Each week, Joe and Terry discuss Apple TV+’s new series The Changeling, based on the novel by Victor LaValle.

Miss a recap? 1-3 / 4

Spoilers follow for Episode 5

JOE

Terry…I’m frustrated (again).

There’s elliptical storytelling that forces audiences to piece together a narrative by weaving together disparate timelines. There’s repetition that illuminates and opens up previously unknown avenues.

And then there’s whatever The Changeling is doing, which is revisiting the same material time and again, albeit for very little pay-off.

Take, for example, the ten minute cold open in episode five. We see more details of Emma (Clark Backo)’s time in São Paulo, and actually see her take the picture that photographer Leif Knudsen eventually sells to a gallery in Norway. It’s a strong, striking picture, and (like most things in The Changeling) it comes back in the episode’s closing moments as it connects to William (Samuel T. Herring)’s story. To hammer the point home, there’s even a repeat of Michelle (Rasheda Crockett)’s line from the first episode that Emma is looking at the camera/audience “like a fucking sorceress.”

It’s good stuff…but it’s not new. And that’s my big complaint about the series as we move into the back half: we’ve seen too much of this before and not enough of it feels revelatory.

There are good moments in the back half of this episode as we get a tour of “Estrogen Island” from Cal (Jane Kaczmarek). Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield) even begins to open his eyes to the fable that he and Emma have wandered into, but it also feels a little too late. A recurring issue with disbelieving characters in horror/fantasy stories is that the audience is almost always ahead of them, which means we’re constantly waiting for them to catch up.

That’s what’s happening here: clearly there is something supernatural/malevolent/witchy happening here; it’s just a question of who Apollo can trust.

Which is why something like Gretta’s late-in-the-episode revelation that William is a liar and a villain doesn’t work. The Changeling presents this as a shocking development (Apollo is floored, and immediately runs over to William’s cell to confront him), but given everything we learned about the man’s deception last episode, this feels expected.

Of course William isn’t what he appears; of course he defaced the prized copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and, of course, he used his wife’s $70K to buy it. We may not have had all of the details before now, but the confirmation that William is a shady dude? It’s a bit of a “no duh” development.

Alas The Changeling never seems aware that the audience is already in the know. Everything is presented as a twist or a shock, and virtually nothing in this middle stretch has been. Even the fact that William was affected by the witchcraft embedded in Emma’s painting doesn’t truly shock. It’s interesting, but also has a ring of ho-hum / “so what?”

The performances on the show are still great and there’s a moody atmosphere that makes it watchable (see: the island’s inhabitants arriving by lantern for puppet time in the dark). But the episode runtimes and the glacial storytelling is turning The Changeling into something of a grind for me.

Terry, do you feel the same as me or are you enjoying the slow, repetitive narrative approach? Did you appreciate seeing more of Emma’s backstory here? And are you uncomfortable with the show’s (vaguely racist) use of Emma’s natural hair in her “crazy” scenes?

TERRY

When I finished this latest episode, I had to sit there wondering why it wasn’t resonating with me. This episode’s structure is completely my kind of narrative, Joe. The way we flit in and out of flashbacks to showcase the various ways in which everything is connected, or happened before, contained some beautiful filmmaking.

Your comment that The Changeling thinks these moments are revelatory is where the issues start creeping in. The thing is, they should be revelatory. They should hit harder than they do.

My issue is that showrunner Kelly Marcel tipped her hand a little too early in the preceding episodes. This is not the fault of the show because it is an adaptation, but even the title of the show primes genre viewers for what’s actually unfolding. So, as you said, we’re waiting for the characters to catch up with us, instead of living in the moment with them, wondering what the heck is going on.

I will say that I didn’t see William’s defacement of To Kill a Mockingbird coming. I knew he was a bad guy, who’s spent most of the season lying to Apollo. I think it goes back to the performances, which, I agree, are mostly great throughout. Samuel T. Herring is really good at painting William like a decent guy who messed up and is trying to keep his family together.

Last episode, I actually felt bad for him as he broke down in front of Apollo and Patrice (Malcom Barrett). That felt like a genuine moment in between all of the red flags that kept popping up.

So I honestly believed that he was sending the book to Gretta, not as a way of taunting her, but as a last ditch effort to get in touch with her. As we learned more information about him, I thought the intent behind sending the book was different than he was letting on (less tearful reunion, more “I must find them”), but, as someone who grew up with a family that collected first editions…I gasped at this reveal.

I think the biggest problem with this episode is that it feels like we already had a transition episode last episode. I was ready to dive head first into the fairy tale of it all in this episode, but we got another very padded episode that was devoted to getting Apollo up to speed.

While the show dabbles in repetitive/circular storytelling, I personally don’t want to keep sounding like a broken record…but once again the genre side of this story falls apart for me. The show desperately wants Apollo’s confrontation with William to be horrifying and scary, and X gives it his all in that scene. But it all just feels as if he’s channeling Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise–I literally expected him to snarl “You’ll float too!” to Apollo as he approaches the jail cell.

Let’s talk about Emma. For a show that seems to be suggesting that men steal power from women, it’s interesting that Emma doesn’t seem to have much agency in the story. Of course The Changeling is being told from Apollo’s perspective, so it makes sense that we spend the majority of our time with him. But the lack of women with agency was highlighted by the arrival of Cal’s island of misfit witches. This is the first time the women are leading the narrative and I’m curious to see if there’s payoff to that; maybe The Changeling is going to say something about the lack of agency…though it doesn’t seem poised to do so.

So, yes, I did enjoy seeing more of Emma’s backstory. When the episode began, I thought maybe we’d get a full episode devoted to her that would shed some light on the situation. I wanted more of that. More of her exploring Brazil. More of seeing what happened through her eyes, instead of Apollo’s. And, instead, yes, we get the uncomfortable scenes of Emma that do feel a little iffy in their representation.

I don’t know, Joe. This was a show that started with so much promise in those first three episodes. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case with puzzle box narratives (a stretch with The Changeling, maybe), the truth is less exciting than the mystery.

We have three episodes left. I’m hopeful Kelly Marcel and co can right this ship and send us into the fantastical. We’ll see when we go back to QueerHorrorMovies for Episode 6.