American Gods

Viewers unfamiliar with Gaiman’s novel may have trouble following the TV series. The story contains lots of sides and flashbacks. But stick with it. The payoff is there. This is Starz’s most ambitious and satisfying offering yet.

American Gods will be an overload of personality for some people. And yet there’s more powerful, memorable ideas and images in these first four episodes than most shows contain in their entire runs. It’s a series that defies traditional description or viewing. As Anderson’s character says to Shadow Moon, “Don’t fight gravity.” This show is gravity.

American Gods is great television but it’s also a tremendous work of self-reflexive art, one that remains outrageously entertaining without giving away the complex, violent mysteries at its roiling core.

While the four episodes presented to critics for preview offered just enough bearings to determine that bearings are of limited use in the universe of American Gods, it’s safe to say even this early that it’s one of the most imaginative, adventurous, and deeply weird experiments on television--an entrancingly trippy metaphorical melee that elevates an investigation of American identity to a supernatural plane.

Some might want a quicker pace from American Gods. Yo, po-mo Clash of the Titans, gets to the clashing! But I was consistently engrossed. The characters, the concept, the deeply considered filmmaking captured my imagination.

[Bryan Fuller and Michael Green have] blended their sensibilities, weaving a rich tapestry of whimsy, epic action, and deft characterization. Practically speaking, it will definitely tide you over until that other fantasy drama returns. But thematically, it could knock someone off their throne.

It’s no Spartacus, of course, but American Gods manages to pull off a unique combination of ideas and stylistic action that will make a believer out of almost anyone.

American Gods is a bit too packed with these intriguing jaunts, and the narrative sometimes feels like it will run out of gas long before reaching its destination. (The first 8-episode season reportedly covers only the first third of the fantasy epic.) But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy the ride.

The spirit of Gaiman’s classic has been captured, but not yet the vision.

While we’re still waiting to see if the story’s substance can match its visual splendor, there’s so much meat here, it’s hard to doubt the blood is coming--especially with Fuller wielding the cleaver.

The result is a wonderfully eclectic mix of gory bloodlust and fairy whimsy, ethereal beauty and tenement apartment realism. Special effects are masterfully used throughout American Gods to thrust viewers into alternate dimensions or let us know something otherworldly is about to happen. And when American Gods does get all supernatural, it’s beautiful.

American Gods is deliberately disjointed, like tracks on an album. There are times when the show seems more interested in parsing ephemeral moments in the here-and-now than contemplating the big issues. The more beguiling moments involve bits of what might be called barroom philosophy, such as Shadow Moon saying that “all the best drinks have self-defining names,” or Media lamenting people’s increasing inability to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Joining McShane and Whittle, such stars as Cloris Leachman, Peter Stormare, Emily Browning, Pablo Schreiber, and others contribute their immeasurable talents. They play their roles expertly, carrying the show's allure and mystery while humanizing their otherworldly characters.

If you’re willing to wait for the story to take shape, there are compensations. The action hums along, even if you can’t tell where it’s going, and there’s a welcome edge of humor (not abundant in this genre), especially in the performances of Mr. McShane and Pablo Schreiber.

It's a slow start to be sure, as American Gods gradually, deliberately but surely draws you into its elaborate, impressively nuanced world, where old myths and religions intersect with new American gods.

Weird and mesmerizing. ... You can feel elements of other programs in this series, but it's also unique in the television landscape. But it's not always an easy show to watch, and not just because of the blood and the body count. You've got to be patient, because Fuller & Co. unspool this story slowly.

To be fair to the actor [Ricky Whittle], the script doesn’t give him all that much to work with early on, and Shadow will eventually become more than just Wednesday’s bodyguard. American Gods is a long, slow burn, but if it stays so true to the novel it’s based on, the bang, when it comes, will be unforgettable.

At times, it’s a deep and powerful saga, while at many others, it’s more of an exercise in style over substance. But what style!

The result is a sprawling, beautiful show that is fascinating, brilliantly executed, and rather hard to follow.

A rambunctious sci-fi/fantasy slice-and-dice of theology, myth, and hot-button sociology, with a generous dollop of pure depravity thrown in just for fun and Nielsen points, American Gods is a dizzying journey through humanity's obsession with theism and dogma. It doesn't always make sense--maybe it never makes sense--and its pace is dreadfully uneven. But a show in which a religious pilgrim trekking through the wilderness of a big-box electronic store is tempted by a goddess disguised as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, murmuring from a TV screen, "Hey, you ever wanted to see Lucy's tits?" is not easily dismissed.

Like the Wachowskis’ “Sense8,” you are prompted to suspend disbelief not by a convincing narrative but by hypnotic visuals--here augmented by extraordinary performances.

Whittle’s role feels slightly underwritten in the first half of the season, but he’s an attractive, empathetic hero, a strong man who is smarter than he looks. And McShane is a pleasure to hear, biting into dialogue with the same enormous vigor and skill he brought to Deadwood. Together, they’re taking us on a road trip with no destination or clear purpose in sight. But the scenery is startling and the company’s great. And for fans of the book or Fuller, that is likely to be enough.

It takes until Episode 3 for everything to gel fully, and that wait may feel interminable to those who haven’t read the book and can’t anticipate what’s ahead. Viewers who are familiar with the work, however, will be happy to know that the novel’s interstitial segments--which offer snapshots of gods at work in the lives of ordinary people--not only have survived the adaptation but provide some of the richest moments in the first part of the season.

For as fantastically fun as American Gods’ gods can be, the series is at its best when it brings the story a little closer to earth.

The eight-episode first season of American Gods takes about four episodes to cohere, especially for any viewers unfamiliar with the novel. ... Mostly it is Mr. McShane’s performance that carries the early episodes. His Mr. Wednesday is self-assured, charming and cutthroat all at once.

Gods has its own dark humor--as when the erratic widow of Shadow’s best friend tries to have sex with him in a cemetery. “I’m trying to get my dignity back here,” she says. Gods takes delight in magnifying images hundredfold--a match being struck, a tile being cleaned. This can get a bit precious.

While it has its flaws, what I’ve seen so far has certainly made me curious enough to see how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

The eight-episode show fantasia of ancient mythology and Americana is gorgeously conceived, vastly imaginative, and ludicrously over the top. It also unfortunately falls sway to the worst, most self-indulgent excesses of prestige television, namely terrible pacing, prodigal violence, and a thuddingly unsubtle score that often feels better suited to a high-budget porn film.

Many individual scenes are excellent, but the whole thing, based on the half-season Starz made available for review, doesn’t knit together.

Visually spectacular but initially lumbering series adaptation. [1-14 May 2017, p.18]

Long on concept and short on momentum, each episode of American Gods (there are eight, the first of which premieres Sunday on Starz) feels like the pilot for still another show and then another.

They are gods, sure, but initially many are just caricatures of abstract tics and traits. That is either going to be maddening to viewers or, given the right level of entertainment and oddness (which American Gods has in spades), a story worth waiting for.

American Gods is amazing to look at and often hard to watch. If you're a fan of Gaiman's work, and patient with slow-moving scenes of thinly developed characters speechifying, you may like it. Others might want to proceed with caution.

American Gods might oscillate between light and shadows, between past and present, but in terms of articulating a comprehensible story, it feels like a lot of smoke and mirrors.