American Gods has us turned all kinds of inside out after its first episode! It’s funny, insane, and irreverent. Here’s our recap of the series premiere, “The Bone Orchard” and a preview for episode two, “The Secret of Spoon”.
{94% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes}
There’s one thing I would have known by the end of American Gods even if I hadn’t looked into it first. I knew almost immediately that Bryan Fuller has had a heavy hand it. He’s an executive producer, by the way.
The sweeping scenes and out of this world gore that’s artistic yet gruesome remind me so much of Hannibal. It’s so strange, confusing, alluring, and feels bigger than what we know right now.
The first episode begins with a man writing, “Coming to America, 813” and vikings sailing across the ocean. Each episode will begin with a year and a story. This one focuses on Vikings making it to America after weeks at sea, and once they reach land, they’re not able to go further inland because a barrage of arrows kills their leader as soon as he steps toward the grass.
They also can’t get back in their boat and leave because there’s no wind. They believe that they’ve come too far for their God to hear them, so they begin a series of sacrifices. First, they each sacrifice an eye, that does nothing to bring the wind. Next, they burn one man alive, and that causes a breeze to stir. Knowing the God wants death, they battle each other, killing nearly half their crew before the wind really picks up and they run for the boat.
The story-teller says that they never spoke of their time there to anyone, and none of them ever sailed again.
As “The Bone Orchard” continues, we follow our main character Shadow Moon as he is getting released from prison after serving three years out of a six year sentence. He has this sense of doom, and one can assume it’s because he’s getting out of prison and back into the real world where his wife has been waiting for him. It’s tough to adjust to being outside the system. Plus, there are some scary looking guys who keep acting like they want to kill him.
He makes a brief phone call to his wife, and she tells him that everything will be okay, and she’ll see him in five days. She mentions that their mutual friend, Robbie, will be coming over to help set up Shadow’s surprise “welcome home” party. It’s an odd thing to add, but we brush it off and move along.
He’s dreaming that night and in the roof caves in around him to reveal his wife. He tells her goodnight and falls asleep. The next dream he has, he’s walking through a forest with bones covering the forest floor and limbs from trees that reach out and try and touch him. Once cuts his cheek and he sees a large tree in the distance.
The next morning, he’s taken to see the warden who tells him that he’s getting out early and his wife has passed away in a car accident. Shadow’s obviously shaken, but he gets dressed and leaves the prison.
His journey to get home is filled with obstacles. First, the lady working the ticket counter tells him that he can’t get a flight earlier because his ticket is for two days away. He’ll have to pay a fee and the difference between tickets. When he tells her has to get to a funeral, she says not without a death certificate.
His thoughts take him back to his friend in prison who gave him this piece of advice:
“Don’t piss off bitches in airports.”
Then relayed a story about how one guy got out on parole then got sent right back for how he behaved in an airport. Shadow finally just asks how much the flight would cost and pays it. He’ll leave the next day.
After this, we’re introduced to Mr. Wednesday. He plays the sympathy card with the same ticket lady and gets a first class ticket all while Shadow watches on.
Once he’s on the plane, his seat is already taken. This might have been filmed months ago, but oh my goodness, talk about revelance in terms of airlines recently. Shadow is sat beside Mr. Wednesday in first class. Wednesday gets him a drink and then offers him a job.
He seems to know lots about Shadow, but tells him to take his time thinking about the job and goes to sleep. All the while, a story rages outside the plane, but Shadow manages to sleep, too.
This dream features the same tree but a buffalo walks from around it and his eyes are flames.
****
In Hollywood, we meet Bilquis for the first time.
She’s a lovely looking woman who meets a middle age man for a drink at a bar. She leads him back to her hotel room and purposefully makes him light a candle beside her bed. This is totally a move of the beginning of a worship or prayer, and I immediately went NOPE.
Bilquis tells this man to worship her, and after a brief moment were he seems possessed in a way, he starts this list of things he worships about her. The whole time she gets larger and larger and he gets smaller and smaller until he’s sucked inside her.
With the act complete, she looks younger and more radiant.
***
Shadow has stopped at a bar and in the restroom, he’s approached again by Mr. Wednesday. This time Wedensday apologizes for his wife’s death and says that the obituary was a nice one. He offers Shadow a job again, but he tells Wednesday that he’s already got a job with his friend, Robbie.
That’s when Wednesday drops this big bomb.
Robbie’s dead, too.
He hands Shadows the newspaper, and it turns out that Shadow’s wife, Laura, and Robbie died in a car accident together. In the early hours of the morning.
