It's why so many of the secondary characters grow to shine as brightly as (if not moreso than) the core duo by the end of Season 1. It's also why Laura and Bilquis's expanded roles work so well American Gods takes the time to explore who these people are and what motivates them, instead of just focusing on Wednesday and Shadow like in Gaiman's novel.
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"Head Full of Snow" has earned much-deserved praise for its explicit gay sex scene, and part of what makes scenes like that and Bilquis's life as a Tinder prostitute working for the Technical Boy is the amount of empathy the writers develop for these characters.
There's a fearlessness to this season that deserves respect, and Starz gets a hat-tip for letting its showrunners push boundaries as much as they do. Fuller and Green's passion behind-the-scenes is the key element that makes American Gods work as well as it does.
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So despite the uneven nature of Season 1, the strengths of American Gods' debut year promise greater things to come when the series comes back with its 10-episode Season 2. In fact, they've been pretty candid about that and the budgetary and production issues behind-the-scenes (case in point: this Vanity Fair interview). In many ways, Fuller, Green and Gaiman seemed to be working out the kinks in American Gods: Season 1, figuring out what they could get away with and what didn't work. Even the finale ended the season far too abruptly and left me wanting much more - likely because an episode this season was cut for budgetary reasons, and Season 1 actually was supposed to reach the House on the Rock. Was the second-to-last episode of the season the right time to have a full hour focused on Mad Sweeney, Essie MacGowan and Laura Moon? Probably not, despite the fact it was a pretty great episode on its own. After a strong opening in the series premiere, the next two episodes spun their wheels a bit during the trip to Chicago. "Lemon Scented You" was an example of an episode that I felt was uneven, and "A Murder of Gods" has been frequently regarded as a low point of the season. There were several stumbles, from pacing to the execution of various episodes. Some of the standout moments of the season weren't necessarily connected to the core throughline of Shadow and Wednesday's road trip, but rather the thematic core of this series - specifically Bilquis's sad tale and the love scene between Salim and the Jinn, as well as Laura Moon's flashback catch up episode.īut despite its highs, Season 1 of American Gods was not a perfect season by any means.
Even if you didn't know exactly what was going on, the imagery and situations presented were meant to be so evocative as to start conversations. For me, I appreciate that Fuller and Green constructed a story that brought you along for the ride. Whether or not you view that as a negative depends on your patience for stories that keep their mysteries mysterious, and depends on whether you came in as a book reader or not. This is a dense story, and can be alienating for those not already aware of the greater context of this narrative. As such, it was definitely a show that benefited from outside knowledge of the story if you hadn't read the book before starting episode 1 (or done even a cursory Wikipedia read), then chances are you quickly found yourself in over your head. Showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green took Neil Gaiman's challenging modern fantasy novel and expanded its themes and scope without dumbing down his vision. The highs of American Gods' first season outshine its stumbles, and the conversation it has already sparked about religion, gender, politics and our sense of self prove that this is a series that rewards analysis and repeat viewings. American Gods is unlike anything else on television, and when it's at its best, it's some of the most jaw-dropping, impressive and moving work on the air.