S02.E05: The Ways of the Dead

[WatchrTina]

14 hours ago, Pallas said:

Is Laura/was Essie his St. Jude then? 

No I don't think so.  I was just speculating that since Mad Sweeney has been around for a while he might have crossed paths with an incarnation of St. Jude.  The conceit of this book is that believers bring their gods with them and Christianity certainly spread to Ireland so . . . maybe Sweeney and St. Jude have shared a glass of mead courtesy of some Irish monks who, like Essie McGowen, weren't above leaving an offering of food or drink out for an "honest fellow."

Edited April 10, 2019 by WatchrTina

[Kite]

I'm left pretty confused by this season too, so I do appreciate the analysis in this forum.

I have to say, I am feeling rather uneasy by the race politics in this episode, but I'm not sure exactly. I'm not Black and American (is anyone in this thread?). I feel there was a lot of focus on Black hate and inaction (as well as graphically detailed suffering), but ahh... really? Who wrote this episode again? Who directed it? Because that matters.

Come on, let's get that hot homo sex onscreen again. Turn off a few new viewers, turn on a few more.

I agree that Laura's waifishness was visually exploited in a male-gazey way. Her and Sweeney are pretty fantastic together though, and I continue to be mesmerised by Anansi.

I find the individual scenes pretty entertaining, the actors and setpieces and effects are really good. I just have trouble with it as a whole. 

[terrymct]

2 hours ago, Kite said:

I agree that Laura's waifishness was visually exploited in a male-gazey way. Her and Sweeney are pretty fantastic together though, and I continue to be mesmerised by Anansi.

Sweeney elevates Laura.  When she's in scenes with other characters, she's either friggin annoying or just 2 dimensional bland.   Sweeney on his own is great, Sweeney and Laura together are great.

Anansi is one of the most interesting characters, in part because the actor is mesmerizing and in part because the character is a trickster and you can't really be sure what side of the road he's playing on in a given moment.  I'm sure he stays fairly well allied with Wednesday, but he has his fun along the way.   Wednesday is interesting for the same reasons.  Ian McShane is awesome.  The character is a mix of good and bad, bad being relative depending on whose perspective you take.    He's playing several games at once and we don't know what his expected outcome really is yet.

Bilquist is starting to bore me.  I hope something happens with the young woman to improve that.  Yes, she is gorgeous and the very walking definition of desire.  She's willing to ally with the new gods to keep access to people, although I don't think sexual desire ever when away even in the 80's when free love was clamped down due to the AIDS crisis.  Sex and desire finds a way.  I think the idea is that technology rescued her in a way, with the movement of porn on to the web increasing it's accessibility and acceptance since you don't have to go to sleazy places now to access it.  People with fetishes can now more easily find each other as well.  Tech helped her to rebrand herself.  I think that's the point.  What the heck is she doing now other than traveling around purring at the other gods?  Give the woman something to do!

If Tech Boy is really gone or retired, there will have to be a new tech boy equivalent created in his place.  Tech is and will continue to be still worshiped.  I was kind of sad to see this version go.  It's only been in the last couple of episodes that he's become interesting.

I hope at some point they explain Mr World's affectations, such as the voice, the hand gestures, and the hunching over.   At some points, such as early on in the bunker when he authorized the attack, he's exaggerated hand gestures seemed to parallel actions that were occurring because of his decision but that isn't always clear.   Why the low voice and the hunching?  Because he stays in the shadows?   I'm not sure.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the massively delightful curse Czernobog put on the person who shot (or authorized?) the shooting at the diner.  I hope they don't let that thread fall.  

[DarkRaichu]

2 hours ago, terrymct said:

Give the woman something to do!

Heh she did not even hung around with the male gods drinking homebrew & making fun of Shadow at the end of the episode.

By the way, why was there no scene with Bilquis and Wednesday? It would have fun to see Wednesday's reaction to her after what happened in the diner.  I think she is completely independent now.  She made it clear she was no longer on World's side but we never seen her trying to get back to Wednesday's side.

2 hours ago, terrymct said:

If Tech Boy is really gone or retired, there will have to be a new tech boy equivalent created in his place.  Tech is and will continue to be still worshiped.  I was kind of sad to see this version go.  It's only been in the last couple of episodes that he's become interesting.

At the end of the previous episode, if you look at the screen in front of Asian guy, you can see an outline of a head appeared in a split second.  A replacement tech god was being created by the Asian guy, just as Mr. World said

[shockermolar]

On 4/8/2019 at 10:31 AM, Bruinsfan said:

Oddly Omid Abtahi is my crush on this show, however.

It's those liquid eyes. 

[WatchrTina]

On 4/10/2019 at 8:19 AM, terrymct said:

I hope at some point they explain Mr World's affectations, such as the voice, the hand gestures, and the hunching over.   At some points, such as early on in the bunker when he authorized the attack, he's exaggerated hand gestures seemed to parallel actions that were occurring because of his decision but that isn't always clear.   Why the low voice and the hunching?  Because he stays in the shadows? 

