Do you believe in magic? After this week’s episode of Good Omens 2, you just might! Well, maybe not, but after watching him fail to pull a dove out of his coat in season one, fans should know that what he lacks in skill, Aziraphale makes up for in enthusiasm. In addition to a magic double act featuring an angel and a demon, this episode also includes brain-eating Nazi zombies, so let’s dive in.
Note: Each episode recap will include spoilers for that episode and the previous ones only. I have seen the entire season, but I will try to keep these reviews contained to the episodes as they proceed.
1. Yakety Shax
In episode one, we learned that a demon named Shax took Crowley’s place on earth. She looks like a lovely, if somewhat intimidating, older lady. Miranda Richardson is back as Shax in a new role after portraying Madame Tracy in the first season. Here, she’s at times growly and at times, well, clueless. When she shows up to intimidate Crowley, she delivers his mail and doesn’t know how sarcasm works. But in this episode, she appears in the Bentley to intimidate Aziraphale as he’s driving back from Edinburgh.
Not only does Shax threaten Aziraphale and tell him that Crowley is putting himself in danger to protect him, she implies that there’s something more than friendship between him and Crowley. It’s another example of a third party confirming that Aziraphale and Crowley look, to the outside world, like a couple. Aziraphale doesn’t react to this, other than a subtle eyebrow raise at the idea that he’s not Crowley’s type.
Miranda Richardson is an absolute treasure, and in season one she was one of the highlights among the non-David Tennent or Michael Sheen cast members. But as Shax, although she looks outstanding, her vibe is strange in a way that I don’t think works as well as it should. I can never quite figure out if she’s supposed to be silly or scary, so she’s never quite either.
2. Nazis, demons, and zombies, oh my!
Back in 1941, Aziraphale found himself entangled in a plot involving Nazis and a British double agent looking for treasures for the Third Reich. Crowley came to his rescue, providing one of the two most romantic scenes in season one of Good Omens. As Crowley offered Aziraphale a lift home from the ruins of a church, Aziraphale seemed to realize the demon loves him. It’s a romantic, character-enhancing vignette in the first season. Returning to it in the second doesn’t seem necessary, but here we are.
The Nazis, now in Hell’s admissions department, are being processed by a demon named Furfur. He’s tired of the grind and looking for a way up the corporate ladder. (Or, “down” the corporate ladder, since we’re talking about Hell?) Shax tells him to find evidence of a demon doing good deeds. Furfur is in luck when the three Nazis who failed to kill Aziraphale show up and complain about Crowley’s intervention. If Furfur can catch Crowley helping an angel, the evidence is his ticket out of Hell’s admissions department. In return for providing this evidence, Furfur sends the trio back to earth in the form of brain-eating zombies.
The Nazi zombies get their first taste of brains, attacking a man singing a song about farts. Then they track Aziraphale down and follow him. This episode spends an awful lot of time with the zombies as they burp and fart their way across war-torn London. Too much time, in my opinion. Nazis and zombies are a fun combination but these wear out their welcome. Good Omens is always a balancing act between the incidental characters who populate the earth and pop up to provide moral lessons or visual gags, sometimes both. But although I’m fond of them, most can’t compete with the chemistry and presence of Tennant and Sheen. Although the original novel was very much an ensemble, it’s hard to care about the story of the TV adaptation any time Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t on screen.
3. The Amazing Mr. Fell
Due to shenanigans involving a botched bootleg liquor delivery and showgirls, Aziraphale agrees to step in and replace a missing stage magician. We know from season one that Aziraphale loves performing magic tricks—and that he’s terrible at it. But since performing gives Aziraphale the chance to repay him for the church rescue and clearly makes Aziraphale happy, Crowley hypes him for his big performance on the West End. They visit a magic shop, where Aziraphale decides to do the most dangerous trick of all—the bullet catch.
Continued belowAziraphale’s fascination with magic is a quirk that makes him lovable and oh-so-human. The angel radiates clueless joy when he’s thinking or talking about performing. And Crowley’s grudging support of his hobby shows how close they’ve become since they met in the garden of Eden. It’s peak married behavior in a show full of married behavior.
4. Don’t try the bullet catch at home, folks
When it comes time to actually perform the bullet catch on stage, Aziraphale chokes. The Nazi zombies have summoned the demon Furfur to catch Crowley in the act of helping and he blocks all miracles for thirty minutes. Unable to miraculously perform magic, the angel and demon have to do things the old-fashioned way—meaning Crowley has to actually shoot at Aziraphale’s face. And it turns out that our kind-hearted demon has never fired a gun!
The bullet catch scene is both charged with sexual innuendo and a test of Aziraphale’s trust in the demon Crowley. Things turn out fine after a suspenseful wait while Crowley shakily aims at his best friend and fires. Aziraphale’s performance is a success! But Furfur captured a photo of them together during the show. He confronts Crowley with the evidence of their “fraternization” and it seems like Crowley is in deep trouble … until the photo magically disappears thanks to the Amazing Mr. Fell’s successful sleight-of-hand.
This episode’s “minisode” is a lot of fun and shows just how deeply Aziraphale trusts that Crowley will always have his back and get him out of trouble. He knows that although Crowley isn’t entirely on board with the decision to do the bullet catch, he’ll go along with it and won’t let him get hurt. (This unwavering trust in Crowley coming around to Aziraphale’s questionable decisions instead of leaving him in the lurch will come back later.) But it crams in a lot of zombie screen time and implies that way too many things happened all in one night in 1941. Though I loved seeing ‘The Amazing Mr. Fell’ in action again, this minisode could’ve been trimmed.
5. One Hell of a party
Back in the present, Aziraphale decides to go through with his idea to host a Jane Austen-style cotillion ball. He’ll use the annual meeting of the shopkeepers on his street as a ruse to get everyone inside the bookshop, then play host as the humans Maggie and Nina dance and realize their love for one another. That’s the idea, anyway. However, Shax, with the full support of Lord Beelzebub, is preparing to lead a full-scale demonic assault on the bookshop!
Since it’s fun to hop around in time and witness Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship developing over the millenia they’ve been on earth, it’s easy to forget what’s happening in the present. And it means that the stakes for the current-day story seem low, even though they should be what’s driving the narrative of the season. It’s easy to lose track of why Crowley was trying to make it rain or why Aziraphale is putting on a ball, especially since Gabriel is still hanging out in the shop being clueless. The back-and-forth between the flashbacks and present-day makes it hard to focus on the current storyline, but because the flashbacks are so fun, it’s hard to admit that the story may have been more successful with less of them.
In any case, it’s time to put on your dancing shoes and fancy outfits, because next week on Good Omens 2, we’re going to a ball! Watch out for the uninvited demonic guests, though.
