American Gods Review 1×04: “Git Gone”

American Gods gives us (and Laura Moon) life in the expository fourth installment

American Gods gives us a fakeout off the top, with an episode created entirely off-novel. We start by seeing some hieroglyphics, but instead of being with the old Gods we’re at a middle America casino where Laura Moon (Emily Browning) works as a blackjack dealer. Laura’s life appears to be pretty monotonous, she eats hard boiled eggs and kills flies with “Git Gone” bug killer. When she’s not sealing herself in a hot tub and trying to use the bug killer on herself, that is. Until she meets Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) at work. Shadow tries to scam the casino and Laura warn him off before he meets her after the casino. Thinking that perhaps her ennui can be cured by this bad boy, she takes him home.

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Unfortunately for Laura, love domesticates him completely. They get married and Laura is bored all over again until she suggests robbing the casino like Shadow wanted the first night they met. Shadow is caught and goes to prison taking the entire blame, asking Laura to wait for him. She doesn’t and starts screwing his best friend Robbie (Dane Cook), but doesn’t seem particularly excited about that either. She dies directly before Shadow comes home and meets Anubis (Chris Obi), who wants to consign her to never ending darkness, but she’s yanked back to earth.

Laura returns to see Shadow being lynched by Technical Boy and we find out she was responsible for his henchmen’s heads being torn off. Apparently, death has made her badass and she’s got a heck of a lot of strength. In her post-massacre quest to fix her arm, she scares the crap out of her friend Audrey (Betty Giplin) and has a reckoning with her before running into Anubis and Mr. Ibis (Demore Barnes). These two work for a funeral home here in America, and they fix zombie Laura up for a proper meeting with Shadow.

What’s Laura’s problem, and why did she end up drawn to Anubis? Besides bringing up a few more questions, we’re finally able to connect some of the dots as some large chunks of information were filled in. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it!

What to do when your bad boy becomes your puppy

One of the things we were looking forward to about the adaptation of American Gods from novel to television show was the decision by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green to flesh out (pun intended) Laura Moon. She features in the novel but definitely needed a bigger place in the series. Here we’re treated to an episode that’s a combination of necessary backstory and flashbacks to fill in missing pieces for Laura. It’s certainly some of the strongest writing to date in a show that already has great writing. We’re looking for more diversity in our television and to have one-dimensional female characters would be unacceptable. Here, Laura is complex, flawed, and we both love and hate her.

“We are like a history book. We’re established fact. We don’t change, we live in the same town that I grew up in in my dead grandma’s shitty house. You have a shitty job. I have a shitty job. And I want more.” -Laura Moon

What is Laura Moon’s problem? She’s got a serious case of ennui. She’s unhappy in her job, she eats one hard boiled egg for dinner, she’s gassing herself with bug killer in her hot tub for God’s sake. Laura is searching for some sort of connection, something to make her feel anything. Enter Shadow Moon. At first, it appears Shadow is just the bad boy Laura is looking for, but he’s domesticated so quickly that Laura is back to the same apathy. She concocts the robbery scheme, and when it goes south Shadow predictably takes the blame. Even if we hadn’t already known Laura wouldn’t be faithful we would know just from this short conversation. It’s this sort of lassitude that really makes us dislike her. For one, we already love Shadow, who we’ve bonded with over the past three episodes. And for another, what woman doesn’t want to believe she can tame the bad boy?
Previously when Laura called Shadow “puppy”, we thought it was an endearment. In episode 1 it felt that way. Here’s where we discover that to Laura, calling Shadow “puppy” is anything but an endearment. He’s in one relationship and Laura is in another one entirely. Their first sexual encounter is the perfect example of this. Shadow starts out tender, and Laura slaps him until he flips her over and treats her rough. When we see them having sex later, Shadow is treating her tenderly and she looks totally over it. We were completely maddened by Laura’s cavalier treatment of Shadow. Audrey said she’d kill to have a man look at her the way Shadow looks at Laura. Same, girl! So it makes it really hard to sympathize with Laura even when zombie Laura turns it around.

