Chucky Review: "Murder at 1600"

At long last, Chucky's back on TV!

The third season of Chucky hit the small screen at the usual time of the year, and kicked of with a young boy, Henry Collins, hiding in the closet, before being comforted by his mother, Charlotte Collins (more on her portrayer later). Henry's glad to see his mother, while also mentioning his new friend: Joseph--who looks quite familiar. I just want to say, I've heard a lot of different names for Good Guy dolls in this franchise: Chucky, Tommy, Larry, Pauly, but Joseph? My goodness.

However, the name is far from the biggest shock. Once Charlotte leaves her baby boy to sleep, Chucky smirks, and we get a pan out to where he is...the White House.

My God, Chucky's in the White House. And somehow, that's still better than who was in there between 2016 and 2020.

We are treated to a look at how our trio--Jake, Lexy, and Devon--are doing now, and regarding Jake, he's found a way to deal with the bad experiences he's had with Chucky: art with doll parts, though he needs a Good Guy to complete his collection. Lexy mentions Chucky killing her mother (I still say, "Thank God"), as well as her little sister, Caroline, ending up going with Tiffany, while Devon continues his podcast. In between all of this, James Collins is coping with being Commander-in-Chief, while dealing with his older son, Grant Collins, pretty much making all of the family's business public on Tiktok.

As for Grant, he continues to bond with "Joseph" and has another friend of sorts in the form of Teddy Brooks, a Secret Service Agent. Sadly, he becomes Chucky's first victim, as Teddy later noticed that a letter opener was missing, and found it in the doll's possession, leading to Chucky grabbing Teddy's gun and shooting him right in the head, portraying Teddy as suicidal. Chucky later contacts his favorite trio and taunts them, while giving them a hint as to where he is, saying that his new surroundings "doesn't really allow a lot of visitors," and it's followed by a hilarious scene of the First Couple actually getting high on weed. Epic! We later see Miss Fairchild back in the fray, as she is serving as the trio's guardian/teacher, though their latest grades haven't been up to par. It's thanks to a TV news break that Jake, Lexy, and Devon finally learn that Chucky's in the White House, and with this knowledge, the trio vow to kill Chucky. Again.

It wouldn't be the Chucky TV series without this man, Devon Sawa. This is the show's third season, yet for Sawa, this is his fourth different character. In Season 1, Sawa played the dual role of Lucas Wheeler (Jake's father) and his twin brother Logan Wheeler (Jake's uncle and Junior's father). Season 2 saw him as Father Bryce, and in this current season, Sawa takes on the role of President James Collins. All of his previous three characters have been knocked off, in some way or form, by Chucky. I would think that playing the Commander-in-Chief would prevent Sawa from being killed off again, but who knows?

I can't look at Sawa without thinking of two of his films: Little Giants and Idle Hands. Sawa was in the former as the titular team's star QB, and in the latter, he played a slacker whose right hand is possessed by the Devil.

I literally beamed when I recognized Lara Jean Chorostecki as First Lady Charlotte Collins, her second character on the series! We last saw LJC in Season 2 as the villainous Sister Ruth, the kindly nun who would develop a strange idolatry of Chucky, and turned heel because of it, only to be killed off by Glenda. Another thought I had: this also marks LJC's return to the political world in a fictional setting, as the last time saw her on Designated Survivor as recurring villainess Beth MacLeish. I do love this, because it's the very thing that American Horror Story is known for--returning cast members as different characters. It's not only Sawa and LJC who are back, Michael Therriault is back as well. Therriault played sinister therapist Dr. Foley in 2017's Cult of Chucky, and in Season 1, he played Nathan Cross (Lexy's father), who was killed off in the season finale. In this season, he's playing Spence, the Vice President.

"Murder at 1600" opened Chucky's third season on USA and SyFy on October 4, 2023. It was reported that while the third season will consist of eight episodes, it will be split into two parts, similar to what American Horror Story's current season is doing. The first four episodes will air every Wednesday in October, while the bottom four will air sometime in 2024. This season will be off the chain; I'm excited to see what will happen with the other characters, mainly Tiffany and Caroline, as well as Nica.

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Here's my story about Nica Pierce: