“It’s a fucking nest.”
Dr. Fonda Howander’s revelation at the beginning of Episode 6 of Below sums up the everything-all-at-once story of the Penney family’s trials.
Right from the prologue, where a younger Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) and his family have their first brush with a cephalopod of kraken proportions, the story seems wrapped around a self-imposed fisherman’s curse.
Jump forward 40 years and Calvin is struggling to make ends meet as a widower and single dad. His eldest boy Jay (Rohan Campbell) is in Fort McMurray working as a roughneck with some dubious friends, and his daughter Mary (Ruby Stokes) is in Montreal. Wade (Charlie Heaton), the youngest of the three, is made to look like a lame duck. He’s shrugged off by his father, who mutters something about ADHD and trying to navigate those waters.
That’s not to say Calvin Penney is a bad man. Not at all. He is just one who is trying to do the best he can with the lot he’s been cast. He’s forced to get ice for the local distillery and he has to grapple with the incoming family reunion with his older children for the Coming Home fete.
And that’s when it hits the harbour, dead ahead. One big chunk of sea ice spearing up through the waves like a kraken’s mantle. It’s the beacon that draws in the squid and sets the wheels in motion for the motherless Penney family. Keep the theme of mother in your back pocket.
B’y does Calvin get capsized into the murkiest depths of Captain Ahabs, Gordon Gekkos and Roland Tembos. And then you’ve got the cultists who make offerings to “Mudder”, which smacks of the Lovecraftian Esoteric Order of Dagon. (Their Newfoundland doggo is cute though.) The scientists are thankfully depicted as the sane ones, ensnared in the net of corporate greed and the gaslighting that’s abundant like the codfish of old days.
All of this because of a squid. And b’ys be sure tis no Architeuthis dux. No, it’s something more primordial and instinctual, like that of a mother’s draw to protect her young.
And just beneath the surface, waiting like an ambush predator, is the political message. Now that corporations are seen as individuals and they hold the money, they make the decisions to displace people in this world and help expedite the climate crisis with their exploitation of natural minerals and resources.
That duality of man vs. nature buoys the real conflicts impacting each character’s life, right from the debt Jay owes his shadowy Fort Mac operator to Noah’s lost family heirloom and Calvin’s sister Ruth, who is the harbour master. There’s a shift in the common folk, who were dragged under at the beginning but are hopeful by the end of the series, especially when the hallucinogenic properties of the mystery ice work their way out of their systems within 48 hours.
As Calvin says, the giant squid is the least of their worries as the corporate antagonist, the Crocker family, works its tendrils deep into the psyche of Snooks Arm.
Even though there are many cogs working inside the small boat’s engine, they don’t get tripped up or overheat. The story moves along at a good clip, but not without the creeping dread of an eldritch horror.
As a parting shot, the soundtrack really gets its hooks into you. With Anne Murray, April Wine, 54-40, Gordon Lightfoot and Nico Paulo providing some of the CanCon, it is the salt to the cod, preserving Canadiana and creating an atmosphere that knows its setting.
Some of the non-Canadian contributions are a little on the nose, like Danzig’s “Mother”, Coldplay’s “The Scientist” and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “The Passenger”, but they don’t take away from the hook-line-and-sinker momentum of Below.
It’s reported that Netflix subscribers have been binging it like screech at a kitchen party, and that’s the fitting celebration we all need.
The world needs more Canadiana.