Laura doesn’t believe in anything, so should we believe in love now?

We got some huge answers here in this fourth installment of American Gods. Things that were left hanging in the series premiere (no pun intended) came roaring back to us in this fantastic episode. There Shadow Moon was being lynched by the Technical Boy and an unseen force tore apart his henchmen and ripped him down. We’ve been wondering how that happened since the premiere as there was seemingly no explanation for it. It took a little time to get here but we finally we see that it was Laura Moon, with a new, incredible amount of strength that tore apart Technical Boy’s goons and tore Shadow down. This was a huge payoff in terms of plot. Watching Laura ripping apart the goons was pretty satisfying, especially since Emily Browning is so tiny. It also did go part way to redeeming Laura in our eyes and goes back to Fuller and Green developing well-rounded, fully developed female characters and not stereotypical archetypes. It was fantastic to see her kicking so much ass. It did bring up more questions for us, not the least of which leaves us asking whether or not Laura actually loves Shadow.

“There’s nothing to believe. Trust me, I’ve looked. My parents believed in everything. Father, son, holy ghost, spirit filled with the light of God. They taught me all of it. Chapter and verse. I went to bed every night in a world full of magic where anything was possible. And then one day you find out that santa’s not real and then the tooth fairy isn’t real and there’s not farm upstate for old dogs. Then I started reading history books and Jesus isn’t real and it’s like everything that made the world anyhting more than what it is is just stories. Snake oil. But worse, because snakes are real.” -Laura Moon

Laura’s resurrection was perfectly timed - just in time to assist Shadow. We’re assuming it has something to do with Mad Sweeney’s coin. The last episode Zorya 3 told Shadow that the sun coin was incredibly powerful protection. In a stroke of visual effects genius, Shadow is also appearing to Laura as pure light. It’s allowing her to track him. So we’re left with two theories: One, the light flare is because she actually does love him as she continuously claimed throughout the episode and they have a connection. Or two, since Shadow gave her the coin it resurrected her to be his personal zombie bodyguard. We think Laura believes the former, currently we believe the latter. The cryptic conversation Laura has with Anubis and Mr. Ibis still don’t really give us the answers we’re looking for yet about this. Laura’s feelings about Shadow are complicated. At least four times in this episode we changed our minds about whether or not she actually loved him.

The real truth about what happens to the embalming fluid: A practical guide to resurrection

Sometimes when characters are resurrected in television shows the practical concerns of their resurrection are ignored. Not so with American Gods and Laura Moon. When Laura rose from the dead she vomits embalming fluid. She also has some gastrointestinal embalming fluid issues. It’s by far one of the funniest moments in the episode and is perfectly supported by Betty Giplin as Audrey who was so great in the premiere. We’re happily enjoying seeing her back. Laura and Audrey have some issues to hack out, unexpected return to life notwithstanding. It only makes sense that that reckoning would take place in a bathroom, Audrey screaming in a bathtub and clinging to a shower curtain while Laura shits embalming fluid.

Laura Moon: “Does Shadow know?”
Audrey: “Yeah he knows, I tried to fuck him. On your grave. It seemed fair.”

Laura also has issues with her decaying dead body. Audrey does an absolutely horrendous job sewing it on and her skin also looks pretty terrible. We can’t imagine she smells particularly pleasant either, especially due to the extraordinarily large amount of flies she’s attracting. The Gods are funny things, though. Anubis and Ibis are attracted to Laura and coincidentally run a mortuary. They also wear absolutely smashing three-piece gray suits. They good good. In a “Death Becomes Her”-like absolutely charming sequence, the two of them use spray paint to fix up her skin and do a better job of re-attaching her arm. Even though they do a decent job, but the flies that are hovering around Laura make us pretty sure that no amount of spray paint is going to cover her rot. One complaint here: Where did Audrey go? She watches Anubis change from a Jackal to a man and just vanishes?

