Why are the ratings so good for THEM: The Scare?

Making a good horror anthology series like American Horror Stories is hard. Even AHS hasn’t gotten it right with all of its seasons. But the first season of the Amazon Original THEM (a.k.a. THEM: Covenant) hit the mark with high ratings. Would its sophomore season, THEM: The Scare, repeat that success? I think it may even be better.

The Scare is a sequel of sorts, but it isn’t a continuation of the story in Covenant. (Although there is a connection, which we’ll get to.)

It’s equally as horrifying as season 1, but the imagery and camera work may be even scarier. That said, there’s no way I can write about season 2, including its connection to season 1, without spoilers. Here’s your warning that they’re ahead.

But first, I’m going to start with a look at the ratings for both seasons.

THEM Ratings

Even though I didn’t see much chatter about season 1 of the Prime Video original, the ratings for THEM were high. I can’t actually tell if the IMDB differentiates between seasons 1 and 2 or is a combo of them. It’s at an impressive 7.5 out of 10, though. 80% of Google users liked season 1. Rotten Tomatoes was more divided. Critics didn’t like it, giving it a 58% Tomatometer score. Audiences were higher at 68%.

Of the over 5,300 viewers who took the time to rate it on Amazon, 79% gave it a four-star rating or above. (Emphasis on the above. 75% of the ratings were five stars.)

So far, the ratings for season 2, THEM: The Scare, are following suit, with the exception of Rotten Tomatoes. Although that might change as time goes on. However, as of the date of this post, it has a 100% Tomatometer score and a 90% audience score. (Which combines with season 1 to give the series as a whole an impressive almost equal rating between critics and audiences with a 79% Tomatometer score and 80% audience score.)

Currently, 97% of Google users like season 1, and of the 120+ ratings on Amazon, 88% are five-star.

Since The Scare only dropped on April 24, its ratings might fluctuate once more people watch.

THEM Season 1 vs. Season 2

Like American Horror Stories, THEM is not a linear horror anthology. Some of the same actors may appear in each season but in different roles since each season is a standalone storyline.

Season 1 followed the Emory family as they embarked in search of a better, safer life during the Great Migration of the 1950s. After enduring terrifying torment that resulted in an unimaginable loss, the family moved from North Carolina to Compton, California. They hoped for more acceptance, but as the first black arrivals in an all-white enclave, they instead found more simmering hatred and prejudice.

Season 2 advances us to 1991, during the time of the Rodney King beating-inspired riots after the acquittal of four LAPD officers. It follows two seemingly concurrent stories. One where Detective Dawn Reeve (Deborah Ayorinde) is first called in to investigate the murder of a foster care mother. Later, she also investigates the deaths of twins, a drug dealer, and a little boy, whose bodies all suggest the same person murdered them. Detective Reeve is convinced a serial killer is stalking the area’s residents and advocates that the press be allowed to warn them.

At the same time, we meet Edmund Gaines (Luke James), a wannabe actor who relentlessly auditions for the only parts available for a young black man: gang bangers and drug dealers. The trouble is, he’s too nice and well-mannered…until he decides to change that.

As each story evolves, we learn about the demons Detective Reeve and Edmund battle, which are family-centric in both cases.

Detective Reeve’s focus is on her son, Kel (Joshua J. Williams), and her mom, Athena (Pam Grier). After recently divorcing her husband, she’s had to move back in with her mom, who isn’t in the best health. She also reveals she’s not Detective Reeve’s birth mother, which causes all kinds of grief.

Kel is a good kid, but he’s a teenager and isn’t happy about the divorce. Detective Reeve knows he’s at that tender age where he’s susceptible to bad influences. And now he’s being stalked by some unseen force that has killed four other people. Can she stop it before it gets to Kel?

And then there’s her job. She also has the added issue of being a woman detective, and a black woman at that, working amongst prejudiced misogynists. She finds her life literally on the line after she pisses off her partner, Detective Ronald McKinney, a staunch white supremacist.

Edmund, on the other hand, just wants to be loved. And to be loved back. He loves acting but can’t seem to get a break. He also loved the white family that adopted him but then gave him up, which leaves him both confused and angry. And when Edmund isn’t happy, oh baby, does he snap. Is he the serial killer Detective Reeve is searching for? (Not exactly. But I won’t entirely give this spoiler away.)

Speaking of babies…

THEM: The Scare’s “Oh, baby!” Connection to Season 1

What is it with babies in the THEM series? I’m starting to see a pattern, one that usually proves pretty ominous for the little ones and those who love them.

In season 1, Lucky (who’s also played by Deborah Ayorinde), the matriarch of the Emory clan, is sexually assaulted when white men break into her North Carolina farmhouse. Then they kill her baby when they stuff him in a pillowcase and swing him around during a game of “Cat in the Bag.” It’s a horrifying scene that reveals the full extent of why the Emory family was so desperate to leave North Carolina with their remaining children for the unknown West.

Like I said earlier, season 2 isn’t a continuation of season 1. We’re not even sure if there’s a connection. But by the last episode, we discover there is. (Here comes the spoiler.)

Detective Reeve and Edmund are actually related. Twins. Athena tried to adopt them both, but she couldn’t. Not after she’d left Edmund with her husband while she’d taken Dawn (who’d grow up to become Detective Reeve) out for a mom-and-daughter outing. When she returned, her husband was dead on the floor with young Edmund playing hear him. She suspected Edmund had somehow killed her husband, so she returned him to his foster mother.

Edmund turns out to be the red-haired phantom killer of the victims that Detective Reeves is investigating. She figures out that she really is dealing with an unseen entity and eventually comes to realize it’s Edmund, who died two years earlier. From the Beyond, he communicates with her to show her their shared history.

That’s how she learns their mom was Ruby Lee Emory, the oldest daughter of Lucky and Henry. We don’t know who the father is, only that young Ruby Lee can’t care for her twin infants on her own. So the seemingly kind foster mom takes them, but she ends up being an awful, abusive tyrant.

Are the ratings for THEM justified?

Absolutely. I was stoked to see a season 2 and binged it as quickly as I could.

But I must say, I try to see my horror like I do my fellow humans. Not in black or white, but for the beings they are. THEM, both seasons 1 and 2, has had a distinctly unique way of making me uncomfortably aware of my whiteness.

Little Marvin, THEM‘s creator, and his head of writers, along with the directors and cinematographers, captures the characters and settings in a way that puts the viewers in the shoes of both Detective Reeves and Edmund. Or at least, that’s how I felt.

I couldn’t help sympathizing with them both, and being horrified at the situations that comprised their everyday lives. Especially the ones where either Detective Reeves’s white male colleagues acted in some heinous fashion, or Edmund’s rich white adoptive parents portrayed the antithesis of the benevolent Philip Drummond from Diff’rent Strokes.

And it was impossible not to compare the 1990s portrayed in The Scare with today’s race issues. I want to think so much has changed, that we’re more evolved as a society. Maybe to some degree we are. But it’s also apparent the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” rings true, which is where the true horror in the THEM series lies.

Check-In

Have you watched either season of THEM yet?