It: Welcome to Derry Episode 1 Review – “The Pilot”

With a striking pair of scenes bookending its first episode, it’s easy to see the potential of It: Welcome to Derry‘s premise – not necessarily as an effective origin story for Andy Muschietti’s 2017 and 2019 Stephen King adaptations, but as a horror series in its own right, perhaps the kind of show that could take the baton Stranger Things will leave in a few months and run with it in its own twisted, violent and demented direction. But between the walls of those terrifying scenes lie a rather pedestrian first hour for It: Welcome to Derry – both begging the question of why this series needed to exist, and whether the frightening opening and closing moments are truly evocative of what this series is eventually going to be.

However, most of the running time of “The Pilot” is spent either in homage to Muschietti’s particular interpretations of It (for example, the Paul Bunyon statue foreshadows and nods in this hour are endless) or offering up rather rote introductions for its central cast of characters – or at least, what appears to be, given some of that is upended by the episode’s bloody, rather unsettling finale (more on that in a bit). Built in the vein of the material it is built from and inspired by (King’s The Body was also adapted into the iconic 1986 film Stand By Me), “The Pilot” offers up a lot of nods to iconic stories and moments – there’s even a Shawkshank Prison redemption, a thoroughly unnecessary Easter egg that nonetheless feels King-ian in its inclusion – but only really feels like it’s coming to life when it steps outside of them, and puts story and character behind allusion and spectacle.

That power can be rather alluring, of course; after introducing “The Pilot” with a gruesome scene of a crazed woman giving birth to a two-headed demon baby in a moving car, It: Welcome to Derry pulls its lens outward to introduce its usual band of King archetypes. There’s the misunderstood girl who gets along better with boys, the moody, flat type – and of course, the conspiracy theorist, all of whom are vaguely connected to a vagabond boy who goes missing in the aforementioned opening scene. Through these three children, “The Pilot” slowly begins to fill in the world around them, full of early 1960’s nuclear paranoia as the carefully polished veneer of post-World War II society began to wear off – and for the most part, fills its time with perfunctory materials about middle school bullies and what appear to be neat analogies to iconic original members of The Loser’ Club (though a few of these characters have some distractingly modern haircuts, one of a few production notes that betray the show’s attempts at period setting).

The other major storyline of the episode, woven between its introduction of presumed main characters Lilly, Teddy and Matty (none of which were common names in the 1960s, another strange betrayal of its own enforced setting) seems incredibly unrelated… unless you’re someone who read the 1400 pages of It feverishly throughout the 1990s and early 2000s (yes, it’s me). We are introduced to commander Leroy Hanlon, as him and his wife arrive at the Derry military base to begin testing the military’s new B-52 airplane. Now, fans of the book and film will recognize the name, of course, with Leroy’s grandson Mike being one of the major characters of the source material – however, those steeped in the lore of King books will recognize this story as the origin story for The Black Spot, a small, but important side story buried deep within the hundreds of pages of It.

For those unfamiliar, I’ll spare the details; but there is a passage in It where Leroy talks about his experience in The Black Spot, a bar where him and other military officers would meet – a group that includes Dick Halloran (the old man with ‘the shine’ from The Shining), otherwise known as the unnamed man who stares at Leroy multiple times in the episode (portrayed by Chris Chalk). Unfortunately, those allusions are rather obfuscated in “The Pilot” – which makes it a nice Easter egg for longtime fans of the source material, but makes the first episode of the series seem a little overstuffed and distracted when its driving around military bases and Leroy is getting beat by a masked group of assailants near the episode’s end.

It makes “The Pilot” a strange dichotomy of rehashing Muschietti’s recent films (he also directs the pilot and executive produces), and a stunted, but intriguing introduction to one of the book’s brief side stories – it also seems to make it incredibly obvious where the series is heading, though I’ve not seen the season’s other seven episodes to know. At the very least, “The Pilot” uses a strong final scene – set in a movie theater, where a possessed copy of The Music Man unleashes the demon baby on the kids, killing all but Lilly in the process – to suggest it may be have plans to use audience expectations against us, as it leaves about 2 and 3/4ths of the supposed new Loser’s Club in bloody piles inside a movie theater.

As catalyzing moments announcing It: Welcome to Derry‘s arrival, the opening and closing scenes are effectively evocative – there’s no denying that, from the shocking birthing scene to the realization at the episode’s close that Lilly and Ronnie (the daughter of the theater’s projectionist) are the only kids still left alive. But those tempo-changing moments can’t entirely shake the feeling that It: Welcome to Derry is a bit of an exercise in IP futility, that it may be destined to repeat itself more than it probably should, that it might be content with being predictable and mediocre when it’s not directly addressing Pennywise-related lore… and that as with just about every other contemporary horror story ever told, learning the origin story of the monster is never as satisfying as you want it to be.

Grade: C+

Other thoughts/observations:

• Though I’m not entirely sold on It: Welcome to Derry‘s premise, I’m slightly intrigued to see where it goes. I’m considering episodic coverage of the first season; if you are interested, let me know by leaving a comment or by subscribing to the official Processed Media mailing list (link is on the right hand side of the page).
  
• It’s not exactly endearing the only personality trait they give Matty is “kid way too old to be loudly sucking a pacifier in a movie theater”.
  
• There’s a lot of radio chatter about nuclear testing, birth defects, and the like. Not obvious at all.
  
• “LOOK AT MY BABYYY!”
  
• “The Pilot” begins on the one-year anniversary of Lilly’s father’s gruesome death at work. Somehow, that’s led her to being mercilessly bullied at school, a connection that’s never quite made by “The Pilot”.
  
• There is perhaps the most random, unfunny fart joke I’ve ever experienced in the middle of this episode. What in the fuck was that?
  
• Genuinely surprised they offed Susie in the first episode, I will give them that.
  
• Another strange moment is the dramatic buildup of revealing who is crying over Matty in the movie theater; after keeping all four characters faces doused in darkness, the illumination from the film projection shows that the two boys were crying… and the two girls weren’t. Holy shit! Oh my god! What could it mean?!!! (I’m kidding, of course.)