After years of development, the adaptation of one of Neil Gaiman’s most notable works has made it to the small screen. To prepare, I re-read the novel and his recently released Norse Mythology (definitely recommended). There will be some book discussion but I’ll reserve the spoilery talk for my fifth thought, which will always be dedicated to talking about adaptation choices. In this episode, an undead Laura Moon finally meets with Shadow, but their reunion is short-lived when he’s arrested, along with Mr. Wednesday, for bank robbery. Beware, spoilers for the episode will follow.
1. “We can live like Jack and Sally if we want…”
It feels like the whole series so far has been setting us up for this moment, and the build up has really paid off. There are now so many dynamics at play between Laura and Shadow that every exchange is working on several levels. This is a welcome addition to the book, where Shadow accepts her coming back from the dead, and her transgressions, way too easily. It was satisfying to see him really struggle with everything that her being in that hotel room meant. Also, I take back what I said about “Puppy” being more palatable in the show; it’s back to being cringeworthy. I really hope they tone it down in the future. Or, maybe that’s the intention. It feels forced and uncomfortable, but as we discovered last episode, that’s how Laura felt a lot of the time. It was nice to see Shadow reject it at the end with a nice bit of subtle facial acting. You can see the comfortable smile slowly transition to a look of disgust as he tells Laura, no, he’s not her “Puppy.”
2. “I’m as colorful as the story I’m telling.”
We got a glimpse of how good Gillian Anderson as Media was a few episodes ago, but she really gets the spotlight this week. In both of her scenes, she does spot-on impressions but also imbues them with a great sense of menace. Technical Boy’s VR limo was the perfect thing for Media to reappropriate as David Bowie, and the dressing down Technical Boy gets, gives us the first hints of how these new gods operate. They have a hierarchy just like the old gods, and Technical Boy is way down there at the bottom. Anderson plays Bowie with just the right balance of aloofness and superiority to really make the scene enthralling to watch. It also helps that Technical Boy is probably the most hateable TV character since Joffrey.
Media’s second scene as Marilyn Monroe was even better. She managed to pull off the voice and mannerisms of Monroe without it being too cartoonish. She also had a lot more to do, including humiliating Technical Boy again by knocking his teeth out with a blown kiss. When she finally breaks character at the end of the scene, it makes it that much more chilling when she talks.
3. Mr. World’s Introduction
This episode was a great introduction for the series’ main villain, Mr. World. Crispin Glover’s delivery was completely unsettling. The show did a great job of setting him up, from Media threatening Technical Boy for him, to the detective’s offhanded remark that he was responsible for finding Osama, and showing Mr. Wednesday being genuinely afraid of him. When Mr. World tries to get Mr. Wednesday to join them, the presentation is really fun. The lines on the walls turning into sound waveforms and then transforming into floor-to-ceiling video screens was really effective.
4. Nowhere In America
When the show stays with one storyline for an extended period of time instead of jumping around, it’s much better for it. That was first demonstrated last week, but this episode felt even stronger due to the tense final two-thirds, once Shadow and Mr. Wednesday were arrested. At that point, it almost felt like a different show. The hyper-realism was put aside for a time, to give us a pretty straightforward interrogation scene. This bare-bones approach provided another opportunity for Ian McShane to chew some scenery. After giving up on the old man act, his contempt for the detective seethes, as he’s explaining what he was doing in Chicago. While Mr. World is explaining to Technical Boy how they should give Mr. Wednesday their respect, his facial expressions steal the scene.
Continued belowEven though we do jump back to the hotel room for a bit to see Mad Sweeney trying to get his coin back from Laura, the transition feels organic, since Shadow and Laura’s earlier conversation about the coin sets up Sweeney’s return. The scenes follow the characters’ natural progression, instead of inserting a non-connecting story about gods unrelated to the story yet. Speaking of gods that hadn’t joined the main story, Mr. Nancy makes his return in the form of a discrete, lock-picking spider, which was a nice reversal from the fiery performance seen in his introduction.
It’s really disappointing that the show is much better when skipping the vignettes, because, on their own, they are extremely captivating pieces. The showrunners just haven’t figured out how to effectively insert them outside of the opening scenes. And even then, only the first two episodes thematically connected to their respective opening. Anubis’ introduction was needed to make Laura’s standalone episode more compelling but had little to do with the episode that it was in, and this week’s opening didn’t seem to connect at all with the episode’s events as well.
5. Book Spoilers Ahead!
Seriously this time, skip ahead if you don’t want to be spoiled for a big reveal late in the series.
Now I’m really curious how the Mr. World reveal is going to go. I thought they would have seeded more Low Key flashbacks to really establish that character as a presence in Shadow’s life, but he hasn’t appeared since the first episode, and his turn as chauffeur to the new gods won’t come until at least the end of the second season. I’ll need to rewatch those prison scenes in the first episode, but it felt like Crispin Glover’s delivery was a good variation on what Jonathon Tucker did. There’s something about the vocal inflection that they both do that makes them feel connected. I’m just bummed we’ll probably have to wait until season three to see how it’s handled. But who knows? Odin’s identity is played as a big reveal in the book, and if it wasn’t apparent yet, they really made it obvious this episode with the missile, and his ravens becoming more than just observers in the background.
