Nobody Told Me Fucking Gillian Anderson Was GonNA BE IN THIS SHOW
American Gods Episode 2 Recap
Hey guys, sorry this is up super late, I ran out of both internet and time to finish this on Sunday night.
Last week, I said that I didn’t feel American Gods was a very strong show. It tried to do too much, leaned more on its weak writing than its strong cinematography to tell the story it wanted, and basically threw all the spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick and what wouldn’t. Ultimately, it was fun, but often the fun was at the expense of the dialogue or scene-writing rather than anything intentional the production team had in mind.
Episode 2, “The Secret of Spoons,” is a marked improvement on the first episode. Let’s dive in!
This Recap is Filled With Spoilers. And I cuss a lot.
If you haven’t watched the second episode of American Gods, turn away now!
KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
Our second episode opens in a similar fashion to the pilot, with what I’m now assuming is the chronicle of how various old world gods got to America. On today’s episode: Anansi, a Ghanaian trickster god that takes the form of a spider but also a dude straight out of vaudeville New Orleans. We’re on a Dutch slave ship, and a captive is calling for Anansi to help free him from his bonds, promising rich food and wine and other gifts in return.
So Anansi basically shows up as “Mr. Nancy” and is like, “Listen, each and every one of you is f u c k e d, so you might as well burn the ship down and take everyone with you.” When the captives question why they’d do that if it means they’d be dead, he basically recounts the next 400 years of their lives and their childrens’ lives. It’s a absolutely fucking memorable scene that I’m sure will piss off the white supremacists who are already upset that le Pen lost her presidential bid. Here’s the scene, just because I love it so much:
(clicky)
In the present day, we’re still in Eagle Point, IN, home of Shadow’s entire, like, mountain of baggage and the America Hotel. After last episode, which ended with our dude Shadow getting beat up by Vape God’s “not-droogs” and then strung up a lightpole and lynched, he’s bruised, bleeding and livid at Mr. Wednesday for the shit the latter has gotten him into. Wednesday assures him that he’s working on a plan to get vengeance, and bids Shadow good night.
Couple things about this scene and then we’ll move on. First, Shadow takes a bubble bath. Fuck yeah, you deserve that bubble bath. Second, Shadow has a dream of his dead wife telling him the world he’s experiencing is just a bad dream, and you really get the sense that he’s super disappointed when he wakes up. He cries himself back to sleep, and you know what? I would too. The shit he’s dealt with? Shit sucks.
Smash cut to Shadow’s house.
A paperboy beans Shadow in the back with the morning news. What an asshole.
The inside of the house is as sparse as this entire scene. There are balloons that I’m guessing were for his return party, but everything else is dishevelled in the way shit gets dishevelled when you’re in the middle of life and not expecting death to rudely interrupt your plans. As Shadow walks through his house, he sees visions of Laura. First at the counter, looking outside. Then laying in a seductive-yet-comfortable pose on the bed. Then she’s gone, and in her place: a box.
Shadow packs this life up in boxes of his own and ships them away, presumably to a storage locker or something. But that box on the bed? It’s from the coroner’s office. It’s got Laura’s personal effects in it. He looks in her cell phone which is not locked and that fucking bothers me, like hell’s blazes, put a goddamn passcode on that fucker please? and wouldn’t you know it — just the biggest fucking dong you’ve ever seen appears in her text logs. Like, you could land an airplane on this dingle. It’s got its own goddamn zip code.
Like let me impress upon you how important this penis is. It’s so large and in charge that it jumps from Laura’s phone to the picture frame by the bed. We only get a glimpse but my life has changed y’all.
Mr. Wednesday is outside. He’s an asshole just like the paperboy. And Shadow has an immense amount of restraint.
So, now we’re driving. Shadow’s about to take the highway when Wednesday insists he turn onto a dirt-ass road anyway and don’t get higher than 70 miles-per-hour. They stop in a diner because duh, and Wednesday instructs Shadow to take this one thousand dollars cash and a shopping list and go hambone. Also, like, don’t take more than five percent off the top, yeah? Money’s tight for a minute.
Shadow: “I’m not going to steal from you!”
Mr. Wednesday, incredulously: “If you can’t look after yourself how do you expect to look after me?”
So now we’re in a Wal-Mart probably and Shadow goes down an aisle consisting entirely of televisions. This is where Lucille Ball talks to him, and like any decent man, he unplugs the goddamn television because Lucille Ball is dead, sadly, and anyway should not be fucking talking to him through the television.
The televisions come back to life and it’s Gillian Anderson, our lady of skepticism, playing a fucking phenomenal part as Lucy herself. She’s the god of Media, just called Media, and she’s looking to make a deal with Shadow: join her side, leave Wednesday, and shit will work itself out. Shadow: ??????? Me: DO IT GOD DAMMIT IT’S SCULLY
Smash cut back to the diner.
Wednesday is doing some dealings with a dude whose eyes glowed. Shadow asks if he’s going insane. Wednesday tells him nothing, except that we’re going to Chicago!
What’s in Chicago? Three sisters, all named Zorya with different last names and who read fortunes, and PETER. FUCKING. STORMARE.
But first, we go to space.
So uh that’s where people that Bilquis vaginally eats go. Space. Yeah, we get a lot more of that whole thing, and then Bilquis visits a museum to admire her statue and rearrange some jewelry-clothing in a meaningful way.
Then it’s another Smash cut to PETER FUCKING STORMARE!!!
Listen. I really enjoy Peter Stormare. He’s kind of like Christopher Walken: if you need a certain kind of actor for a certain kind of role, he’s your man. Mostly, do you need a scary man, or a Russian man? Or both? Peter Stormare is the right fit for you.
In American Gods, Stormare is playing a slavic version of Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Only, where he’s from, they call him Czernobog, or black god. You’ve actually seen this god, or a version of him, before — in Disney’s Fantasia.
Anyway, I really like Stormare as an actor. He’s been in a shitload of movies — usually playing a bit part but often enough, he’s integral to the plot. He’s even done voice acting for cartoons and video games, and with the latter he’ll even do motion-capture if the game needs it.
So yeah, Stormare comes in and basically hams up the joint, Shadow gets his fortune read (hint: it’s not good) and Mr. Wednesday fails to convince his hammer to join them on their quest across America. So, they have a delicious dinner — during which Stormare describes, in great detail, how to fucking slaughter cows — and then he challenges Shadow to a game of… Checkers.
Wednesday is absofuckinglutely not amused, and is like “Shadow, no, Shadow really, don’t. You d o n o t have to do this, I am one hundred percent serious.” To which Shadow basically replies, “well, this is all crazy anyway, so why not.” If Shadow wins, Czernobog will go with them. If he loses, he dies by Czernobog’s favorite method of killing.
Shadow loses.
Smash cut to credits.
Overall, I did enjoy this episode more than the pilot. I think it was a lot more coherent and less “holy fuck what just happened,” the cinematography was as on point as in the first episode, and I kind of just… got involved in the overall story. I’m not a fan of burying the lede like this show has done, but I’m glad I’m sticking with it. It’s still goofy in some spots, like… the penis… but I can detect a real center to this show that’s gonna pay out big dividends by the season finale.
