Chucky – Season 1 Episode 3 “I Like To Be Hugged” Recap & Review

I Like To Be Hugged

To kill or not to kill, that is the question. At least, that’s the question plaguing Jake in episode 3 of Chucky, as our murderous doll encourages his protégé to pop his killing cherry.

While this is going on, Detective Kim Evans shows up at school looking for information on Jake. She believes Jake knows more than he’s letting on and probes his teacher for information. She refuses to talk though, but does take matters into her own hands. She sets up a meeting for Jake and Lexy, supervised by their guardians, to try and straighten out everything befalling the two. For Jake, he has other ideas.

Following Chucky’s teachings, Jake stalks Lexy while she’s out for a run, chasing after the girl with a big old knife. Only… it’s not actually Lexy, it’s Junior. Jake hides the knife at the last second but jumping out the trees is enough to spook his cousin and race off in fear.

Off the back of this, Junior convinces Lexy to head over to Jake’s place to apologize. ‘Sorry’ does a lot of heavy lifting here as Lexy fumbles her apology and eventually expects something in return for being put through this ordeal. Something like holding onto Chucky for a while?

Jake immediately refuses but hesitates, unable to kill Lexy. When she leaves, Jake reports back to Chucky. He glumly confirms he can’t kill, as Chucky brushes it off as him suffering from “Completion Anxiety.” So naturally, Chucky decides to show his student how it’s done, taking the knife for himself and preparing to strike.

This plan begins with Jake handing over Chucky to Caroline and Lexy. Chucky obviously does what Chucky does best, and he waits for an opportune time to strike that evening. Lexy invites over all her friends, who start dancing about at an impromptu silent disco.

While Lexy heads off for a drink, Caroline comes downstairs and reveals that Chucky’s gone and wants to kill her. After putting her sister back to bed, Lexy breaks horror rule #1 and goes off alone to look for Chucky.

After brutally murdering Oliver on the landing, stabbing him multiple times, Chucky turns his attention to Lexy. The blonde brat has given up her search and takes some time out to smoke a  joint instead, as you do. Chucky pounces, choking her out and strangling her.

As she drops her blunt, it catches light to the curtains and the whole house ends up ablaze. Promising that he’s going to kill her for Jake, Chucky strikes.

We don’t actually see him land the killer blow but fire shoots around the house while the kids continue to dance obliviously. Hey, wouldn’t they at least feel the flames despite having headphones on? Ah, either way the house is left a fiery inferno as Chucky maniacally laughs and leaves things wide open for next week’s toasty follow-up.

The Episode Review

Chucky returns with another solid episode, although this one does rely on old horror tropes of having its characters dumb as a doorstop. How could none of these kids sense the fire up on the balcony and why didn’t any notice Chucky killing Oliver upstairs? I understand most had their backs turned but not everyone. Either way though, the attention this time turns to Lexy and the ending hints that there’s going to be a massive bloodbath in the wake of all this.

It would appear that the police will chalk this up to an accident but could they also suspect Jake and begin to paint him as the suspect of this presumed arson attack?

This third episode continues the trend of delivering decent drama alongside humour, with plenty of classic Chucky quips and an interesting dynamic as he uses Jake to be his student of sorts.

Chucky is definitely turning into one of this year’s biggest surprises and I have to admit, I did have concerns when this series was announced. However, it’s always good to be proven wrong and that much is especially true with this series, which manages to deliver classic Child’s Play vibes. Roll on the next episode!