American Gods
I hear way too much praise to this
series and I don’t know why, I mean have I been watching the wrong American
Gods? So I want to make my point on why this show can’t find its own ass even
sitting on its hands.
I like Brian Fuller, the guy has, or
had, a good eye for visuals, and the scenes on Hannibal were deep in every
sense, I mean I liked to watch that series with the headphones so I could not
miss a single sound and watched to like 30 cm of the screen so I could only
watch the show and nothing else. But now we have American Gods, a show inspired
on a not very good book (no matter what the people say) and now I see that every
little criticism the show gets the fanboys jump to the rescue, but this show
deserves to be called out when it fails that for me is at least 3 times per
episode. And yes I am one of those people that read the book, but that only
gives me more ammunition to destroy every scene piece by piece and even the
foundation for it that this show destroys it by itself, so let’s begin with the
discectomy.
Well the appeal of the book is that it
goes by the back roads of USA and to the small towns where you can find the
biggest ball of razor wire or other road attractions. And watching the show I
can see that Brian Fuller has never stepped out of the Highway and hit a
backroad in his life, he has never gone to a truckers dinner, or charged gas on
a small town gas station, which is also supermarket, restaurant and has some
things to make it more colourful. If you go and stay for a while in those
places you’ll notice that everything looks slower, almost like time has stopped
is that kind of peace in the air, the silence, is unique. But here you have
always motion, always there is something happening and it makes no sense. Also everything
should look like normal, like everyday life but with a little twist to make it
look twice just to make sure you actually saw that. Like the alligator bar, in
the show everything was alligators and it looked like a whole crew worked to
create that set, while in the book this was a simple dinner/bar with 3
alligators as decoration, already dusty and forgotten but it was because the
owner of the place liked them and though they bring luck. And that takes me to
every single shot. Everything in this show looks staged and carefully detailed
to the most minimal piece and that is so wrong is so many levels for this
story, because the idea should be that this world is the world we live but
happens things that you are sure just happened random but a person is telling
you that they are doing it, and for a second you have that doubt, that not
believing in your own mind. But the fact that everything looks a set takes you
out, it doesn’t look like an everyday moment, looks like a play where
everything is fake.
The main point of the show is that
the old gods are fading because people are forgetting them and by this same
reason the old gods want nothing with the new world, so when they said that Czernobog
is using the bolt gun or Bilquis is using online dating is a complete denial of
their premise. In the book Czernobog is retired from the slaughter house, he
stopped working there when the bolt gun came, Bilquis was a prostitute, this
was to show how low they fell, from being goods to that pathetic existence, but
they look like they are doing OK in the show, a comfy life. Czernobog should
have been in a small apartment that should look like the apartment of an old
person, full of old furniture and ceramic figurines and almost no space to move
because a whole life was camped into that little place. But in the show we have
a big apartment that looks more like an abandoned luxury hotel than an
apartment.
The show wastes a lot of time with
pointless scenes, like the ones of the Ifrit or Bilquis, and gives you nothing
for good scenes. I mean Bilquis is a character that has nothing to give for the
story, the only thing is for sex scenes. The Ifrit could have been a better
scene if you could have a moment to care for the guy who was there, I mean give
the guy a proper introduction, show him taking all the samples into his
briefcase let us hear how he talks with his family, before you strip him naked
and have sex, I didn’t care for either of them in that scene. Bilquis should be
a speck of dust a token of a story like the “Coming to America” bits but no, we
need to see her naked every damned episode, why? The hell I know, she does not
have a plot or adds any of value to the story. And now that I touched the
Coming to America bits, there are enough stories of that in the book to keep
you interested but they decided to make their own, which are really bad, I mean
the story of Mr Nancy, makes no sense, if he could see the future he should
have made peace with his own vanishing. Instead they could have used the story
of the twins, or the one for Mad Sweeney, and the prehistoric era one made no
sense, that story was about how with time and mixing cultures people forget the
old gods and adopt new ones, not changing religions by force. And there are way
more stories and could take a little more time and go visit Shadow’s dreams,
that also is kind of wrong, because he starts on a cavern in the dark, making
reference to he doesn’t know anything and then he starts to learn, also they
set the Yggdrasil too soon.
Also, this show can’t find a genre
that fits it, I mean, is it adventure, mystery, comedy? What is it? Because it
doesn’t fit at any of those. It has no mystery, the adventures are dull and the
comedy is worse than third grade jokes. I mean a Viking steps into the grass
and 10,000 arrows get him at the same time, that is just dumb and ridiculous,
then the battle among 4 Vikings an arm flew still holding a sword and kills
another guy, was it supposed to be funny? Laura kicks a guy between the legs
and the skeleton flies out of the body, that is a level of stupid even I can
point out. Again the idea of the story was that do normal things and you’ll not
be sure if the gods had something to do with it. The part of the Vikings on the
book was that they hang a native and then they go back to their land, but years
later when they came back their gods where already there in that new lands
waiting for them, something simple something mundane, not all that flashy,
artsy stuff. It is supposed to make you think it is normal.
The characters are way worse as
every episode passes Shadow was supposed to be a good guy that did one bad
thing once and ended in jail for that, and even in jail he learned the coin
tricks just to stay out of trouble and pass time, also he reads a lot, a good
guy so normal that his wife got a little bored of him, but here let’s make him
a scammer and a low life. We should have seen a change in Laura, because being
dead takes all the emotion of life, that is the point when she say that she can
taste cigarettes anymore life has lost its taste, but here she is more alive
than ever, and cheeky also super annoying, we lost the Zen master and we got
some drunk high schooler, also if she does not believe in anything why is she
judged by Anubis, that by the way looks way too good to have been forgotten,
she should have disappeared or at least follow a grim reaper. Mr World should
have been on the shadows at least till the end of the season, he is supposed to
be the head of the men in black (not all are gods, if you believe in something
it is real, THAT is the premise) so it was just the super under agency of the government.
Media was meant to start like a dream that you don’t know if it really happened
or you just have been way too much in that world and then move on to a more
real thing. I liked that they followed Mad Sweeney after he lose the coin, but
he got to it way to fast, I mean in the book he never gets close to it, I would
like to see him in little scenes during the whole season trying to figure out
what is happening and then trying to make his own luck, but no, it lasted like
40 minutes, before the “Comedy part” of Laura.
The show looks like it tries to be
something it is not, like the kid in middle school that tries too hard to be
supper mature but is still a kid. I mean the book I liked at the beginning, but
it was like those dishes that you like the first bite but the more you eat the
less you like, so I had to force myself to finish the book, but it took the
book ¾ of it to happen, in the show happened on the first half of the first
episode.
Don’t get me wrong there are things
I like, like the intro, that one is nice, it could have been done better and
loses the idea very fast, it remembers me when a friend tried to make an
artistic/protest/social conscience video and it should have been 7 minutes long
and we ended with 45 seconds. The intro is the same, like they had a good idea
but it went away very fast.
The show is bad, it hides itself behind
that mask of artistic and colour, but if you scratch the surface and really see
it is a bad show that can’t even follow its own rules.
