American Gods Episode Four: “Git Gone”

“Git Gone” introduces us to Laura Moon, Shadow’s now-dead (question mark?) wife, fleshing out her past in a way the book never did. There’s no “Coming to America” vignette this week, keeping the focus squarely on her.
Laura Moon is bored. She works in a dumpy Egyptian themed casino, which has sucked all the joy out of her life. She even half-heartedly tries to commit suicide in her hot tub with bug spray, but stops herself. Then one day, Shadow shows up to try and rob the place a little. Despite Shadow’s status as a small time thief, he catches Laura’s eye, and she ends up taking him home. Thus begins their romance. Soon, they’re married. Then Laura gets bored again. She convinces Shadow to pull off a fool-proof heist at the casino that ends up getting him thrown in prison.
Now alone, Laura’s life becomes mundane again. She reaches her breaking point when, after a long night at the casino, she comes home to discover her cat dead on the kitchen floor. Her married friend Robbie comes over to help her, and soon they’ve fallen into an affair, which goes on until it’s time for Shadow’s release. One night, Laura and Robbie argue as they drive home, Robbie insisting he’ll divorce his wife Audrey, and trying to convince Laura to divorce Shadow. Laura says their affair was just something they can think back on when they’re old. As a goodbye gesture, Laura tells him to sing as she leans over his lap for one final “naughty memory.” It ends up being very final, as Robbie loses control of the car and crashes, killing them both.
Laura comes to, overlooking her dead body, splayed on the road. Anubis comes to collect her. Laura refuses to let her heart be weighed. Angry, Anubis tells her all she’ll get is darkness and nothing. He points to a hot tub and bottle of bug spray and tells her to get in. Laura refuses, and is miraculously whisked away. She climbs out of her own grave and starts the long walk home. She follows a light in the sky that leads her directly to Shadow; she rescues him from Technical Boy’s goons, losing her arm in the fray.
Once home, she cleans herself up, packs a bag, and heads to Audrey’s to pick up craft supplies to reattach her limb—unfortunately for Audrey (but a boon to whatever therapist is inevitably going to have to treat her after all of this is over), who walks in on her dead friend trying to sew her own arm back on. Audrey loses it and hides in the bathroom. Laura and Audrey have a deeply bizarre heart to heart, and Audrey ends up helping Laura sew and even driving her to find Shadow. They’re intercepted by Anubis and Thoth, who take Laura to their funeral home to help preserve her decaying body. They let her go, and she finally reaches Shadow.
Our Reactions
Meghan: Last week’s episode was a let down, but this one comes roaring back. “Git Gone” is disturbingly, grotesquely beautiful, equal parts funny (oh, Audrey), heartwarming, and terrifying. The writers have taken Laura Moon, a woman without much agency or backstory in the novel, and made her a multi-faceted character in her own right. Emily Browning is magnificent as the doll-faced, doe eyed Laura, deadpan funny with a cool, dark logic to her. In the book, she’s just a travel agent, the uncomplicated love of Shadow’s life. In the show, she’s mercurial, depressed, and self-destructive. It was a really good choice. Using Garbage’s excellent “Stupid Girl” as her anthem was inspired as well. Also, Audrey continues to be the absolute best character on the show; her reaction to seeing dead Laura in her living room made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to sprain something. 
Kelly: This show has been switching it up. The first two episodes seemed like one thing, then the third leaned hard into what felt like a wrong turn. Now, we’ve gone back the other way, and we’re good again. This is the train I want to ride all the way to the end. This episode was all about stillness and silence, observing the characters in an almost documentary style. Fuller and his team are at their best when they let camera angles, long shots, montages, facial expressions and color speak for themselves—it works better than dialogue at conveying who these people are. Although the two actresses showcased this week also had a hand in that—there are only two characters whose dialogue always improves on silence; one is Wednesday, obviously, but the other is Audrey. Her constantly-on-the-edge-scenes are hats off, every time. Emily Browning gaives her a run for her money in a few scenes (that long shot of her walking up the street in her bloody flowery zombie dress), but it is telling that the best scene in the episode is the one in the bathroom with the two of them. The number of sh*ts they give is pretty low (no pun intended—well, maybe a little). I was impressed. Keep heading this way, American Gods! This is what you should be!
Book vs. Show (Meghan)
I usually watch American Gods with a copy of the book close at hand. I basically flung it aside this week, since the entire episode is completely new, and non-book canon. I think that was actually a good move, though.
In the book, Laura works for a travel agent and seems to be more of a light-hearted free spirit than the Laura of the show. She’s been updated. 2017 is a world without travel agents, so now she works at a casino, which leaves her feeling unfulfilled and bored. Shadow is also different. In the book he’s not really a thief, and he meets Laura through Audrey. In the show, he tries to steal at Laura’s table and she calls him out on it. Why does this make her fall head over heels for him? No idea. But it works.
In the book, Shadow goes to jail for assault after he beats up the people who used him in a theft gone bad. In the show, he tries to knock over the casino Laura works in. It’s her plan, and she tries to talk him out of taking the fall for her, but he refuses. Admittedly, book Laura is kind of two-dimensional and boring, apart from the whole undead thing. Fuller and Gaiman both said they wanted the show’s women to have fuller parts, and they did the job right with Laura.
