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| "It's the freakiest show..." |
Over the last month American Gods
has slowly unfolded a mysterious
and shadowy (no pun intended) web of deliberately incomplete
mythology; world-building with key elements of that world kept in the
dark, both from us and from our protagonist. Showrunners Bryan Fuller
and Michael Green have done a brilliant job of letting us get to know
(or think we know) an ensemble of fascinating characters while
withholding key details about them, and they have built up the
skeleton of a plot all the while hiding from us what that plot really
is. We have been allowed to know exactly as much as our bewildered
protagonist Shadow Moon knows – which is to say, as little as
possible, but enough to know that this is a journey we have to be on.
This is the episode where that all changes. In a series of swift,
intense sequences, the world starts to come out of the dark, and the
plot comes into focus while raising both the urgency and the stakes.
In short, this is a turning-point moment for the series.
As
Shadow and Laura try to figure out where they stand – both in terms
of their relationship and in terms of the natural order of life and
death – the mysterious forces who have been pursuing Shadow and
Wednesday come together to make plans. As those forces close in
around them, Shadow is increasingly faced with the mythical reality
of the world he has been pulled into, and the danger that lurks
there. The conversations and confrontations that carry these secrets
fill in quite a few of the important blanks that have been left in
the show's lore, and for the first time they really reveal the
hitherto-mysterious narrative of the series. If you're a viewer of
the series who hasn't read the book, and who has spent the last month
hooked to the show but also wondering just what is going on, this is
one of the moments you've been waiting for. The slow build-up of the
mythology over the first half of the season makes this episode's
reveals even stronger and more well-earned, as the knowledge feels
like something that we (and Shadow) truly have earned by facing the
mysteries of Mr. Wednesday's world and taking them in stride. For
those who have read the book, the scope of Wednesday's quest, and
that of his opposition, are realized brilliantly – and with a
couple key differences that pack a welcome punch even to those
already familiar with the material.
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| "We're clearly in an alternate nightmare reality where Biff is president... where's my son when we need him?" |
The
show's mysterious antagonists take center stage here, giving
excellent performances that not only flesh out their characters
beyond the glimpses we've seen so far, but significantly
differentiate themselves from their literary counterparts. Gillian
Anderson's Media really shines in this episode, taking on some more
personas drawn from pop-culture, and using those borrowed
personalities to deliver some wonderfully devious monologues. Bruce
Langley's bratty, vape-loving Technical Boy proves once again to be a
spot-on 2017 update of the character, for the age of Martin Shkreli
and Jesse Eisenberg's retooled Lex Luthor. These two updated
characters even provide reason for the show to address how the
sixteen years since the book's publication have made its themes of
race and racism in America more depressingly relevant than ever. But
possibly the best moments come from an actor whose name has been
featured in the opening credits of every episode so far, but who has
been conspicuously absent prior to this fashionably-late entrance:
crazy-guy extraordinaire Crispin Glover. I shall say nothing about
who he is or what purpose he serves in the episode, as he provides
some surprises for both those who have read the book and those who
have not, which must remain unspoiled. But I can say that he delivers
an excellent performance that is just as wonderfully unhinged as we
have come to expect from this strangest of actors. He even manages to
upstage Anderson, and given her appearance shown above, that's really
saying something.
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| "Did you get these scars in the Sunday ratings battle against Twin Peaks?" |
This
first season of American Gods
has built up in an absolutely brilliant way, gradually expanding its
universe and mythology while teasing the mystery and central plot
rather than revealing it. It has been an exercise in the slow
ratcheting up of suspense and the gradual laying-out of clues, taking
a storytelling approach more similar to that of a novel than a
typical TV show. That approach makes this sudden snapping into focus
of several key aspects of the plot all the more satisfying, and makes
the already high speed of this episode's key moments feel even more
intense. The series just hit the accelerator, and it is fantastic.
Score:
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Christopher S. Jordan
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