This week, horror fans got their fill of character’s brains on the ground. While the other show took every opportunity to draw out the drama from the character’s deaths, AvED went full splatstick, showing close-ups while Ash attempts to piece his father together again after the Classic mowed him down. It’s no use. There’s not enough skull intact to hold it all in place, plus Brock’s missing an eye—which is neatly embedded in the Delta’s grille. It stares down Pablo and Ash while they discuss a plan of action over Brock’s corpse. The plan, apparently, is for Pablo to charge the possessed car by himself and become its captive alongside the sheriff’s daughter. Pretty sure that’s not how one wins the war against evil.
Pablo’s newfound bravery is a farce. He’s reacting purely from fear and Evil knows it, manipulating Pablo to do what it wants through his bizarre connection to the Necronomicon. Matter of fact, the fallout from one conversation with the book changes everything for Ash and his team. We’ve waited so long for Pablo to finally step up and be the hero, but he’s going about it the wrong way. So now we get to sit and watch him set the world ablaze. Neat. Maybe we’ll get more super-intense visions, like the car crash, along the way. I loved the mild shock from watching Pablo stagger around with a steel bar longer than he is tall through his chest.
The possessed Delta isn’t their only problem. In true men-sense, the guys completely overlook the demonspawn still camped in the crematorium in favor of chasing the Classic to the local demolition derby stadium. Ash even takes a highly intoxicated Chet along for the pursuit. That leaves the ladies on the team to take care of Ruby’s ill-behaved children. What Ruby didn’t take into account is that they’ve spent their time gaining strength in order to fulfill their father’s wishes. The spawn are way stronger than their mother now. Kelly saves Ruby’s bacon a couple times—gratitude is a sensation I’m sure is completely foreign to Ruby. This is the first solid moment the ladies have had where they were just as hardcore as the men without eventually falling back on Ash’s uncanny competence at killing in order to win the day’s battle. They mow through the demonspawn with a couple close-calls on the getting maimed front.
Unfortunately, killing the demonspawn doesn’t do a thing to slow Baal’s roll. Pablo gives him a Get Out Of Hell Free card when he listens to the Necronomicon and together they open a hellgate in the Classic’s trunk. Great. Now we’re cooking with fire. Bring on the big bad. Things are about to get even worse and I cannot wait.
Last Call Review for Ash vs Evil Dead 203 By A. Zombie
Ash enlists some help to make sure this party rages hard enough to coax the teens who stole the Delta from whatever shadow they’re hiding in. Chet’s introductory scene is the perfect way to bring Ted Raimi onto the show. It’s bizarre, laced with weird inside jokes, and radiates Ted’s unique charm. Not to mention, it gives us a chance to see a sillier side of Kelly for a few moments—we’ll just ignore that two older, pervy men pressure her into drinking a Ketamine-laced cocktail, first. I will note the tongue-in-cheek PSA after the episode urging viewers not to ingest any cocktail mixed with drugs. They know it’s wrong to include laced drinks, but they’d rather apologize than ask permission. It’s pretty much how everything goes on this show, to be honest.
So, where exactly is the Delta while the party planning session commences? Getting high and fraternizing with teenagers. Basically, Ash with even less morals. With the Necronomicon left to work its influence on the Delta, things turn to crap fast for Amber, Tyler, Lacey, and their pals. Tyler gets the worst of it, losing his manhood after Amber reads from the book and becomes a deadite. The sheriff’s daughter, Lacey, has a front row seat for each death caused by the Delta—including the final, and most tragic, murder after the dual showdowns during the most awkward party ever at Chet’s bar.
There can’t be a shindig in town without Brock making an appearance. Plus, that’s his bar. Ash left Elk Grove, the bar, and his father long ago. Brock wishes he’d leave again and makes it known pretty much the minute he enters the setup/party. Ruby draws the short straw, stuck on Brock-sitting duty. Basically, she has to stop the old guy from being creepy around young people. One must ask, which old guy? Ash does an astounding job of being weird and obviously out of his peer-level without his father’s aid. It does give Ruby time to try and teach Brock how to speak to a lady, yanking his nose after he makes several skin-crawling advances. Unfortunately, the tree is exactly like the apple it produced and Brock isn’t phased in the least after the assault to his nostrils.
