TV Review – I’m a Virgo

I’m a Virgo (Amazon Prime)
Written by Boots Riley, Tze Chun, Whitney White, Marcus Gardley, and Michael R. Jackson
Directed by Boots Riley

When I saw Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You years ago it didn’t click with me. That was weird because so much of the underlying themes of the film meshed with my own beliefs. On reflection, having watched and loved I’m a Virgo, I think this has to do with the conflicting structures of film vs. television. There was so much to the world Riley was creating in his film that never got the time it needed to breathe, so that the audience could fully feel the impact. I’m a Virgo, with seven episodes, is able to avoid that while still feeling like a cohesive seven part film. Ideas are introduced and allowed to be fleshed out. Characters don’t just linger in the background, the focus will shift away from our protagonist to spotlight important figures. And it’s a story of superheroes that doesn’t suck like all the Marvel stuff.

Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) is a 13 foot tall young Black man living in Oakland, California. For his whole life, Cootie has been kept in a bubble by his Aunt Lafrancine (Carmen Ejogo) and his Uncle Martisse (Mike Epps). That doesn’t stop Cootie’s curiosity and he sneaks out one day after being discovered by a group of activists. The giant youth learns quickly that the fast food he hungered for while watching television tastes like shit in real life. The hero he admired named, well, The Hero (Walton Goggins) is actually upholding a brutally oppressive system. Not only that, Cootie is framed as a villain without having done anything wrong. A lot of lessons are learned and shared as our protagonist eventually forms his own super team to take down The Hero and the system he represents.

Boots Riley is a communist so when I heard this was his take on the superhero genre I knew I had to see it. Each superpowered character is more than just a person with special abilities, in some way their powers reflect a social truth about the world we live in. Flora (Olivia Washington) works at a fast food burger joint and has super speed, something I’m sure her manager loves. We get a brilliant flashback to Flora’s childhood showing her in possession of these powers from birth. Her parents just see their daughter as this unceasing blur of movement, however to Flora the world is a frozen place and people speak too slowly for her to understand. 

Using a series of letters she has her father read aloud, Flora is able to slow down enough to be able to communicate. However, she expresses frustration to Cootie that her whole life is spent slowing down to accommodate others when her natural inclination both in physical and mental action is to move quicker. We can see this as relating to certain disabilities but also when someone is able to process information at a faster rate but is then shamed for not hovering in the same place as everyone else in school or work. It’s important that Flora learn how to slow down so she can develop empathy and understand those around her, but she rarely is afforded opportunities to let her powers go.

Where a viewer might be turned off is how Riley lets the episodes bounce around to all sorts of ideas, many of which don’t seem to go anywhere right away. There’s a recurring in-universe animated series everyone seems to be obsessed with called Parking Tickets. One character in the cartoon has a catchphrase that becomes part of an urban legend, that a particular unaired episode has a scene that causes intense existential dread. By the last episode we see this fabled scene and it is quite good. I get the sense Riley doesn’t have a lot of respect for the ideas propagated by a lot of popular contemporary adult animation (The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy) and I don’t disagree with him. While billed as ‘radical’ upon their respective releases the politics of all those shoes is trenched in moderate to conservative American ideology, nothing radical in the least.

Jharrel Jerome is quite good as Cootie, able to convey that naivety of a homeschooled kid being introduced to the brutal truths of the world. He comes across as childlike but still charming so we understand why a romance blooms between him and Flora. Riley does an excellent job using Cootie to unpack a lot of reactionary thinking young people have when they realize just how bad the system is. There’s an emphasis on strategizing rather than just taking action because you’re mad. Jones (Kara Young) has the super power of making people visualize abstract concepts in their minds which allows Riley to talk in depth about the basic tenets of communism and direct action while still being visually entertaining. Even comic books and superhero movies themselves are addressed as serving the interest of the status quo by framing every villain as someone who wants to change the world and making that a bad thing.

I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but I will say the special effects in the series were fantastic. It is very reminiscent of DIY-style effects you might find in Michel Gondry while still looking slick. Riley has a great imagination for world-building and so he’s able to take the limitations of the budget and come up with deeply impressive visuals that feel on par with any major superhero movie. The dialogue is very direct but I think in this instance it works because of the type of characters and situations we are working in, along with this being a comic book world where people do explicate quite often. If you have become as annoyed and disinterested in the unending churn of superhero garbage as I have but still enjoy elements of the genre, I’m a Virgo manages to give it the fresh coat of paint and injection of new ideas it needs.