Watch & Remark: American Gods, Head Full of Snow

Welcome back to my series on American Gods! Here's my review for episode three of this amazing series.

This show continues to amaze me. I usually have trouble keeping up with shows week by week, and I usually prefer to binge-watch after all the episodes have been released, but American Gods has me coming back for more and more every week, even though I KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN I JUST NEED TO SEE IT. But really, please watch this show. It will amaze you and make you think about what you really believe about the world around us.

I just have to mention the opening scene, which was brilliantly done. It was unique, and slightly reassuring in some ways. Just because an old woman still remembered what she was told as a young girl, her place in an "afterlife" was determined by it, and the way this scene played out was stunning. I especially loved the cat.

Image Source: Denofgeek.com

Meanwhile, Shadow is struggling to believe in the world that has been shown to him by the Zoryas, by Czernobog, by Mr. Wednesday. The way this show is set up, with such an intricate attention to detail on every level, is mind-blowingly great. The audience is captured by Shadow's struggle to take in the new details of his world, to accept that there is a bear in the sky, and some coin makes a leprechaun lucky, and that he himself can wish snow into the skies. This is part of Shadow's larger struggle--to figure out for himself if he wants to carve out a space in this new world without Laura, or if he just wants to lay down and be forgotten.

But besides Shadow's existential crisis, this episode also featured some of my favorite one-liners. From Mr. Wednesday's "We're robbing a bank. Want some coffee?" to Shadow's "Why are you talking to me about marshmallows? I'm not worried about marshmallows! ...Yeah I like marshmallows, thanks." this show is a beautiful example of scripting an amazing novel into a memorable TV show.

GIF Source: Vanityfair.com

Mad Sweeney was one of my favorite characters in the book, and the way that he is incorporated into the show is ingenious and highly entertaining. Poor Sweeney, he gave away his lucky coin, and now he's on a streak of particularly bad luck, that seems to be working out quite well for Shadow. But even Sweeney's story in this episode is overshadowed by the vignette of the djinn and the salesman. It was a tastefully explicit sex scene that reflected the history and myth of the legends of the djinn, and the paths that the old gods must follow to maintain themselves in a new world that is rushing to forget them in the face of technology.

This episode was a brilliant example of direction from Guillermo Navaro, a lesson in cinematography crossed with a spectacular snow storm, and a teaser for one of the most important side-characters of the novel. Congratulations to Neil Gaiman for one hell of a show that's coming from one hell of a novel.