American Gods episode 4 dissected Laura Moon in every way: her weaknesses, her strengths, and the gamut of life, love and death in between. Now that Laura Moon’s horrible undead ass is my new favorite character, we return to Shadow and Mr. Wednesday’s divine recruitment drive featuring Corbin Bernsen as Vulcan, God of the Fire and the Forge.
Corbin Bernsen! You know, Shawn’s dad on Pysch and, uh, 216 other roles. Anyway, I was crazy excited to see Shawn’s dad on Psych come through as Vulcan. I was also excited for Mr. Wednesday to have a friend, since everybody just seems annoyed to see him. But it turns out I was getting ahead of myself. Heh heh heh.
The opening scene to “A Murder of Gods” is just as painful and reflects just as much ugly history as Mr. Nancy’s legendary episode 2 opening, except the scene depicted in the opening isn’t history. It’s current news and it really happens like that, from the desperate river crossing, to the children getting shot in the head, to the ugly irony of how both sides call on Jesus’ name. I do know that the tumbleweed rolling across perfectly-coiffed Mexican Jesus’ head to leave a crown of thorns was Bryan Fuller Extra ™, but I loved it anyway. I also didn’t think it could get more painful than that slave ship opening, but here we are.
Shadow continues to suffer on every level: emotionally, physically, spiritually and existentially. He tries to get answers out of Mr. Wednesday about everything that’s been happening, but all he gets back is looping statements about the interlocked nature of reality and faith.
Shadow: “Motherfucker, you never just answer a fucking question!”
Mr. Wednesday: “I’m not so young nor so narrow to assume the dead are dead and there’s no spectrum of spectral in between. In my experience, the dead that aren’t rarely come back without purpose.”
Cut to Mad Sweeney and Laura back at the motel. I love the concierge guy reading a John Grisham novel as a dead woman demands her car back and fights with a leprechaun. Life’s stranger than fiction, bub. Mad Sweeney needs to get the coin out of Laura and figures if she doesn’t need it anymore, he’ll get it back, so he plans to take her to someone who can perform a resurrection. In order to do that, he starts hot-wiring a cab. Meanwhile, he and Laura engage in top-tier banter:
Sweeney: “Why don’t you put that on your fucking scales and weigh it?”
Laura: “What the fuck are you? I mean, what the fuck are any of you but tell me, what the fuck are you?”
S: “I’m a leprechaun.”
L: “Oh, well that makes sense.”
S: “Does it now?”
L: “NO!”
Then our homeboy who fell in love with the djinn comes back to stop Sweeney from carjacking his taxi. He’s still hunting for the djinn ( Sweeney: “Fire for eyes, shit for brains?” Homeboy: “Yes, and no, presumably”), but Laura and Sweeney need a car, so Sweeney cops a deal: if the cabbie takes them to Kentucky, Sweeney will tell him where he can find the djinn (and a whole bunch of other gods). Presumably that’s the place in Wisconsin where Mr. Wednesday’s assembling his army.
Our poor homeboy, Salim-not-Salim, is gonna have to pick his way through GodCon 2017 to find the fire-eyed demi-god of his dreams, but not before a road trip with two of the worst attitudes on the show. Predictably, his sweet and talkative nature is almost totally wasted on Laura and Sweeney.
Sweeney: “I’m sitting back here having a fucking anxiety attack because I am genuinely terrified that you are never gonna shut the fuck up.”
Salim: “Fuck those assholes.”
Laura: “Fuck those assholes.”Sweeney: “Did you have a genie in your bottle? Did you rub one out of him, darling?”
Good luck, Salim!
Now, remember that weird, awful tree at the end of the last episode? Turns out that Shadow’s injury from Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree is worse and grosser than they imagined. Mr. Wednesday likens it to a wound from a shit-coated shiv, poisoned with a little something extra.
In a really gross scene under the car headlights, Mr. Wednesday exorcises the wriggling, tree-like parasite writhing in Shadow’s wound along with a little monologue about how Mr. Wood, ancient god of trees, sacrificed everything to industrialization and became something else. I don’t know which god’s backstory this is, but it’s creepy and haunting and fits in perfectly with Vulcan.
