When last we saw our heroes, Ash was at the mercy of Kelly, possessed by the demon Eligos back from ‘Books From Beyond’, who had managed to convince Pablo and his uncle Theo the Brujo that Ash had attacked her instead.
The episode begins with Ash bound and gagged as Pablo, Kelly and Theo speculate that Ash is in fact possessed. As Theo plans out how to exorcise the demon from Ash; an exercise he may not survive, Kelly convinces Pablo to get high with the remainder of Ash’s weed stash.
Never a good idea in an impending exorcism situation…
Meanwhile, Ms Knowby and Michigan State Trooper Amanda Fisher are tracking Team Ash to the Brujo’s farm, using Ash’s severed hand to literally point the way. As they wait for the hand to pick a direction, Knowby tries to educate Amanda in her philosophy and word view.
Do I need to get into how *stupid* this is? No? didn’t think so.
Back at the farm, the Eligos possessed Kelly tries to convince Pablo to smoke using Ash’s boomstick as a makeshift pipe, planning to exploit the inherent risks therein. As it looks like Kelly might just pull it off, Ash finally convinces Theo that he’s not possessed, and the rest of the episode focuses on the battle for Kelly’s soul…
I think this is the first episode that truly exposes the flaws with the format that ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ has adopted. Part of it is the episode length; in some cases they are trying to cram a lot into a 20 minute episode, to the point where I’m starting to wonder how well the show might improve if it were marathoned rather than watched week to week. However the inverse is true here; it doesn’t feel like there’s enough plot to fill 20 minutes, and so the episode drags.
The other part is the writing style that seems to have been employed by the writers subsequent to Sam Raimi; things are being assumed rather than the audience being informed of them. For example, one minor annoyance I’ve had for the past couple of episodes is that while the name of Lucy Lawless’ character has been released in publicity material, we haven’t been actually told what it is on screen yet. Trying to incorporate that sort of exposition can be a chore, and for the character of the Brujo, they just drop his name “Theo” casually into the opening dialogue of the episode.
Worse still is that the hook for the next step in the plot was only mentioned in the last episode, not this one. If the viewer missed it last week, they’d have no idea what Ash was talking about here. Not assuming your audience are idiots is gratifying, but some of the gaps in the narrative and exposition that we are starting to see are beginning to drag.
All jokes aside, there’s some surprising depth of emotion from Bruce Campbell’s Ash here.
Despite these negatives, there is some good to be had here. Dana DeLorenzo builds on her work from the previous week and escalating her performance as the demonically possessed Kelly to something truly horrific, which does work as the core of the episode.
Also effective is the discussion of Ms Knowby’s life philosophy, which is remarkably similar to Ash’s discussed in the previous episode. It reaffirms the idea that she is really barking up the wrong tree in all of this and they’d be better off as allies.
All up, this was a disappointing filler episode that doesn’t so much end as fade out. That being said, there may be some pay off in future episodes, as some character work was laid out here; even if it was somewhat rudimentary. Both Pablo and Kelly go through some significant changes during the episode, so we’ll see where that takes them next week and beyond.
