She then embarks on an affair with Shadow’s best friend when he goes to prison for a failed casino heist she planned herself. But when Shadow trades in his life of crime for domesticity, Laura resumes her nightly ritual of asphyxiating herself with bug spray. For a while, she thinks the tall, dark, and handsome thief who walks in mid-shift might be her life raft. In 15 minutes of montage, we understand Laura (before her death) is desperate for something to break the monotony of her life as a small-town casino dealer. That all changed with “Git Gone”: an effective character study that quickly and efficiently gives Laura all the nuance and dimension that Shadow lacks. For the first three episodes, American Gods was Shadow’s show, and his one-note astonishment at his supernatural surroundings quickly wore thin he’s still agape long after the audience is. Whittle’s Shadow has become a different kind of audience surrogate, mirroring our disbelief rather than relieving it. But the show needs a character like Laura, too: more active than passive, with clear goals that act as catalysts for plot development and characterization.Īs conceived by Gaiman, Shadow is a stoic receptacle.
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The series can awe and befuddle us, with Shadow as our proxy. But television rewards ensembles adding more fully realized human beings (or supernatural entities) lets characters share the load. On the page, American Gods is a single, complex narrative. That “Git Gone” is also American Gods’ best installment to date is not a coincidence.
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The episode is also an injection of something American Gods desperately needed: a second protagonist to keep us invested and entertained through the chaos of the rest of the show. “Git Gone” - a spotlight on Laura Moon (Emily Browning), the deceased wife of hero Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) who’s come back from the grave - is the show’s first significant departure from its source material. Plotless flourishes like slow-motion dandelion petals and CGI sex scenes are stunning but frustrating, especially since they’re meted out week to week.īut American Gods hit a turning point in its fourth episode, a 57-minute solution to the show ’s most pressing problem: its boring protagonist.
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After a gorgeous yet sluggish initial trio of episodes, I heard from and saw plenty of viewers who were understandably losing patience.
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That’s because there’s one all-important distinction between the reading experience and the viewing one: TV can’t be watched at the viewer’s own pace.
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Digesting all the book’s details and detours led to widespread confusion over even the most basic details of what is going on. Yet early episodes also faced criticism for pacing and clarity issues that felt like direct outgrowths of source material. Initial reaction to the show was mixed: the story of a brewing war between “old” gods brought over by immigrants (Anansi, Anubis) and “new” ones generated by modern culture (Technology, Media), American Gods easily drew attention for its high-profile cast, cheerily bastardized iconography, and snazzy title sequence. Heading into the final episode of its first season, which airs this Sunday on Starz, American Gods has introduced new and compelling characters, balanced flourish with TV convention, and - most importantly - proved it can work as a television show. The question that faced Bryan Fuller and Michael Green’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s sprawling 2001 novel was whether the show could channel that ambition into a manageable, compelling story. American Gods has the kind of ambition only sought-after IP can buy: kaleidoscopic visuals, cult-favorite actors, a mythology that spans thousands of years and multiple continents, and one alarmingly accurate David Bowie impression.