American Gods - "Git Gone" Recap. - Your Entertainment Corner

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 1

Emily Browning as Laura Moon, the dead wife

Season 1, Episode 4
Air Date: Sunday May 21, 2017, 9PM ET/PT on STARZ
★★★★★

The Dead Wife.
By Erin Richards-Kunkel

“When you die, you rot. Physics doesn’t take Sundays off.” – Laura Moon

Just when American Gods hits with a huge twist (revealing Laura Moon (Emily Browning) is alive, or rather, undead), it’s time for some major backstory in “Git Gone.” Alternating between the past and the present, not only is Laura and Shadow’s (Ricky Whittle) relationship uncovered, but the episode answers some major questions about how exactly Laura came back to life.

Laura is a complex character, full of flaws that make you both despite and sympathize with her. They are the kind of flaws that make her both relatable and more emotional during her journey of redemption trying to find her way back to Shadow.

“Git Gone” opens with Laura’s life before Shadow, showing her monotonous job as a card dealer at a small town casino. It’s at the blackjack table where she meets Shadow, who strolls in to play a round and try to cheat the house. She warns him off but he sticks around to win a date. After a night together, they are inseparable, eventually getting married. Shadow retires as a thief and starts working as a trainer in their friend Robbie’s (Dane Cook) boxing gym. Everything should be peaceful and happy, but there is a growing darkness in the background. Throughout “Git Gone,” tension is hidden in the spaces and pauses of what should be happy moments.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 2

Laura trapped in a job at a casino

Despite what should have been happiness with Shadow, Laura’s day-to-day routines uncover her thinly veiled hatred for her current life. As a result, she flirts with a desire to throw herself over the edge into the nothingness of death. Her absolute belief in the finality of death is a chilling foreshadowing to her own death in “Git Gone.”

“There is nothing to believe. Trust me, I’ve looked. It’s like anything that made the world more than what it is, is just stories, just snake oil.”

Laura’s desires and mind are somewhat of a mystery. She is generally unhappy, even after meeting Shadow, but is unclear on what will fill that void. She is clinical and sometimes emotionless. Browning fuses all of these intricacies of her character together beautifully.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 3

Shadow works his charm on Laura

On her path to finding happiness, Laura encourages Shadow to rob her casino, leveraging her insider information to pull it off. Of course, this is exactly what lands Shadow in prison. Although she promises to wait for him, she begins a torrid affair with Robbie. It is in their last goodbye fling that they end up in the fatal accident that ends both of their lives.

Once again, Laura is again confronted with the nothingness she so resolutely believed in. But only after her encounter with Anubis (Chris Obi) and his scales does she reject the idea of only nothingness. Thus, her soul is called back into her body and she literally rises from her grave.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 4

Laura Moon’s got a long journey ahead of her.

From this moment on, Laura is reborn (so to speak) into a new life as the undead. She is drawn to Shadow like a beacon, luckily coming to his rescue in time to save him from the would-be lynching at the hands of Technical Boy (Bruce Langley). From her perspective, we see her kicking and punching through the clones like sheets of paper. Apparently being undead comes with super strength. As a zombie, Laura tries to reclaim her old life, putting her directly in the path of Mr. Jacquel (Anubis) and his partner Mr. Ibis (Demore Barnes). Together, fittingly, they run a funeral home. They prepare her as they would a corpse for a funeral, except they mend her flesh and prepare her for her unfinished life in her undead body.

Afterwards, Laura waits in Shadow’s hotel room, ready to reunite and confront him with the fact that she is still (somewhat) alive.