The Williams men face off twice in this episode. First, to win Amber’s attention for a bathroom fling. Then a mechanical bull-riding challenge to prove who is the better man. Brock wins both. Which is so not a good thing. Pablo kicks Ash’s mopey backside into gear after they discover Amber is a deadite. That’s one fight Ash actually wins. Victory is short-lived. As are Brock’s praises. The Delta arrives at the party just in time to miss the big fight. It doesn’t miss Brock as he’s in the midst of telling Ash something life-changing. Too soon, we’re waving goodbye to Lee Majors and the grumpy charisma oozing from his pores. He made a fun addition to the show and gave them the chance to build Ash’s backstory at last.
Barring another Christine-esque episode, the gang has the Necronomicon and their getaway vehicle once again. Perfect. Now what? They have what the hellspawn desire. The freaky children are hell-bent on raising Baal. Ash is a giant target so long as he holds the book, standing in their way to victory. I suspect we’ll see the gang wiggling like worms on a hook soon to lure the hellspawn in so they can deal with them for good. That’s if they get the chance to plan anything and they’re not side-swiped by evil again.
The Morgue Review for Ash vs Evil Dead 202 By A. Zombie
The team is all about divide and conquer. They don’t trust Ruby further than Pablo can throw her, which is about a foot. So he stays behind to grill her about the freaky hallucinations he’s had since popping out her hellspawn. Turns out they’re precognitive visions, but only Ruby can translate the jumbled mess vomited into Pablo’s mind through his connection to the book. According to her, the misbehaving hellbrats want to wake daddy dearest, Baal. Judging from the ferocity of Pablo’s vision, the guy is the worst of the worst. Because that’s just what Ash needs when he’s supposed to be retired.
While the gang scrambles to save the world—again—Brock dims the lights and settles in for a romantic night with his current favorite lady. Lillian Pendergrass also happens to be Ash’s ex-lover. Well, technically, she’s an ex-ex-lover. Poor Lillian kicked the bucket and a Deadite took her for a joyride. It finally brings the danger Ash faces daily right into Brock’s living room. The fallout will be astounding with these hard-headed men.
Ash and Kelly are on Necronomicon duty. That’s a really unfortunate phrase.
Field trip to the morgue! All Ash knows is the book is in a body, so he leaves Kelly in the hall to stand guard and tackles the treasure hunt alone. Good thing she’s there, too. Ever-hateful Sheriff Emery is on his way to the morgue, but gladly takes the chance to stop and harass Kelly about the recent unexplained deaths in town. Her patience is gone. The sheriff learns this firsthand.
With too many bodies to pick from and no description to work from, Ash reverts to his old ways, using a chainsaw to hack through each body he finds. Should’ve looked, first. The Necromonicon is in the final body, but it’s been there long enough to influence the flesh hiding it. Ash realizes he got the crappy job rather quickly. This scene is by far the most hilarious, graphic, and disgusting gag I’ve seen anyone film. If there was any wonder if this show is okay for children, Ash getting his head rammed up a dead guy’s backside firmly answers the question—no, now quit adding to your kid’s future therapy bill.
The mortifying experience pays off. Ash and Kelly scram, Necronomicon in tow. They almost make it back to Pablo and Ruby without incident . . . then they encounter a couple low-IQ locals with a knack for car theft. Thinking he is smart, Ash hides the book in his car until they discover Ruby’s intentions—only for the car to be stolen while they argue.
Ash can’t catch a break. A bigger bad waits for the door to be unlocked by freaky bald guys. His dad is still a jerk. His companions barely know or trust each other. And the key to saving mankind is in the back of the only thing he actually owns, but it’s in the hands of petty morons. He’s got a long way to go if mankind will survive Baal’s arrival.
Pablo and Kelly sling beer at a dive bar in Jacksonville, FL while Ash makes himself the life of the party. For one of them, life after the deadite invasion is golden. There’s plenty of hot chicks, alcohol, and his little lizard buddy is there to play wingman. Ash’s happiness is hollow and fleeting, like a chocolate bunny left in an oven. Things are amiss with the dark side. They’re gonna need the bumbling savior once again.
Enter the deadites, and they’ve got a message from the woman in charge, “The truce is over.” Ash’s fighting skills were swapped for keg-cutting and flirting. The fights are slapstick, with Ash struggling to do the heroic moves he’d mastered over years fighting evil. The deadites, primarily a woman he’d flirted with before crap hit the fan, taunt Ash with “Ashy Slashy” rhymes. There’s only one way Ruby knows exactly how to get under his skin—she’s in Elk Grove, his hometown.