Then there is Anubis and Thoth. In the book, they run the Ibis and Jaquel funeral home in Cairo, Illinois, and don’t appear until the narrative has advanced well past where we are now. In show-world, they’ve been around for a while: Mr. Ibis, the Egyptian god Thoth, has been writing the “Coming to America” vignettes, and Anubis appeared last week. Anubis is honestly the only reason the casino is Egyptian themed. Laura doesn’t believe in an afterlife or gods, so it makes sense Anubis would claim her, since she kind of worked in his house of worship. Laura never meets either of them in the book. They don’t find her and fix her up (she also doesn’t lose her arm). But it makes sense for them to intercept her and coach her on how to upkeep her dead body.
I’m honestly so pleased with the non-book choices Fuller made this week. I thought they worked perfectly in the context of the show, and really expanded the scope of the book. 
Kelly and Meghan Talk It Over
Meghan: I thought that was excellent. I love this version of Laura. They fleshed her out so much (pun intended). She’s less Shadow’s perfect wife, and more a complicated mess of a woman who, it turns out, Shadow didn’t know as well as he thought he did. It’s going to make things very interesting. Also, my god do I love the actress playing Audrey. She’s just fantastic. The way she freaked out on Laura, then ended up helping her, was just perfect. Dane Cook was also shockingly good as Robbie, though I suppose he had “douchey bro” down to a science already. He brought a surprising amount of humanity to the character. I was pleasantly surprised.
Kelly: I honestly loved that Dane Cook was kind of beside the point. He was there as a plot point and a caricature, hit all the expected beats, and got out of the way of the women. Because, well, wouldn’t you, with these ladies to showcase?
Meghan: Laura was the stand out.
Kelly: I think Audrey ran her a close second, and she should get an Emmy for “Outstanding Recurring Single Scene Appearances,” whenever they make that a thing. But yeah, exploring Laura was a really great choice. I think it brought front and center something that was acknowledged in the book, but not really forefront—the fact that Shadow was in prison because of her, and she should have been in there too. This episode asked “Why?” and came up with some compellingly banal, and therefore powerful, answers. She’s bored and depressed, full of ennui and resentment at life for dealing her a crappy hand—one not improved enough by her handsome, loving husband to make it fair. Love does not conquer all, especially if you’re kind of a selfish, nasty person. That’s such a great, simple explanation for unleashing hell, because it seldom takes more than that.
Meghan: “Stupid Girl” was the perfect song for her. 
Kelly: Yes! And I’m not just saying that because it hits huge nostalgia buttons for me. And speaking of perfect songs, I have to say, I laughed pretty hard at the use of “The Weight” in the car crash scene, given the, um… circumstances. Does that make me a bad person? Having Dane Cook sing it was amazing, and perfect, and super immature. High fives all around, bros.
Meghan: Complete turnaround from the languid, uneven episode last week. This one sped by, and I genuinely shouted “that’s it?” when it was over. I could have watched hours more of Emily Browning. I love how blasé she was about her arm falling off. 
Kelly: I thought that was a perfect use of a line from the book, where she tells Shadow she has lost the ability to care about what things look like, since she is, you know, dead. I feel like they took that to its logical conclusion—its logical, hilarious conclusion. It’s a great example of how you don’t have to follow a book verbatim; they took the essence of what Gaiman conveyed with the character and expanded on it. All the business with the arm was wonderful. I used to do plays in school, and that kind of prop is the thing you always hand to the funniest person on stage to do with what they will; that’s what this reminded me of, and I loved it.
Sometimes I think zombie stories have been done to death, so I appreciated the show treating it as slapstick. I loved the “beauty treatment” scene in the funeral parlor, too; it reminded me of that scene in The Hunger Games where they clean up Katniss in a surgical space—Laura takes it like an old pro, already disillusioned with life…and death, even. The women win this week, for sure.
But even so—what about Shadow? This episode painted him as far slicker, far more of a two-bit con man than we’ve seen him so far in either the show or the book—at least at the start, before he transforms through the power of love. He transforms. Laura doesn’t. And yet, her scene with Anubis seems to indicate she still might. The show has done its best to put us firmly on Shadow’s side, but who knows where we’ll end up? I love seeing this anti-hero journey given to a complex female character like Laura. I hope they continue to do interesting things with it.
Wisdom of the Gods (AKA Our favorite quotes)
It’s all about Laura this week!
“My parents believed in everything. I went to bed in a world full of magic, everything is possible. But then you find out that Santa isn’t real, then the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, and there’s no farm upstate for old dogs. Then I started reading history books and Jesus isn’t real. It’s like everything that made the world more than what it is… it’s just stories, snake oil. But worse. Because snakes are real. I wanted the magic back, but then I just accepted that I couldn’t because life is just…not that interesting.” —Laura, keeping it bright and cheerful

