ok we are finally talking about widow's bay

my new favorite show

It’s nice to know that the sun will rise from the east, I will somehow manage to rewatch Twin Peaks at the most emotionally fraught time of my life, and Matthew Rhys will periodically hop onto my television screen to deliver one of the best performances of the year.

Look at that face! A man you can kinda sorta maybe trust! (Photo: Apple TV)

Folks. Babes. Friends. Fellow World Cup watchers.¹ I have been watching Widow’s Bay, a series on Apple TV, a platform whose output toggles so faithfully between mediocrity (see: Stick and, bringing me no pleasure to say this, Your Friends & Neighbors), in[s]anity (see: The Morning Show and Drops of God, two series I’ve seen every episode of, to be clear) and genius (see: Severance, Bad Sisters’ first season, Slow Horses) that every time I press play on a new show I brace myself for impact. Box of chocolates and all that.

Apple TV is the finest purveyor of whiplash this side of the Atlantic, which is why I was nervous when I read that Widow’s Bay was a comedy-horror series set in a fictional island east of Massachusetts. A Kirkland-brand Martha’s Vineyard. But as aforementioned, I more or less trust Matthew Rhys, who leads this cast, with my life, in large part because no one can deliver a line like this and not receive my eternal gratitude and devotion:

Long-time readers will know I did just finish my latest rewatch of The Americans late last year. A perfect show—Elizabeth and Philip Jennings forever.

Needless to say—and I swear to god this is not sponsored even though Apple should really consider bringing me under their (seemingly meager) marketing budget, because I watch a lot of television and have a lot to say. Not all good, sure, but isn’t all press good press, etc—anyway, needless to say, I was immediately invested in this kooky cast of characters. I love kitsch and I love eccentrics and I love moody little islands where strange people of indeterminate ages frolic and flail.

What is Widow’s Bay? It’s a show with the campiness of Scooby-Doo, the small town eeriness of Twin Peaks, and the off-beat humor of Arrested Development. (And if I said Widow’s Bay was Riverdale’s older sibling, what then? What then???)

It is also the funniest series I’ve seen thus far this year.

*

The island, we are told from the first episode, is waking up. Strange things are happening—storms, creatures not of this world, floods, Chris Fleming selling fucked up mushrooms from a weathered couch manufactured no later than 1951.²

Like, this is exactly what a small-town dealer’s living room should look like, actually. Cultures should be respected. (Photo: Apple TV)

On top of it all, there’s a pesky little problem slash (sub)urban legend: whoever is born on the island cannot leave. If they do, they might find themselves a little—well, dead. It’s a bit of an issue.

At the center of all this is Rhys’s Tom Loftis, our creepy little island’s mayor who only wants to make Widow’s Bay a tourist destination to rival Martha’s Vineyard—or, at the very least, Bar Harbor. Beggars, choosers, etc. He wants the island to outgrow its demons and its backwoods nature. To eventually procure a cell phone tower. To become a place from where his son—famously born on the island—can leave without facing near-certain death.

He’s essentially Belle twirling around her Alsacian village, begging people to be less rustic. More ambitious.