There’s no waffling around, when Ash reaches Elk Grove, he stops by the old homestead. Enter Brock Williams—Ash’s cantankerous, unsupportive father, who greets house guests by firing a warning shot past their ear. There’s no love in his heart for his wayward, murdering son or his sidekick, Pablo, but he really wants a date with Kelly. The offer is shot down before he finishes asking her out.
With nothing more than a city’s name, the gang’s gonna need some help finding Ruby. Too bad Ash is the town’s local serial killer and they want less than nothing to do with him, or his mission to save mankind. Linda Bates is the sole kind soul at the bar Ash visits looking for information. Her kindness ends where her husband’s hatred begins, though. Sheriff Thomas Emery would gladly tar and feather Ash if given the chance.
Pablo ends up proving his usefulness . . . by having wicked violent hallucinations linking his mind to the Necronomicon again. The hallucinations, and Pablo’s mind, are sharp enough to feed the gang the clues they need to find Ruby. It’s too easy. They’re totally walking into a trap.
It’s actually a trap for the Mother of Darkness. Ruby’s been cornered in Elk Grove’s crematorium since the freak deadite storm in Florida. Her babies, those freaky little bastards, matured into malicious demonspawn hellbent on using the Necronomicon to their own devices—personal theory, they want to summon Great Daddy Evil and get the family reunion really rolling. The only way Ruby knows to contain the new evil threat is with Ash’s help. There’s a boatload of character development for Ruby in her brief scenes. Necessary development since it’s well known the character didn’t have much on paper when Lawless took on the role for season one. As much as I enjoy watching Ash fumble through his savior complex, I want to see what Lawless can do with Ruby. There’s great potential for her to go good or evil, and that’s the real attention-grabber for season two. When it comes time to decide, will Ruby back Ash or will she fall to old ways and reign over evil once her darling problem children are disposed of?
The adult demonspawn are freaky. There’s awesome physical movement from the one who attacks Pablo, in particular. It’s easy to rely on scary makeup to push the point, but changing the way the creature moves to make it truly inhuman makes a simplistic design much more effective. They also morph into shadow creatures and take on human form, adding infinite opportunity to mix up fight scenes if these guys are going to stick around as the primary kill-target this season.
With the gang together again, they’re off to stop Ruby’s great mistake. So, what are the odds Ash annoys her so much she tries to kill him before they’ve been on the road an hour?
Those adventures brought up an arm-long question list from fans. This return to the source should’ve answered a few questions, right? It really only answered one: What kind of dagger is it Ruby keeps so well hidden? Amanda accidentally finds the answer in a journal inside the cabin; the dagger can melt the binding on the Necronomicon. But as far as Ruby’s true identity, her connection to evil, or anything truly in depth about what they’re facing? Nope. Nada. Zilch. We get heavy-handed callbacks to Evil Dead, some poorly executed, and a death we all saw coming since episode 103. I said in my last review that the formula was killing the fun, well . . . . It’s dead, Jim.
The glorious parallels to the film franchise were few and far between, but at least they started it off right. We catch up with Ash walking in the woods, communing with undead birds. Then, the cabin appears. The porch swing bangs against the wall—thump, thump, thump, thump, stop. My shriveled heart actually beat when Ash hit the porch. But from there on out, each reference fizzles or only manages to illicit a, “Huh, I remember that.” They even brought in the dreaded ex-girlfriend scenario. Now, it may be nostalgia coloring my memory, but was Linda always so insufferably obnoxious? I remember she did whine a little, but the actress they brought in to be Linda’s head took whine to professional levels. There is no authenticity in the performance. She phoned in what she parroted, poorly, from the source material. There’s a scene where evil flings things at Ash and steals his technohand, marred by Linda’s incessant whining and fellatio jokes. We get a BadAsh in this episode, for heaven’s sake. That alone should make plotting through Pablo and Kelly’s B-story of nothingness worth it.
Nope.
BadAsh gets lumped in with the Ashmanda plot. Of course. We see what may be character growth from Ash and it’s his psycho half manipulating the heck out of Amanda by hinting at a happy future between them. How did BadAsh come about? Well when a severed hand and a demon love each other . . . . Basically, the hand grew an Ash. BadAsh has Amanda fooled up until she realizes he’s got a rather funky appendage. They fight. She loses. Of course she does. The boss fight in this whole thing has to be Ash against a deadite woman. Because if fans haven’t figured it out by now, his worst enemies are himself and love. Even in Army of Darkness Ash’s greatest enemy isn’t the skeleton army at the gates, but the possessed woman he once fell for out of the blue and BadAsh. Literally everyone else is in the movie to fight or die in the background; they don’t matter. So why even attempt to get Pablo and Kelly into the episode if they’re doomed to similar fate? Why not make the episode focus on the fights with Linda and Ash, Amanda and BadAsh, and finally Ash vs BadAsh? They planned to leave the final fight on a cliffhanger, anyway. Why not put more focus on what’s obviously the sole goal in the episode?