When he comes back out to the bar, he tells Wednesday that he’ll work for him if he wins a coin toss. Of course, Wednesday loses, but Shadow eventually tells him that it’s a trick coin and it will always be tails.
This is when Mad Sweeney shows up. He’s a big, Irish guy who downs his jack and coke in one long pull.
Shadows tells Wednesday that he’ll work for him and names several different conditions before they seal the deal. Shadow drinks the other two honey wine shots and Wednesday spits in his own hand and extends it over the table. Shadow shakes it then wipes his hand across his shirt.
This is when things get more interesting. Sweeney calls Shadow out for using a trick coin, and then he starts pulling gold coins out of thin air and flicking them into the empty tumbler on the table.
“How’d you do it?”
“With panache.”
Sweeney wants to fight, but Shadow doesn’t want to. That is, until he brings up Shadow’s wife and how she and Robbie died at the same time…
The fight goes on for awhile, and Shadow finally says, he’s done. Then Sweeney tells him they’re not done until he says they are. They jump at each and the screen goes black.
***
Shadow wakes up in the backseat of Wednesday’s car. Wednesday tells him not to get used to it because one of his duties will be driving Betty, but he figured he could use the rest since he has to go to his wife’s funeral today.
They make it to Eagle Point and check into a motel. Wednesday tells Shadow:
“I will tell you this once and once only ever. Take all the time you need.”
Shadow gets cleaned up and goes to his wife’s funeral. There, he scoots into a pew besides a woman who’s crying. Audrey was his wife’s best friend and Robbie’s wife. Audrey makes some rude comments about him getting out or escaping jail. How reconstructing Laura’s face to have an open casket probably drained his savings account. Shadow tells her that Laura loved her and she was her best friend.
Audrey laughs a little and says that he really doesn’t know. They stare at each other for a second then she says,
“She died with my husband’s cock in her mouth.”
He knew even if he didn’t want to admit it yet. Audrey pushes him to the realization and he’s hurt and shocked. After the graveside service, he stays and looks at her grave and finally yells at it.
Shadow tells her that he read while he was inside. He read 813 books. <-- same number written at the beginning of the episode!
“I wanted to come back better than I went in for you.”
That’s when Audrey shows up again. She tells him that she’s been yelling at her husband’s grave, too, and she understands why he didn’t come to his service. Audrey goes into way too much detail about how Robbie’s penis was severed in the accident and how she told the coroner to leave it where he found it. Then clarifying that Laura isn’t buried with it in her mouth.
In an act of revenge where Robbie and Laura can both see, Audrey tries to get Shadow to have sex with her, but he just holds her and lets her cry.
On the way back to the motel, he’s walking down the road and the street lights start to go out all the way up to him. He goes to the side of the road where there are a bunch of lights dancing around a cube. When he gets close to the cube, it opens up and hits him.
This is where we me Technical Boy.
He smokes synthetic toad and quizzes Shadow over why he’s working for Wednesday and what is it that Wednesday wants. Shadow tells him that he just started working for him today and he doesn’t know anything.
Technical Boy asks him if he’d tell him if he knew anything anyway. When Shadow says, no, Technical Boy tells his guards to kill him. The faceless bodyguards sitting beside him start attacking him, and Technical Boy tells him that he’s going to be deleted and when you’re deleted, there’s no going back.
What comes next is a graphic beating and lynching scene as Shadow is hung from a tree.
Before he can die, someone comes through and kills all the faceless men and Shadow falls to the ground amongst all the blood and bodies.
****
Episode two of American Gods, “The Secret of Spoon”, will follow Shadow and Mr. Wednesday as they take road trip and meet an old friend of Mr. Wednesday’s.
As Mr. Wednesday begins recruitment for the coming battle, Shadow Moon travels with him to Chicago, and agrees to a very high stakes game of checkers with the old Slavic god, Czernobog.
You can take a look at two clips and see the stills for “The Secret of Spoons” below! Shadow’s having a hard time coming to terms with this new view of the world.
We’re also introduced to Cloris Leachman’s character, Zorya Vechernyaya, in episode two, too. She’s described as:
The eldest of three sisters who watch over the constellations, guarding against horrors forgotten by modern man. Once accustomed to royal status, the sisters have learned to survive on far less in a country that has no memory of them. In this clip with Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), Zorya describes her new life now that she is a forgotten Old God.
Since this is told in Shadow’s point of view, Zorya’s explanation doesn’t make much sense as it does to us since we realize these are very, very old Gods.
American Gods airs on Sundays on Starz at 9/8c. Live tweet with us at We So Nerdy!