Vulcan, by the way, turns out to be the leader of a creepy little town full of armed Caucasians who love God, country and guns. Vulcan has repurposed their love of guns for his own worship: his factory manufactures bullets with his name on them, so that every shot fired is literally a prayer in his name. Periodically, a warehouse worker falls in one of the forge pits due to “weak railings” or what have you, and Vulcan accepts this as a sacrifice.
The reunion starts out jovial, but once Vulcan starts saying stuff like, “I’m not starving for any taste of honey,” you know this won’t be as simple and straightforward as Mr. Wednesday painted it.
“Come on get happy” playing as these Stepford warehouse workers grin and bounce their way through a day on the job, closing with the guy falling in the lava pit. It’s so dark and so funny, you just have to laugh.
Why does this factory and town tableau look exactly like the intro area in Fallout 4 though?
“Everyone in this particular town is a dedicated citizen. Dedicated to one sticky belief: America. Their America.”
These creepy Nazi-esque armbands…
Shadow’s “why are you taking my black ass through these Caucasian streets, #GetOut” face
The song and music choice in this episode is truly top-notch. That cover of “I Put A Spell On You” is top-notch.
About the forge pit “sacrifices”: “It’s as good as throwing them in intentionally.”
The bullets flying up above the clouds like all the prayers they represent. Their rise… and their fall.
Meanwhile, Laura, Mad Sweeney and Salim-not-Salim make for a pretty awkward bar trio at the same bar from episode 1 as Sweeney tries to talk Laura into relinquishing her hold on this life. It’s a quiet scene and I’m not really sure what the point of having Salim there is, but most shows would never even have had Salim, let alone as a recurring role, so it’s all good.
Sweeney : “Your man came, saw you, tasted death on your tongue and left.”
Laura (after Sweeney compares her undead attachment to Shadow to a grand buttfucking no one wanted): “I dunno. I really like anal sex.”
Back in Vulcan, Virginia, Vulcan shows off his hanging tree to Shadow, snubs Shadow when he pours wine and refuses to uncork Mr. Wednesday’s gift. Vulcan’s surface-jovial treatment of Mr. Wednesday and dismissive, provocative attitude towards Shadow comprise a nuanced and ugly “fuck you.” I’m not sure why Vulcan agrees to make Wednesday a blade worthy of a god considering he’s clearly not on Wednesday’s team here, but Wednesday has a retort to all those fuck yous in mind.
Vulcan: “You are what you worship. God of the Volcano. Those who worship hold a volcano in the palm of their hand. It’s filled with prayers in my name. The power of fire is firepower. Not God, but god-like. And they believe. It fills their spirits every time they pull the trigger. They feel my heat on their hip and it keeps them warm at night.”
Vulcan (about the New Gods) “They’re not the oppressors. They’re the tide. They’re gravity. You saw what I was. I was a story people forgot to remember to tell. They gave me a gun. They put power back in my hand. And I gotta tell you. It feels good. Every bullet fired in a crowded movie theatre is a prayer in my name. And that prayer makes them want to pray even harder.”
Vulcan: “I never needed my religion to be moral.”
Wednesday: “You pledged allegiance to me and forged a blade. And they killed you for it.”
Mr. Wednesday cuts off his old pal’s head, kicks him into his own forge and pisses on his body.
Shadow: “Oh shit! Holy shit! What did you do! Oh fuck, what did you do!”
Mr. Wednesday, you conniving son of a gun. The episode closes on Laura watching Salim do his prayers, both of them agreeing that life is great. Seems that the New Gods found a way to make Vulcan great again, but Wednesday’s not willing to play by those rules. He’ll have it his way for all of the Old Gods, or drag them all down trying. I love these gods and I love watching them at work. Salim tagging along with Laura and Sweeney is really odd and doesn’t quite fit in, but sure. Laura and Sweeney have great chemistry and some part of his little leprechaun soul really does seem to be trying to look out for her. But nothing is dragging Laura’s hyperfocus away from Shadow.
What were your favorite parts of episode 6? What do you most look forward to in episode 7? How do you think this war between gods is shaping up? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below, and don’t forget to check out episode 7, "Prayer for Mad Sweeney," on Starz this Sunday, June 11 at 9 p.m. EST.