There’s two episodes left. I’m eagerly awaiting something on this show surprising me.
Ruby also has a weird connection to the deadites, one which is teased yet again after Ruby and Amanda arrive at Brujo’s farm, only to find the funeral pyre burning as well as the idols. The remaining idols inside the house react to Ruby with similar curses to when they faced Eligos. Hell, even Brujo has something to say when he jumps from the pyre as a deadite to attack Ruby. How is she a double crosser? Did Ruby make a pact with the deadites? Is she the real reason why the book was at the cabin? We may not find out. Ruby and DeadBrujo fell into the fire. Amanda didn’t bother sticking around to see if her new friend survived. The second Amanda realized Ash’s POS rustbucket backfired on a nearby road, she steals Ruby’s car—minus Ash’s hand, which wandered off—and follows. Unconcerned with potential pursuit, the gang stops for a bite. Ash attempts to dump his baggage early, telling Pablo and Kelly they can’t go to the cabin. They call BS, no amount of danger will keep them from seeing this through now they’ve been dragged in. Kelly lost her family; and Pablo has no one left aside from his awkward feelings about Kelly and a half-hearted friendship with Ash—neither have anything left to lose. Pablo proves his mettle by telling Ash, “If I were a deadite, it’d be an honor for you to cut my head off.”
It’s an honor they all may experience soon if Ash doesn’t stop finding danger in the most mundane spots.
We already know Ash isn’t the most stellar guy. After he offers to pay for the gang’s food, he tries to back out. Pablo and Kelly call him on it and he moves on to hitting on the waitress, promising her the best sex of her life to work off the bill. He’s not even concerned when Nancy points out her menacing husband working in the kitchen. Ash just wanders to the bathroom to await his next easy conquest.
The woman who walks in isn’t the woman he wants to see. Amanda and Ash fight again, with her still assuming he has a direct hand in the deadites and the deaths they cause, not that he’s a doorknob with his libido doing the thinking ninety percent of the time. It isn’t until the other State Police officer she calls in is killed and transformed into a deadite that Amanda suddenly realizes, nothing the doorknob does actually makes these things; the monsters just show up, kill people, and make a mess. The man she wants to hold accountable is actually the only one with the skill to kill them.
After Amanda sees Team Badass in action, she wants in. Of course she wants into their oh-so exclusive club. Who wouldn’t? Oh, say, anyone who wants to live to see old age? Ash doesn’t have a good track record for keeping companions alive.
There may be a snag in the plan to reach the cabin. At the restaurant, Ash runs into an old pal, Lem. Lem has joined forces with the local militia. When the deadites hit the fan, Lem bolted into the forest behind the restaurant. He’s put in a call for backup. Hope there’s extra bunks at the cabin, looks like the gang will have company. The other snag? Kelly may not be ready to say goodbye to revenge killing. After everything, she lives for the confrontation with evil. During the main fight for this episode, she uses a meat slicer to carve away DeadNancy’s face. She’s seriously into the kill. If they bury the Necronomicon, all her anger will have nowhere to go.
I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Kelly’s possession by evil. Eligos may be gone, but the weakness her revenge creates will make her an ideal target to become the Big Bad come the season’s end.
Poor Lionel is having a bad day. His store is wrecked by evil winds accompanying a spell he did right, only for Ash to botch. Does he get thanks for a job well done? No. He gets a glass shard to the eye and a demon using him as a meat puppet to attack Amanda Fisher. I guess in a way having Amanda handcuffed in place counts as a reward.
Then Ruby happens.
In typical Ruby style, she attacks DeadLionel, impaling him with a lamppost. Pinning DeadLionel to the wall gives Ruby time to snoop around the shop. She also fills Amanda in on her side of the whole Evil Dead story. According to Ruby, Ash is a stone-cold killer who mowed down her entire family—mom, dad, and her sister Annie. Something about her story tickles DeadLionel’s funny bone. Before he says something to contradict the tale, Ruby decapitates him and stomps on his head. Completely oblivious to Ruby’s true intentions, but enjoying her methods, Amanda agrees to team up with the undead slayer to track Ash. But how? He’s in the wind. Ruby has a friend who can help—Ash’s possessed hand which he severed in one of the most memorable fights in the franchise. Seems the little fellow has an internal tracking power, making it move the closer they are to Ash. It’s not GPS, but it’ll work in a pinch.
