The Gothicism of American Gothic: "Learning to Crawl"

[For the previous entry, click here.]

Despite being set primarily in a weathered cabin in the woods, "Learning to Crawl" is hardly the most Gothic installment of American Gothic.  The episode does begin, though, with an instance of the sudden eruption of horror within everyday life, when Caleb is accidentally electrocuted and nearly killed while doing mundane chores down at the Sheriff's Station.

Once Caleb survives the scare, Sheriff Lucas Buck takes the boy on a bass-fishing trip.   On the drive to the isolated cabin (located on the outskirts of a "ghost town"), Lucas entertains Caleb with a spook story about a monstrous cat haunting the Simpsonville woods.  According to the yarning sheriff, the beast has never been seen, and is known only by the savage claw marks it has scored into trees.

The father-and-son team, however, run across a more natural nemesis upon arrival.  The cabin has been occupied by a trio of Capote-esque criminals who are holding a tobacco-company executive for ransom (and who end up killing the hostage in cold blood).  These are ruthless folks, for sure, but they meet more than their match in Lucas, who calmly employs his devilish skills to manipulate the situation.

At one point during the standoff with the criminals, Lucas teaches Caleb a "visualization" technique.  Caleb proceeds to imagine an outcome in which Jeri reunites with her brother-in-law Ted (with whom she's been having an affair), but when the adulteress moves to embrace her lover she ends up kissing the bloody-mouthed corpse of her late husband Cody (whom she has recently gunned down).  Subsequently, in an attempt to prey on Jeri's fears, Caleb uses his nascent powers to terrorize her with the approach of the cat-monster from Lucas's story.  A scene of eerily lit woods (that seems to hearken back to the 1989 film Pet Sematary) ends with Jeri's cheek clawed gorily open.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of "Learning to Crawl" is that the episode dramatizes the deepening bond between Lucas and Caleb and shows the former's increasing tutelage of the latter.  As the season-long run of American Gothic draws to a close, the storyline has started arcing towards what portends to be a dark climax.