I got around to watching the chucky TV series for the hell of it after marathoning all the movies. The series puts an enormous ammount of eggs in the "Feel bad for the protagonist because he's a faggot. His dad doesn't like that he's a genetic dead end, the other kids make fun of him, he's awkward, etc."
Like I'm sorry dude, I just don't feel bad that you're a faggot, find a new angle to milk for sympathy points.
Even if he wasn't gay, he's unlikable because he's a retard, a source of drama between him and his dad is that he's a wanna be artist and his father keeps telling him "You won't be able to pay the bills you retard." It also doesn't help that the father is overworking himself to support himself and his son and the son wants to go to a 1500$ "art camp" which his dad can't afford.
It also really doesn't help that every other male character is a faggot and keeps lusting after older men. (Writer is gay so a bit of a self report I guess)
Chucky also deciding to take pity on the faggot protagonist and protect him from his bullies by doing standup comedy? Wtf is this, chucky protecting someone from bullies? Is this a chucky series or a self insert fanfic?
Anyway appart from that, I feel the series fails at both things chucky and child's play are good at.
1.) The Child's Play series isn't really scary, but its great at building tension, you know chucky is going to strike, but you don't know how and you don't know when. A lot of the direction surrounding chucky's kills is just buildup toward the main event. By contrast a lot of chucky's kills in this are super fast with little to no buildup, so there's not a lot of catharsis when he actually does it because it never lets tension build.
The dad kill, the housekeeper kill, the random cop, from setup, to buildup, to execution, they all last like 20 seconds. There's no tension or buildup.
2.) And on the other hand, the Chucky series isn't even horror, its just character comedy around charles being a crass little fucker that gets off on serial killing, but chucky is barely in the series about chucky. You see him for like 3 minutes per 40 minute episode, so Dourif can't even riff as chucky which is the sole reason I'm watching a series called chucky.
The series tries to take the format of curse and cult, where chucky murders everyone around a specific person, leading everyone to go "Wtf why does everyone around this guy keep dying".
But it doesn't work because the braindead protagonist KNOWS chucky is doing it and constantly talks with chucky. There's no fucking mystery around "The doll did it", we know the doll did it, the main character knows the doll did it, he's just too stupid to realize that the fucking mass murdering serial killer is gonna turn on him.
They want to do "Chucky brainwashes person into becoming a killer" from cult, but again, it doesn't work because in cult the person chucky was pushing Nica to kill was the doctor raping her while she was in a mental asylum and drugged up/hypnotized, whereas the protagonist here is just some annoying faggot too stupid to realize that the fucking serial mass murdering rapist isn't his friend. Worst part is they do it again later with much better setup and they only had to waste half the fucking episodes to do it.
The worst part is that a recipe for a much better show was right fucking there. Andy and Kyle hunting down Chucky Dolls while Tiffany and Nico do their voodoo freaky friday bodyswap bullshit, with the charles doll corrupting junior and his grand plan.
Throw in the chucky backstory flashbacks and THERE, you got a good fucking show. Its insane that the worst part about this show is the main characters.
I'm just dissapointed, because this series is 90% dud and 9% mid and 1% chucky, its just fucking boring, something the chucky franchise even at its worst NEVER was.
Also, what's the point of splitting shitface in two if you're gonna make one of the twins non binary anyway??? That's like wanting to have your cake and fuck it too.