Featured TV on DVD Review: American Gods: Season One

October 16, 2017

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American Gods: Season One

American Gods came out about 15 years ago. Since it was first released, lots of people wanted to turn it into a movie, but it never went far, because turning the 465 page book into a 2 hour movie seemed fool-hardy. Turning it into a TV series, on the other hand... Was this the wiser path to take? Or is the book just too hard to adapt?

The Show

We learn in a prologue about a group of Vikings who travelled to what is now Newfoundland, but they became trapped there when the wind refused to blow and take them off the island. So they called to Odin to help with the wind. When Odin finally shows up to help, the Vikings left as fast as possible accidentally leaving Odin behind.

Flash forward to the modern day and we meet Shadow Moon in prison. He’s got just five days till he gets out of prison and back to his wife, Laura. The next day he’s called into the warden’s office and told he’s being released that day. His wife died in a car crash the night before, so they are letting him go home early. When he’s at the airport waiting for his flight, he sees a man at the counter claiming he is supposed to be in first class and that he’s both supposed to be traveling with his son, who takes care of him, and that he’s traveling to his son’s christening. The lady at the desk gets so flustered that she bumps him up to first class. Shadow immediately recognizes the con, as he’s a bit of a con artist himself. (It’s part of the reason he ended up in prison.) When he is also bumped up to first class (The airline sold his seat twice.) he meets the man, who introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday. The pair talk for a bit before Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job. Shadow says he’s got a job waiting for him at his best friend’s gym, but Mr. Wednesday tells him he doesn’t.

(We switch to Bilquis for a second, but things get a little weird here and Shadow hasn’t been fully introduced to this yet, so we can hold onto that reveal for a bit.)

Shadow’s plane is diverted due to bad weather, so he decides to rent a car the rest of the way. He makes it to a bar, where he runs into Mr. Wednesday again. Mr. Wednesday again makes his offer of employment and again Shadow says he has a job waiting for him. This time, Mr. Wednesday gives him the bad news. That car crash that killed his wife, his best friend was driving, so there’s no job waiting for him. Worse still, Shadow finds out at her funeral that they weren’t just together in the car, they were together, together. Eventually, and reluctantly, Shadow agrees to work for Mr. Wednesday. With that, he gets thrown into a world he didn’t know existed and gets into a fight with leprechaun, kidnapped by the god of technology, and thrust into a war between the old gods and the new gods in order to determine who will have the power.

This doesn’t even take us to the end of the first episode, but we’re running into spoiler territory.

I originally wasn’t going to request a screener for this show, because I already had two screeners for the 17th that I had previously requested. I grabbed it at the last minute for two reasons. Firstly, I suspected the other screeners wouldn’t arrive. Secondly, it was getting a lot of positive buzz. Does it live up to the buzz? For the most part, yes.

The TV show is based on a novel by Neil Gaiman and if you are a fan of his work, then you will love the American Gods. It has a fantastic sense of style that will draw in most of his fans and many people unfamiliar with his work. However, the style is so important that it isn’t a case of style over substance; the style is the substance in many cases. This does mean the show moves slower than it should. The season is only eight episodes long, but it takes till nearly the halfway point before things really start to coalesce and I fear this will cause a number of viewers to tune out before this point.

On the other hand, even in the show’s slower moments, there’s plenty to keep the viewer’s attention. Ian McShane is fantastic as Mr. Wednesday, while Ricky Whittle carries a lot of the weight as the audience POV character, Shadow Moon. The supporting cast is loaded with talent as well, from Christopher Obi as Anubis, to Gillian Anderson as Media, to Orlando Jones as Anansi, etc. Even if the story isn’t able to grab you right away, the acting will keep you engaged in the meantime.

The Extras

The only extras on disc one are two audio commentary tracks, both on the pilot.

Disc two has no audio commentary tracks, but it does have five featurettes, starting with American Gods: Origins. This is a 16-minute featurette with Neil Gaiman talking about how he created the original book and what inspired it. Old Gods is an eight-minute featurette on the old gods and how they are adapting to the modern world, while New Gods is a five-minute featurette on the gods that were born in America. What is American Gods? is a five-minute featurette that looks at the genre of the book / series and why it is hard to pin down. Finally there’s Book vs. Show, a four-minute look at what had to be changed in adapting to the TV screen. There is also a 360 degree look at the Crocodile Bar, with audio commentary track.

The Road to American Gods is an eight-part, two-and-a-half hour long making of documentary. Title Gods is an eight-minute look at the title sequence. Finally, there is a video commentary track for the season finale.

The Verdict

American Gods has a ton of style and an incredible cast and that delivers episode after episode. It is a little slow, as the style sometimes comes at the expense of pacing, but it is worth sticking with. The Season One DVD and Blu-ray has plenty of extras and is absolutely worth picking up.

Filed under: Video Review, Gillian Anderson, Emily Browning, Orlando Jones, Ian McShane, Pablo Schreiber, Neil Gaiman, Ricky Whittle, Christopher Obi, Yetide Badaki