My Review of It - Welcome To Derry: "The Great Swirling Apparatus Of Our Planet's Function"

 

Written by Helen Shang

Directed by Andrew Bernstein 

Hallorann (to Taniel): "What they want me to do to you. It's not going to be pleasant."

Now we're at the halfway point of this show, it's definitely time for Bill Skarsgard to show up and wreck proper havoc on the Derry residents. I'm hoping this will be the last episode not to feature him.

Following the events of the previous episode, Lilly along with Ronnie, Will and Rich tried to show their photographs to Bowers in order to free Hank. Sadly the photos weren't enough to get Bowers on side. That guy really does want to see Hank sent to Shawshank, doesn't he?

Anyways, the photos did get discovered by Charlotte with Will having to fill her in on everything. Charlotte took it upon herself to strongarm Bowers into letting her visit Hank and the latter confessed to an affair with a married white woman. Needless to say that was something that Hank didn't want to confess to Bowers to for sadly good reasons.

As for the kids, Will's fishing trip with own father led to another creepy encounter in the water and then there was Marge. I actually had to look away during that eye scene, it was genuinely that horrifying to watch. On a frustrating note, I also didn't like that everyone assumed that Lilly attacked her when we know what really happened to her.

Getting to the root of the episode, I'm not loving the military subplot and I really hate that General Shaw's stupid enough to think that having Hallorann as an ace up his sleeve will result in being able to control Pennywise. He's going to end up getting a lot of people killed in the second half of the season.

Saying that, I actually do think Chris Chalk better be up for some award love in the next twelve months. He's doing amazing stuff as Hallorann and the scene with him invading the mind of poor Taniel (Joshua Odjick) at least provided a nice origin story for what's been terrorising Derry all these years.

- Will definitely has it bad for Ronnie as both his parents now seem to be aware of. 

- Marge really was going to go ahead and let those mean girls humiliate Lilly. This episode also revealed that Madeleine Stowe's character is called Ingrid. Ingrid talked about missing kids in the 1930s.

- Standout music: Ray Charles What I'd Say and Bo Diddley's You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover.

- Chronology: From where the previous episode left off.

The Great Swirling Apparatus Of Our Planet's Function, I'll admit that's a rather cool title for the show itself. The episode was good, largely for the goriness of Marge's eye scene and everything involving Hallorann.

Rating: 7 out of 10