“You remember when you asked me to be your inside man?”
“You wanna rob the casino?”
“I think I need to.”
—Laura and Shadow… ‘Cause you gotta do you!

“Don’t I get a say in this?”
“Death is not a debate. How many do you think have come before you? All with promises, and threats and offers of gold, love, glory. Who are you to misguide me from my duty? You are only a man, and not even one I should remember. You will go into the darkness and I will forget ever having met you.”
“Ugh! F*ck you!”
—Laura and Anubis… Girl knows how to make an exit.
 
“Well, I know who was in your mouth when you died.”
“Does everyone know?”
“Just everyone who attended your funeral. I may have mentioned it once or twice during the service.”
“Does Shadow know?”
“Yeah, he knows. I tried to f*ck him. On your grave. Seemed only fair.”
“…Yeah, that does seem fair.”
 
“I found out you and Robbie were dead and having an affair in the same sentence. Or maybe it was the same breath, not the same sentence.”
“Maybe it was a run-on sentence?”
—Audrey and Laura, in a scene as amazing as it sounds
Final thoughts (Kelly)
This was another interlude episode—far better done than last week, but an interlude nonetheless, hitting the rewind button again for a whole episode to explain another piece of the puzzle. Now, we’ve pretty much got our main cast up to speed and in the same place, so I think it’s time for some forward plot momentum. Next week, the powers circle each other and gather together. We can all see there’s magic in the world, and they’ve stopped playing the “is it all real, or isn’t it?” game. Now let’s see what magic can do.
What did you think of episode four?