Review: It: Welcome To Derry, "The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function” | Season 1, Episode 4

They called it “the Galloo.” The Native Americans that first faced It, a creature from beyond the stars, managed to contain It through the power of meteor shards—they called the monster that preyed on their fears “the Galloo.” Like a Dr. Seuss book about how you should make friends even with people who are very large.

I suppose this is not the most effective criticism on my part, but I’m sorry, what? Stephen King has been guilty of some word crimes in his time, but not even “shit weasels” is as bad as taking the monster to end all monsters and naming it “the Galloo.” In the novel, the Losers try and use some Native American rituals to learn more about Pennywise, and in doing so, come across the word “wendigo,” which is fine; I guess you could argue the term is too overused by now and needed to be replaced, but surely we could’ve come up with something better. Surely we could’ve done a second draft.

But then, I suppose I’ve given up on this show ever managing to have any clear idea about what it’s doing or why it’s doing it. In this week’s episode “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function” (yeesh), we get a backstory for the monster that James Remar is so intent on hunting down, and an explanation about the “objects” that supposedly surround said monster. As backstories go, it’s functional but not really compelling; horror usually loses some of its scares when you know where it’s coming from, and this doesn’t buck the trend. But apart from the whole “Galloo” nonsense, it’s at least a relief to have the show operating on some kind of plotting structure that makes sense.