After last week’s series low, Chucky course corrects with an eventful episode full of returning characters from the films, juicy family drama, relationship woes, and a couple deaths that should have quite the lasting impacts as we move forward.

Previously on Chucky.

Before continuing I have to acknowledge something that has to do with the reason this review is late to the party. Daphne, my wonderful dog of over 21 years, passed away a few days ago. I could go on for quite a long time (really) about how much I miss her and all the ways in which she was a great teammate to have in this game of life, but I will stop myself now before going down that rabbit hole. I’ll simply leave this photo and do my best to focus.

Well, the movie series and the TV series have officially coalesced. There have been several nods to events of the many films and last week added Tiffany & Nica to the mix, but with the appearance of Andy (and Kyle) all the players are present and accounted for. The sequence of Andy and Kyle as the bizarre pair of census takers who that family will never forget is a solid series intro. Kyle’s definitely better with her facade than Andy, who seems to barely be restraining himself from tearing the house apart until he finds Chucky.

The fact that it’s only been two weeks since the events of the last film, Cult of Chucky, is made clear again in case it wasn’t last time. I wonder why Mancini settled on such a short timeframe. Perhaps Nica being possessed by Charles has something to do with that? Or maybe that if four years had passed there’d probably be a lot more Chucky’s running around all over the place? Oh, and aside from that family I mentioned being traumatized by census takers unloading quite a few rounds into the daughter’s doll, they also then had to clean up the bloody mess made from shooting a toy. Lots of unanswered questions for them, I bet.

As for Hackensack happenings, it was a hard week to be a mom. Between Junior’s mom getting pushed through a window and dying inches away from his face to Devon’s mom falling down the stairs and breaking her neck in front of him, the body count sure is rising. I think the mechanics of Junior’s mom going through that window don’t work at all, frankly, but it doesn’t hurt the scene too much. Really, though, how such a light bump from a mail cart sends her shattering through the window is a complete mystery. I guess someone saved money by going with breakaway glass as opposed to, you know, actual glass. Also, the therapist immediately popping by to tell Junior and his dad that it must have been suicide seems premature, considering there’s a murderer on the loose.

Before dying at the bottom of Lexy’s stairs, Devon’s mom had a fairly eventful episode. She arrested that biology teacher (based on what sounds like quite circumstantial evidence) and Devon came out to her in a nice little scene. I was a bit surprised by her death, I’ll say, if only because I didn’t expect two moms to be killed within minutes of each other in one episode. Plus, before Junior’s mom died there were a few warning signs as to what was about to happen (her little heart to heart moment with Junior, saying “I’ll be right back,” another couple bits of dialogue with her therapist about how long she has left, etc) whereas Devon’s mom felt like more of a sudden development.

Jake, Devon, and Junior have all had a parent killed by Chucky now–I wonder how much longer until Lexy joins the club? Speaking of Lexy, Junior broke up with her. Oh no, so sad, or whatever.

On the Tiffany and Nica front, thankfully they’ve finally left that damn hotel room. I don’t know what it was, but something about still being stuck in that one room made their scenes feel cheap and stagnant to me. Anyway, Nica did a pretty okay impression of Charles, even if Tiffany couldn’t be fooled. While they’re good scene partners, and all, I look forward to them actually interacting with other people going forward–like that realtor who was itching to leave Tiffany’s company. And I didn’t catch it last week, but the flashback of ‘80s Charles is actually played by Fiona Dourif. She’s actually pretty good, even if the ADR of Chucky and Tiffany’s voices still don’t seem quite right.

The Cape Fear homages are silly fun, but does anyone else just think of Sideshow Bob whenever that music plays?

I’m going to wrap things up now and I apologize for not being 100% into this. My mind is still soaked in doldrums from Daphne passing away, but I didn’t want to just skip an episode. I’ll do better next time, when hopefully Andy, Kyle, Tiffany, and Nica all integrate into the main happenings as the finale gets closer and closer.

8 out of 10 Crazy Census Takers