Crime
Wayward
Wayward tries to make a statement about intergenerational trauma, but it comes with a lot of content issues that will make the show a nonstarter for many.
It’s hard to hide when you’re 13 feet tall.
Cootie knows that better than anybody. Literally anybody.
He wasn’t born that tall, of course. Heavens no. He was just a wee little infant of 4-foot-6 back then. (Well, maybe a little taller.) But still, he could fit in the back seat of a car. His aunt and uncle (LaFrancine and Martisse) could care for him in their tiny apartment without breaking too much furniture.
But puberty did away with that (and a great deal of furniture), so the little family with the big, adopted son had to pick up and move to a house built specifically to not only accommodate Cootie’s size, but to hide the kid, too.
They feel like they must. After all, a big, Black kid just might have a big, red target on his back. In fact, they can almost guarantee it.
But you can only keep a literal giant out of sight for so long.
Cootie’s aunt and uncle want to postpone Cootie’s big reveal. When he turns 21, they promise, they’ll introduce him to the big, wide world.
But the world discovers Cootie two years early. And the firehose of information he subsequently gets can feel overwhelming. Subwoofers! Fast food! Alcohol! And, most important of all, friends! His parents were wrong about people. They don’t want to hurt him; they love him.
But Uncle Martisse believes differently. “Some people are going to try to figure out how to use you,” he says. “And when they can’t use you no more, they going to try to get rid of you.”
Indeed, society doesn’t quite know what to make of the literal big man around town (Oakland, California, in case you’re interested). And while he might be a hit at the clubs and a draw for companies looking for a larger-than-life spokesman, others see him as a danger.
Take Jay Whittle, a comic-book tycoon who transformed himself into one of his own characters, The Hero. The jet-packed vigilante is out to preserve law and order, one jaywalker and shoplifter at a time. And while Cootie grew up idolizing The Hero, he also represents a threat to The Hero’s beloved sense of order. While Cootie hasn’t done anything too terrible just yet, perhaps it’s just a matter of time. And when the giant does, The Hero will be there to deal with it.
After all, the bigger you are, the harder you fall.
Salvador Dali would’ve loved our current entertainment age. The famed painter of melting clocks would’ve fit well in today’s high-art absurdism. And I’m a Virgo is, in its own way, as artsy and absurdist as it comes. It’s ridiculous. It’s poignant. It’s a cutting satire and a curiously affectionate superhero story. And as I write this, it’s holding a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In a world where Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven Oscars, why couldn’t I’m a Virgo win an Emmy or two?
But while the show might be a critical darling, it’s also a content mess.
The title of the very first episode—“You a Big MothaF—a”—hints at the problems to come. Cootie’s world is profane, obscene and dripping with alcohol and drugs. He gets drunk. He smokes marijuana. He apparently has sex. When he’s less a real person and more an urban legend, people start selling T-shirts that call him the “Twamp Monster,” with the first word slang for a bag of weed.
And despite all this, Prime Video has apparently given its buzzy new show a TV-14 rating.
It’s easy to appreciate the creativity behind I’m a Virgo. But it’s impossible to ignore its problems.
Cosmopolitan magazine tells me that Virgos tend to have a “highly tuned sense of sense of style, quality and taste,” adding that they can be a little, um, “judge-y.” Perhaps a show that has Virgo in the title could thus understand where Plugged In is coming from in its own judgment. While I’m a Virgo has some unquestioned merits, its problems are as big as its protagonist.
Virgo? We’re gone.
For all his 19 years, Cootie has been raised under the protective guidance of his aunt and uncle, LaFrancine and Martisse. He’s been raised on a steady diet of homemade food, books and questionable TV shows—and they’ve kept him hidden from the rest of the world. But when a neighbor spies him and offers him a tamale, Cootie’s curiosity about the world outside gets the better of him. He leaves his safe environment and sneaks out—disguised as a very large bush.
The ruse is discovered when a guy (and future best friend, Felix) tries to urinate on him. Soon Felix and his friends (Scat and Jones) are selling “Twamp Monster” shirts, and when they offer Cootie a marijuana joint (which he takes), he invites them into his home—and into his life.
The group goes to a party, where Cootie gets drunk and makes some very awkward conversation with a female partygoer. Later, a few other ladies ask if they can see Cootie’s privates. (They’re interrupted before he can honor their request.) Another drunken partygoer tries to fight with Cootie. It does not go well: We see the drunk leap toward Cootie and punch him several times in the face (as his friends cling to Cootie’s limbs), but Cootie eventually brushes them off (with the main bully falling quite a distance). Cootie accidentally knocks them all down as they try to leave.
Meanwhile, The Hero—a comic-book-character-turned-real by its rich creator—fights low-key crime that the show’s creators feel should be ignored. We hear about how he busted a cigarette shoplifting ring, and he breaks up a rowdy party in a parking lot (insinuating that they could be gang members). In an interview, he points a gun to his head, comparing the act to lawlessness. “I see in black and white,” he says. “I suppose gray is a color, but even that color isn’t in my color wheel.” When Cootie tells his new friends how much he likes The Hero, Scat tells him he’s not one: The Hero threw his cousin in jail for selling marijuana without a license.
Cootie tells his friend that he’s a Virgo, which means (he says) that he likes adventure. His aunt talks about her own astrological sign. His uncle tells him that he stinks. “Is that your feet, your butt or your arms I smell?” he asks.
Cootie’s aunt and uncle keep a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings of all the giants whom society has killed over the last several decades. They tell Cootie that Big Bang Burgers (fast food that’s advertised through highly sexually charged ads) are “poison” and insist they’ve never eaten one—a lie, Cootie later discovers. (He suspects his guardians of lying to him about other things, too.) He solemnly tells his new friends that he knows he needs to get a job right away; if he doesn’t, the police will surely arrest him. (His friends tell him that it’s not literally true, but metaphorically it’s fairly accurate.) A cross hangs from someone’s rearview mirror.
People smoke and drink, and Cootie gets drunk. Cootie accuses his aunt and uncle of “abuse” because they never told him about the magic of subwoofers. We hear the f-word at least 17 times—perhaps more if you isolate the songs playing in the background. We also hear the s-word nearly a dozen times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and about a half-dozen uses of the n-word.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Wayward tries to make a statement about intergenerational trauma, but it comes with a lot of content issues that will make the show a nonstarter for many.
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