I have a theory!  What if Mr. World is the manifestation of people's belief in conspiracy theories?  He could be fueled by everything from the flat-earthers to the people who think the Illuminati secretly run world governments (which is silly because it's really the Trilateral Commission that does that) to those assholes who think the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary never happened (I'm looking at you Alex Jones, you POS.)  That would explain why he lurks in the shadows so much but you can't kill him (remember he survived Wednesday's lightning strike at Easter's house.)

[Nashville]

On 4/10/2019 at 8:19 AM, terrymct said:

I hope at some point they explain Mr World's affectations, such as the voice, the hand gestures, and the hunching over.   At some points, such as early on in the bunker when he authorized the attack, he's exaggerated hand gestures seemed to parallel actions that were occurring because of his decision but that isn't always clear.   Why the low voice and the hunching?  Because he stays in the shadows?   I'm not sure.

Because Mr. World is being played by Crispin Fucking Glover, and everything you’re describing is probably how CFG looks when he does his weekly grocery shopping.

[Mr. Sparkle]

7 hours ago, Nashville said:

Because Mr. World is being played by Crispin Fucking Glover, and everything you’re describing is probably how CFG looks when he does his weekly grocery shopping.

I think he's an absolutely awful actor, but he's memorable in the quirky roles he does. I agree, I think he's exactly like his persona. He must be interesting to know irl. 

[Bruinsfan]

I maintain to this day that no one has made the obvious step of casting Glover as the Joker in a Batman movie because they're afraid he'd get too into the role and leave the set littered with the bodies of grips and production assistants.

[Nashville]

34 minutes ago, Bruinsfan said:

I maintain to this day that no one has made the obvious step of casting Glover as the Joker in a Batman movie because they're afraid he'd get too into the role and leave the set littered with the bodies of grips and production assistants.

I doubt you’re too far off there.

”Well... it was in the script that way <huhhuh>....”

Edited April 14, 2019 by Nashville
Typo

[ombre]

On 4/8/2019 at 2:50 PM, Lemur said:

Also, interesting to note that the white woman who got William James in trouble was played by Laura. 

But only when it was Shadow standing in the place of James.  I thought it was a striking, quiet way of noting that Shadow's own marriage was exactly the kind of thing that could have gotten him killed horribly not too long ago.

On 4/10/2019 at 9:19 AM, terrymct said:

Bilquist is starting to bore me.  I hope something happens with the young woman to improve that.  Yes, she is gorgeous and the very walking definition of desire.  She's willing to ally with the new gods to keep access to people, although I don't think sexual desire ever when away even in the 80's when free love was clamped down due to the AIDS crisis.  Sex and desire finds a way. 

And yet... with all the recent studies of how not just marriage but sex is way down...  (Mind you, there are *plenty* of reasons for those trends other than internet porn)

****

I just rewatched this and Ep 4 and they're hopelessly entangled in my head, so I'm putting my thoughts here so as to not spoil anyone who's seen 4 but not 5.

The conversations between Bilquis, Nancy, Ibis, Ruby (and others - the priest, Shadow, etc) are *fascinating* to me.  They touch on a number of things I've been reading in the last few months.  The way that Bilquis, Nancy, and Ibis seem reduced to squabbling amongst themselves for bits of worship feels very in line with Mehrsa Baradaran's excellent book on banking in African American communities, The Color of Money, which talks about how the financial system effectively pulls money out of black communities and doesn't return it (reinvest in those communities), and how black businesses are stuck fighting between themselves for an ever shrinking slice of the pie. 

(Sidenote: I haven't yet made up my mind what I think about the eliding of gods from North, West, and East Africa - does this speak to the forcible melting pot of the new world, in which some plantations intentionally separated members of the same language groups and punished enslaved people for speaking their mother tongue?  Or does it do that tired old thing of just saying Africa is all one place?  For the moment... it's slippery and I can hold on to both sides of the slipperiness.)

In hearing the gods' debates about Team Old vs Team New, I also can't help but see the Reconstruction-and-beyond debates about how to work in a two-party system.  Frederick Douglass spent basically his whole life telling black voters "support the Republican Party - because the other guys would very much like to string you up if you won't go back to the bad old times."  But as the Republicans fractured and moved away from civil rights and the Dems utterly and often violently disenfranchised anybody who thought about voting for Rs (ever-present disclaimer that the parties switched their stands on civil rights in the intervening decades), black voters started to wonder if maybe party loyalty wasn't all that and maybe there were reasons to switch teams.  (One excellent recent addition to a large and rich field - Race Over Party)

I'm also digging the way each is channeling various themes and attitudes from African American political history.  Ibis feels very Booker T. Washington to me, although he's holding his cards close to his chest so it's hard to tell where he's going.  Mr. Nancy is a glorious blend of young Douglass, Ida B. Wells (*throw* those stats, man!), Du Bois, Baldwin, Malcolm X, etc.  And I don't have a read on how Bilquis is operating, but then, I don't think we're supposed to.  

