American Gods episode 6 review: A Murder Of Gods

What did I say last week? They have only gone and done it again and smashed it with another truly tremendous episode, for our eyes to behold. Its starting to become a bit of a joke to be honest, every week I say to myself it surely cant get any better... But it does time and time again.

There's something of an art to splitting the main cast of a television show into two groups. I've seen it done very poorly, and I've seen it done very well. Some shows, like Game Of Thrones, seem to deliberately break their episodes up into little segments and chunks, so viewers get to spend five minutes here, five minutes there, and only occasionally get a full-on episode in one location with one or two major characters. American Gods, being a travelogue at its core, has two groups of characters on the road, and they're two groups that function very well separately from one another.

Shadow and Wednesday, the self-contained pair of the show thus far, are still on the road heading around the country looking for willing soldiers for Wednesday's war against the New Gods. This week, the destination is Virginia, and the Roman god turned firearms salesman, Vulcan (Corbin Bernsen). Meanwhile, Mad Sweeney and Laura find an unlikely partner in their road trip in the form of Salim, who has his own purposes for taking the two on their mad journey. They're driving in different directions, but they all have goals in mind, and most of those goals are self-serving. Salim wants to be reunited with the Djinn. Mad Sweeney wants his coin back. Laura wants her puppy. Wednesday wants to recruit Vulcan to his war. Shadow is just trying to hang on for dear life in a world he cannot understand.

I have to give a tonne of credit to Michael Green and Bryan Fuller, as well as to the people who cast the series (Margery Simkin and Orly Sitowitz, based off what information I can see from IMDb). When they have managed to cast every God wonderfully, even when the one chosen for the role wasn't their first choice. I can't see anyone else as Mr. Wednesday now that Ian McShane is that character. Ricky Wittle is an unknown in the States, but he's been a great Shadow Moon. Emily Browning is a scene-stealing Laura Moon, and she works great with Pablo Schreiber's Mad Sweeney who is an absolute joy to watch.

It's been a long time since I've seen Corbin Bernsen in anything, he's a talented comic actor, and now he's a phenomenal Roman god. The creation of the character provides an interesting addition to the line-up of gods originally dreamed up by Neil Gaiman; Vulcan is a combination of the work of Green, Fuller, and Gaiman, and it's a brilliant take on a modern version of the volcano god. Given that he's the god of volcanoes, fire, and the forge, making guns is a natural twist on his tendency to make things explode using metal, and that Vulcan has turned his company town into a creepy gun cult isn't all that surprising, either; Americans do tend to fetishise guns, for good or ill, whether they are pro or anti.

A lot of the credit for the character has to go to the script, from Seamus Kevin Fahey and Green & Fuller. Vulcan has such a swagger to him, a confidence that is supreme, and unlike some of the shabby characters we've been seeing, Vulcan is almost as powerful as the New Gods that he betrays Wednesday and Shadow to; he's clearly got something good going for him, and with every bullet being a blood sacrifice, it's no wonder Vulcan has an entire town of people at his beck and call, and why he seems like the only one of Wednesday's compatriots to not be in some sort of dire straits. Fahey, Green, and Fuller get the point across about Vulcan without belaboring the point; the impact of the reveal is still there, but it doesn't feel excessively politicised. If possible, it's the right amount of politicised, and Corbin Bernsen knocks it completely out of the park. He's charming and threatening in turns, treating Wednesday like an equal and treating Shadow with something worse than simple contempt; even with that, Shadow's response to Vulcan's fate is one of the more heartbreaking (and hilarious) moments on a very funny show.

Adam Kane reinforces the town's strangeness in the way he handles the scenes in Vulcan. The funeral march is a solemn affair, with everyone wearing armbands and carrying weapons. They fire into the sky in unison, and disperse before the bullets fired in the air come back down—that's a rare bit of reality that isn't shown on television, as those bullets have to go somewhere—in a town that is uniformly white and seems to be locked into belief in Vulcan's new way of living. The town itself is beautiful; the introduction of the big black car driving into the town is like driving into a Technicolor matte painting in a classic film. In fact, it's so pretty and perfect that it feels unsettling even before we see just how strange all the townsfolk are and how much Shadow sticks out like a sore thumb.

Meanwhile, a zombie, a leprechaun, and a gay Muslim aren't even really blinked at, no matter how weird Mad Sweeney says they look together. They're a great three-man comedy act and they add some much-needed lightness to what is a fairly heavy episode, what with all the people getting murdered in the cold opening and the cult-like townspeople. Again, it's another example of just how well American Gods is able to straddle the line of dark comedy.

Somehow, Vulcan—the town and the person—are both threatening and funny all at the same time. Dangerous yet funny is this show's entire MO. Look no farther than Wednesday using his own urine as a means to heap a curse onto a late betrayer.

I'm sorry but before you go I just have to take two minutes just to give Pablo Schreiber the credit he deserves for some amazing performances that have me none-stop giggling every single time I hear his voice, especially in this episode. Firstly his accent is second to none, you would not think he was Canadian, I honestly didn't even notice it was him, thought it was a proper paddy. Everything he does is pure comedy gold. Just little things like for example, how throughout the hole episode Mad Sweeney refers to Laura as "dead wife" and its just the way he says it with his facial expressions that just make it hilarious every time. So Kudos to you Pablo mad props.