By the Book: The Secret Life of Laura Moon
By Connie Allen

By the end of “Git Gone,” some viewers may feel Laura should be gone for good while others, like me, remain curious about the significant role Laura will play in Shadow’s fate. Despite having read Neil Gaiman’s book, I find there are enough differences in the way American Gods navigates the major story lines to provide room for a great deal of suspense.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 5

Laura comes to Shadow’s rescue

In the aftermath of Shadow finding Laura in his hotel room, “Git Gone” centers around Laura. In a perfect example of how well a book and its TV adaptation complement each other, not only is there deeper context to Laura’s importance in Shadow’s life, but the episode details the circumstances of Shadow’s incarceration. Aside from maintaining the continuity by tying up loose ends in the major plot points, what I absolutely love about this episode is how multi-faceted Laura is. Writers Bryan Fuller and Michael Green scripted “Git Gone” carefully to ensure Laura isn’t depicted as an evil sort of character. Regardless of how one may feel about Laura, Browning’s performance cannot be ignored as she acts her butt off. The way Browning uses her facial expressions to communicate Laura’s boredom, misery, and hope makes her emotions perfectly clear. Without relying on dialogue, director Chris Zobel does an awesome job of setting up Laura’s scenes with an emphasis on her point of view.

The Good Stuff

Another satisfying element of American Gods is the cast. Anubis, aka Mr. Jacquel, and Laura have some of the best scenes of “Git Gone.” Browning and Obi play off each other effortlessly; their onscreen chemistry works well in showing the different sides of their characters. When Laura defies Anubis, rejecting her death, the look on his face speaks volumes.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 6

It takes being undead for Laura to see her life differently.

A character’s backstory can sometimes make or break a series. Understanding Laura outside of other characters’ viewpoints is critical. The way Fuller and Green develop Laura by showing her life prior to meeting Shadow is substantial in how some viewers will perceive her later in the episode. Watching how Laura’s life was when she was alive made me feel a bit sorry for her. Sure, it could have been worse, but seeing what she goes through to earn a living lends some sympathy. She’s not free to be herself, but she’s the kind of person who can’t be held down in one place for too long. She does the right thing, most of the time, because it’s expected of her, not because her heart is in it.

It isn’t until Laura evades death and meets Shadow for the first time that the story picks up. The story lines flow between flashbacks of Laura’s past to the present circumstances, in effect outlining how much she has changed since her death.

The absolute highlight of “Git Gone” for me is the extent Laura goes to protect Shadow. Discovering she is the one who saved him from being hanged the night she met Technical Boy is significant because it shows not only how strong she is, but the extreme lengths she takes to protect Shadow. The scenes where an undead Laura recognizes Shadow as a glowing presence in the dark is not only symbolic of how she sees him, but it just might be an essential component of their story line.

Overall

American Gods keeps up with the spirit of its source material without straying too far from it. The production value is stunning, as usual, and I find that with each new episode of American Gods, I am not only able to anticipate what will happen next but how the story will play out onscreen. Gaiman’s novel is beautifully written with fascinating descriptions of characters and places. Yet, there are some elements of the book that are a bit vague. Whereas, we don’t learn much about Shadow until the end of the book, the opposite is true in the series as we learn during the first major arc of the season. I appreciate how well balanced the tone is throughout “Git Gone;” the story lines don’t stay morbid for too long, and if a scene is intense, some light humor is thrown in.

<i>American Gods </i> - "Git Gone" Recap. 7

Robbie just doesn’t know how to quit.

Although my primary attention is on Laura and Shadow’s relationship, I wasn’t thrilled with her scenes with Robbie. Cook does a good job; actually, his performance is kind of how I imagined Robbie to be in the book. Thoth, aka Mr. Ibis, has more screen time away from writing down humanity’s history. Thoth and Anubis working together add the perfect light-hearted aspects.

There are plenty of scenes that are straight out of the book, but what the TV series is developing are fillers for the more ambiguous plot points. With a second season renewal already announced by Starz, it will be a challenge to stretch out one epic story into a multitude of episodes. I believe that’s the reason characters like Mad Sweeney (Pablo Schreiber) and Bilquis (Yetide Badaki) are important; they’re intriguing characters whose actions can create new and alternative story lines.

Overall, I really enjoyed “Git Gone.” I’ll admit I initially thought the changes from the book would lessen my enthusiasm. Instead, I am thoroughly eager to watch what happens next!

Tune in to new episodes of American Gods, Sundays at 9PM E/P on Starz.

For more on the show, go to https://www.starz.com/series/americangods/episodes