I see this playing out in the dynamics between Ruby and the priest.  Young activist for the win, persuading the old man, and getting him to consider the old battle between hope and despair with fresh eyes and even a little honesty with his own self.

Finally, just one note of awed appreciation for the New Orleans quartet.  Yeah yeah, blahblahsexcakes, but the subtle reaction shots that each and every one of them pulled off though all their scenes...  Really, really lovely.  There have been times this season when I felt like the lines could pull an aircraft carrier to the bottom of the ocean, but the actors are so damned good and such a joy to see.

[Kel Varnsen]

So did Sweeney and Dead Wife actually have sex with each other in some weird body changing thing or was it just weird magic powered hallucinations? 

Also was the biggest dwarf in America totally made me think of Peter Dinklage's character from Infinity War.

[Bruinsfan]

I think the loa were just letting Sweeney and Dead Wife ride them in the figurative sense as well as literal, letting the former see and feel through Baron Samedi's senses and the latter through Maman Brigette's. Sort of a reverse of the usual way possession works in Haitian Voodoo lore.

[Kel Varnsen]

5 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

I think the loa were just letting Sweeney and Dead Wife ride them in the figurative sense as well as literal, letting the former see and feel through Baron Samedi's senses and the latter through Maman Brigette's. Sort of a reverse of the usual way possession works in Haitian Voodoo lore.

Weird. Also why did it seem like Shadow had an old timey outfit on with the suit vest and suspenders. I don't seem to remember him wearing clothes like that before and I am not sure he would fit into Mr. Ibis's clothes. Was this more of the curse of the lynching victim?

[ombre]

Welp.  That "You're not uncomfortable sleeping under the same roof as the dead?" "Not as long as they stay that way" exchange really says all one needs to know about Shadow's view of his marriage.

I think I've watched this ep three times now.  Each time, the idea that the explanation for William James's haunting is that he blames the black community for standing by through his lynching sits worse and worse.  Sure, individuals get individual ideas but... I've read a lot of material around lynchings and this doesn't represent James's time and feels well, I've got a lot of choice negative words for how it feels now.  Hangings are pretty much par for the course in stories about Odin, and it does feel important to somehow address that it takes on very different meanings when you write that imagery onto Shadow but this... ain't it.  And while, in this third viewing, I get the sense that they're trying for an overall story about hope beating nihilism (the minister's lovely speech to Ruby - "I'll come running"), they leave Shadow all tied up in the nihilist side of it with no resolution.  I've been watching this time through trying to really track the overall character lines... I don't see how you can put him here and not use it, just hit the reset button, and more to the point, I don't see *why* you'd do it.

They passed up a chance to talk about the role of New Gods in James's lynching, too.  You don't get crowds that size without running special excursion trains.  You don't get collectible postcards without Media, etc.  Lynchings were what they were in no small part because of the technology of the day.

And finally, using James as a story of nihilism just rubs the wrong way when one of the legacies of *his* lynching (as opposed to so many others) was finally some actual legislation against it.  As always, the story is in the framing.  And this story was framed badly.  On *many* levels.

As a point of historical interest, Cairo, IL is the city that Stephen A. Douglas kept referring to through his 1858 debates with Abraham Lincoln.  IL was divided north (more anti-slavery) and south (more pro-slavery).  Douglas kept threatening through the first two (far northern) debates that he'd get Lincoln to say all sorts of scandalous things in the first two debates and then listen as he changed his tune when they debated in (far southern) Cairo.  Meanwhile, Lincoln spent the third debate pointing out all the ways the Douglas and his party changed their tune.  Fitting place to spend time in a story about lies and lies and lies!  (Added twist - despite Douglas referring to trotting Lincoln down to Cairo, they actually debated in... Jonesboro, about 30 miles north of Cairo.)

Edited April 28, 2019 by ombre

[The Kings Foot]

On 4/9/2019 at 4:44 PM, DarkRaichu said:

Technically his religion (or maybe certain sects in that religion) acknowledges the existence of magical/spiritual beings like Djinns.  Salim could have just rationalized that Wednesday is a more powerful djinn and voila no contradiction. 

Although I am still waiting to see if the show has the balls to depict a personification of Salim's god 😛

Allah wouldnt have a  visible personification.   He'd  exist but be invisible  since that how his followers perceive him.

[T Summer]

When Laura Moon is in the field with Wednesday he asks her if she can still see Shadow's golden light, to which she answers no.

After she slays Argus fulfilling her end of the "compact" with Mr Wednesday, she asks him how she's going to get out of where  the tech gods  are hanging and back to where Shadow Moon is... and he basically tells her to get stuffed

How did she  make her way to New Orleans, and find Mad Sweeney so he could take her to the Baron?