre stalwart Ti West, and \u201cSeasickness,\u201d directed by Sam Donovan, a return to the present in which our heroes, island mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) and fisherman Wyck (Stephen Root) believe that, having dug up Richard Warren and seen he\u2019s still alive, they\u2019ve solved the mystery of the island\u2019s curse. People born on Widow\u2019s Bay die if they try to leave, and the island is haunted by mysterious outbreaks of violence. Could it really be true that all Loftis, Wyck, and their co-conspirator Patricia (Kate O\u2019Flynn) need to do to fix everything is to take zombie Warren out to sea, past the island\u2019s sphere of influence, so that he will finally die?<\/p>\n Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> treats history with the same perfect light touch it has for horror. The character of Richard Warren is played as a grim and looming presence by Hamish Linklater, last most memorably seen as the priest of a flock on a different slowly dying island on Mike Flanagan\u2019s Netflix horror series Midnight Mass<\/em><\/a>. But this terrifying leader is also very funny, as when Loftis and Wyck feed him Starkist tuna and canned vienna sausages, and Linklater scarfs them up with the gusto of a rooting hog. <\/em>Loftis, sitting across from Warren, gags, and we can add another perfectly-timed Matthew Rhys facial expression to the long list of great ones<\/a> we\u2019ve gotten from Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em>. This exalted founder, we discover, is just a human who wants to keep on living\u2014and who, when he gets in a scuffle with Wyck, yells in his basso profundo voice, \u201cI\u2019m gonna make you eat my dick!\u201d<\/p>\n We know from tagging along on a visit to the historical society in an earlier episode that the first white settlers to arrive on the island of Widow\u2019s Bay found nothing there\u2014except, as the docent adds forebodingly, \u201cthe teeth.\u201d In that first winter, the settlers struggled, and the struggle led Warren to make some kind of devil\u2019s bargain\u2014the effects of which the island is still feeling. This backstory evokes that of any number of European colonies in New England and Virginia whose early years were not promising. In the context of Jamestown, this was called the \u201cstarving time<\/a>,\u201d those first winters of labor, hunger, sickness, and death that would either kill a colony or become a dark origin story<\/a> full of anecdotes that would confound later residents who\u2019d prefer a more heroic and noble usable past. (In the case of actual colonies, part of this story was warfare with the local Native tribes, an element absent from the history of Widow\u2019s Bay\u2014at least, from what we\u2019ve seen so far.)<\/p>\n