Final Verdict: American Gods 1×04 “Git Gone” dives into the doldrums of one ass-kicking zombie and comes out smelling a lot better than she does

This novel departure is the strongest episode of American Gods yet. We adored how Fuller and Green really went the extra mile to add depth to Laura and by extension Shadow Moon. We also appreciated getting answers to one of the more burning questions from the start of the series so far, who saved Shadow Moon from being lynched by Technical Boy.

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With answers comes more questions, however. How did Man Sweeney’s coin resurrect Laura? Where does her super strength come from? Laura thinks that it’s not love that brought her back, but love that has her staying, but we’re not even sure that’s the case. There has to be more to the sun coin and the way Shadow appears like light to Laura. Why does she have super strength and is so powerful? Why were flies attracted to her before she died? Will Laura continue to rot?

Of course the biggest question from this episode: Why Anubis? We already know that Anubis called Mrs. Fadil to the scales because her Tita taught her the old ways of Egypt. But Laura Moon believes in nothing, much like Shadow Moon believed in nothing after her death. If she believes in nothing, why was she called to the scales? Just because she worked at a casino with an Egyptian theme? And why the hot tub for her oblivion? Is that some sick joke on the part of Anubis? And speaking of Laura believing in nothing, she seemed to change her tune when Anubis was trying to put her into the hot tub to darkness. We suppose anyone really facing oblivion would feel the same way.

We quite literally wouldn’t change a thing about this episode. It was absolute perfection. Alternating between the past and the present, seeing Laura’s life and undignified death and filling in the pieces of the missing part of what Shadow remembers might as well have been a stroke of genius. We’d watch and re-watch this episode add nauseum and probably still never get sick of it. Using Garbage’s “Stupid Girl” for a “Laura Moon is bored” montage is an example of the perfection of this episode.

Emily Browning’s every single bored look was captivating. When Anubis warns her that when her task is done he will do what he came to do and take her to darkness, her arched eyebrow and wry side-eye were everything we wanted. When she smiled at the pit boss when he tells her she doesn’t have to shuffle anymore and then immediately drops her face to deadpan at the top of the episode, we fell in love. That is why we love and hate the character so much! There’s so much to identify with in there. Sure, she sucked her husband’s best friend’s dick. But watching her walk down the street casually holding her arm and kicking off her shoes after she’s rescued Shadow Moon makes us laugh despite the fact that she’s actually the worst person.

Though we didn’t get any “Coming to America” or “Somewhere in America” stories this week, marking the first time since the series premiere that has happened, this episode felt completely consistent with the world American Gods has established. The show is consistently raising our expectations of what television can be in terms of honoring diversity by giving such rich depth to its female characters. How will Shadow react to Laura’s sudden reappearance? And what will happen when Mad Sweeney catches up to her? We can’t wait for next week!

Comments and Questions: The old Gods give answers that create ten more questions

• It’s very clear why Laura Moon is so slim. She ate a freaking hard boiled egg for dinner.
• Was Laura Moon actually trying to kill herself with the Git Gone at the top of the episode? What are your thoughts?
• Flies were attracted to Laura before her death as well. Are there mythological connections here? Is she now truly Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies?
• Alright, we get it, ravens are stalking Shadow (they were there at the BBQ with Robbie & Audrey). When are we going to get the answers for that?
• There’s a lot to be said for your eyes really being open to what your relationship is. Food for thought, Shadow.
• There was one brief moment where Laura’s mother was speaking to her at Laura’s wedding to Shadow. Laura brushes her off, but her mother looks like she’s saying something important to her. We’re dying to know what it was and if something was cut here.
• Why didn’t Shadow see Laura Moon ripping apart Technical Boy’s goons?

American Gods returns next Sunday, May 29th, 2017 at 9/8C on Starz.