The pure strangeness of I’m a Virgo is apparent from its very first moments, which depict a woman holding a baby that’s roughly the size of a large dog. Named Cootie, the child grows up in Oakland, California, sheltered from the outside world by his aunt, Lafrancine (Carmen Ejogo), and uncle, Martisse (Mike Epps). By 19, the 13-foot-tall Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) has outgrown his house and now sleeps in a large ramshackle shed out back.
Like creator Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You, the show’s inventiveness doesn’t stop with its premise. Cootie’s idol is the Hero (Walton Goggins), a disillusioned comic book author turned vigilante who patrols the city’s streets via jetpack, and he develops a crush on a fast food cashier, Flora (Olivia Washington), who has the gift of superhuman speed but has learned to slow down her actions and speech to better integrate into society. In a funny running gag, we catch glimpses of a popular cartoon that consists of macabre, existential ramblings and features a boy spouting the non-sequitur catchphrase “Boyoyoyoyoing.”
Anchoring the show’s weirdness is Cootie as he takes his first steps into the outside world, and much to the dismay of his guardians, given the target that a giant Black man will inevitably have on his back. Initially, I’m a Virgo emphasizes Cootie’s stunted social development, but he adjusts surprisingly quickly by starting a job and finding a girlfriend in Flora, whose own abilities make her a kindred spirit (one of the show’s strangest yet most surprisingly tender scenes involves the logistics of having sex with a 13-foot person).
Riley depicts Cootie using a mixture of forced perspective, puppetry, and miniatures. The result is a distinctively rickety charm that doesn’t exactly look convincing but doesn’t need to in the context of such a bizarre setting. The tangible quality of the effects help ground the fanciful subject matter; we see Cootie’s ramshackle new residence go up piece by piece in fast-forward, and a political activist named Jones (Kara Young) gives speeches accompanied by stop-motion visual aids and a stage-like backdrop that folds out from behind her like a net.
There’s so much going on in I’m a Virgo that sometimes the series loses itself as it winds its way through so many tangents, leaving a few of its themes fuzzy and some of its characters—especially Lafrancine and Martisse—underwritten. For one, the central coming-of-age story is accompanied by a parallel critique of “chosen one” narratives that never totally coheres, and it only sporadically touches on the general public’s perception of Cootie.
The series is at its best and most focused when it depicts the ways that Cootie has been shaped by things that his family doesn’t quite approve of. To be sheltered as Cootie has been is to be addled by the media. He’s obsessed with a prominently advertised hamburger chain whose greasy pleasures are denied to him, and his worldview has been shaped by uncritical consumption of comics. So even if it doesn’t successfully extrapolate on everything it has to say, I’m a Virgo springs vivid and astute insights alongside its intoxicating shot of imagination.
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