23rd May2017

‘American Gods 1×04: Git Gone’ Review

by Paul Metcalf

Stars: Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Emily Browning, Crispin Glover, Bruce Langley, Yetide Badaki, Orlando Jones, Pablo Schreiber, Peter Stormare, Kristin Chenoweth, Gillian Anderson, Cloris Leachman | Created by Neil Gaiman | Developed for TV by Bryan Fuller

american-gods-git-gone

Twin Peaks may have been on many people’s minds on Sunday night, but that doesn’t mean that other television shows weren’t worth watching. American Gods took us for a trip back to the past, to reveal more about Laura Moon (Emily Browning).

Before Shadow (Ricky Whittle) met Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) his main focus was Laura, his wife. Through the perspective of Laura, we now get to see how they met, the truth about her death and why she has returned to Shadow.

With Laura’s return, it is a good time to get to know the character, and this episode of American Gods does it very well. A woman bored with her life and looking for escape, Shadow is a bit of excitement. What is interesting about her is the fact we are not presented with the perfect wife as Shadow wished she was, but a person with issues.

It is an eye opened that she isn’t a clean-cut character, personally I thought that there may have been an influence in her death, and that it was manipulated to put Shadow into the situation he finds himself in with Mr. Wednesday. What I actually like about her though, is that she feels one of the most real character in the show, even if she is a corpse finding it hard to keep her limbs attached.

Last week we were introduced to Anubis (Chris Obi) and he makes a re-appearance here. Introducing him last week in his capacity of the god of Death was a smart move, so this week he can get straight down to business. Laura’s reaction to his decision-making about where she will end up in the afterlife is amusing and shows the strength of her character. It will be interesting to see if this attitude is one that she keeps, I for one hope son.

What I like about Laura is that there is no real excuse for the things she’s done, and will do in the future. She does it, then feels bad about it later. This makes the character feel more real, and her destructive nature (when alive) is refreshing, but also tragic. She looks for happiness, but only finds it in death. Even before her death her dalliances in past times that could kill her, show her boredom with life, even when she should have happiness.

It will be interesting to see how Shadow takes her in her new form, not that he’ll have much choice from the looks of it. Laura is an undead bad-ass and protector of the man she loves. He may hate what she did, but I get the feeling he’ll have to just deal with it and accept her into his life. It will still be interesting to actually hear his reaction, though Audrey’s (Betty Gilpin) will be hard to beat.

American Gods may have been a little overshadowed by the return of Twin Peaks, but it still delivered an important episode for the story. There may not have been many gods on show, but it was nice to get back to a more human story, even if it was a dead human. Now to see where her undead life takes her from here.

****½  4.5/5

American Gods is available in the UK on Amazon Prime.

Review originally posted on PissedOffGeek
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