Get ready for a wild ride with I’m a Virgo – a show that’s a triumph of imagination and ideology. It’s a throwback to Amazon’s early streaming years when shows like Transparent and Patriot dominated Jeff Bezos’ slate. This Boots Riley-created series is a revitalizing return to originality for the platform and the franchise-heavy small screen itself. So, watch it with both eyes open!
The heart of the show is 13-foot-tall Cootie, portrayed in towering fashion by Jharrel Jerome. He leads the way for the unsure steps of the 19-year-old Oakland native to the outside world after years of being hidden. The When They See Us Emmy winner ups his already considerable game to unfurl a naturalism that grounds the magical realism all around him.
Operating on a number of levels, there’s a lot of metaphor at work in I’m a Virgo. From one sharp angle, this is a mixtape of Jonathan Swift, N.K. Jemisin, Samuel Becket, Kara Walker, and Ralph Ellison. Yet, in a very pointed manner, the work is resoundingly soulful and skillful.
This show is a Situationist by any other name. Riley has been seeding the long détournement game for years for this very moment and the seven-episode DIY I’m a Virgo. The goofy gag scenes that populate the charged coming-of-age narrative once Cootie breaks free of the gilded cage constructed by his aunt and uncle come to fruition down the line across generational and economic divides.
Power outages, self-interested parenting, an unhinged billionaire anti-hero literally called the Hero, friendship, betrayal, comic book fandom, cults, and lovingly awkward sex between Cootie and Washington’s Flora fill I’m a Virgo. The series also is packed with the legacy of Amiri Baraka’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre, social disruption, local politics, an uncomfortable animated series within the series, the business of crime, and capitalist critiques that postulate in another world what a Buster Keaton-Angela Davis-Preston Sturges collaboration might have looked like.
In that sense, I’m a Virgo puts American myth-making to a stress test. The result isn’t flattering to the lies we tell ourselves and the truths most turn away from. This show exposes the callow core of the assembly-line caped crusaders, spinoffs, and revival content that has been keeping the lights on in Hollywood for far too long. This is the difference between creativity and content by committee.
What I’m a Virgo is not about, to snag a phrase from an early episode, is situationships. This show is about what’s going on, trying to see it in the moment we are in. It’s about how in America, as Jones tells Hero towards the end of the season, “the paper is a placeholder for the violence.” Sit with that, with both eyes open.