The ladies may not have far to go to catch up. The Evil tracking Ash catches up with him, Pablo, and a severely concussed Kelly on the road to Pablo’s uncle’s. A dust cloud storms down the road, chasing the trailer Ash tows, tossing passing vehicles into the air. In the nick of time, the car turns into the Brujo’s driveway. The talismans around the property protect it from the evil dust storm. Not from Ash’s incompetent swagger.
Uncle Brujo knew Pablo would return. Not sure much could prepare him to deal with Ash as the sole Jefe available to deal with the local evil problem, but he’s game if Ash is. “When evil shows up, it blows up,” Ash tells the gang—it’s his new slogan if he is indeed this whacky Jefe thing Pablo and Brujo talk about all the time. There’s a long road ahead if Ash will become the hero they need. The Brujo says the light inside the hero-to-be is too dim, and quite frankly, Ash is a gigantic failure.
The trip they must take is an intimate one, which leaves Pablo to take care of Kelly. She’s probably going to need more than the standard, “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” seeing as she’s hearing voices in her head and all. None of the guys know. She’s really not inclined to tell them, either. You guys remember Eligos, the faceless fun n mental mindgames demon the gang summoned in the last episode? Yeah, he’s taken residence in Kelly’s brain and body. Rut roh. Pablo does his best to make sure she’s comfortable. While she rests, and is consumed by evil, he rifles through the storage shed for hand-making supplies. He creates a pretty nifty mechanical hand before Keligos electrocutes him, knocking him out.
In Brujo’s ramshackle shed, Ash is given a hearty dose of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic meant to draw Ash into himself to find the answer to their troubles. It takes a while for the potion to kick in, but once it does, whoa. We’re treated to an odd TV montage acid trip sequence, followed by footage from Evil Dead and a map tracking Ash’s nomadic life from ValueStop to ValueStop. At last Ash drops into a freshly dug grave. His eyes are sewn shut. Vaguely Ash-like masked men roam around, searching for our hero-to-be. Brujo, as a voice from above, instructs Ash on how to control his trip. The minute Ash has a grip on things, he travels to Jacksonville, FL. But not the real city, just an idealized version Ash saw on a postcard. He’d planned a trip to the city thirty years prior. A trip he was supposed to take right after visiting the cabin where he obtained the Necronomicon.
Eli the lizard, who can talk in this vision, verbally abuses Ash until they work out what’s in Ash’s subconscious that can point them to a solution to the evil problem. It all has to go back to the beginning, Ash and the book. Great news for long-term ED fans, they get to see the infamous cabin again.
Ash is vulnerable, trapped in the vision quest. He’s ripe for Eligos to screw with mentally. The demon hijacks Ash’s trip and drags him mentally back to ValueStop, where the possessed Little Lori doll waits to finish their fight. But this is Ash’s vision. He’s the head honcho in charge. Ash changes the vision, attacking Eligos. In reality, he’s strangling Kelly’s possessed body. Unaware of the real situation, Pablo whacks Ash over the head to save Kelly.
Well, that’s a strange turn of events. How will Keligos fit into the new plan: Bury the Necronomicon at the cabin in the woods? Will Pablo trust Ash after the attack? Is this the delay Ruby needs to finally catch up with her prey?
The fun and screams continue as Team Badass ventures to finally translate the Necronomicon—no, Pablo, I won’t call you guys The Ghost Beaters even if you paid me in fresh human flesh. Ash drags his unlikely partners along to Books from Beyond, owned by Lionel Hawkins, a self-made Necronomicon expert. He’s probably the only guy alive today who can read the book. Good thing nothing happens to him, right?
I’m getting ahead of myself.
The mysterious Ruby Knowby is on the team’s trail. She arrives at Kelly’s parent’s house not long after they drove off. Her taste in cars in commendable, by the way, but that’s not why we’re here. Ruby wants Ash and the Necronomicon. To find them, she needs information. That’s where dear old dad comes into play. Kelly’s father wasn’t properly buried for someone attacked by a deadite. They idiots left his head attached. When Ruby shows up looking for Ash’s trail, she’s attacked by DeadDad. The fight lasts a laughable half a second before Ruby impales DeadDad on his wife’s grave marker and begins her interrogation.
DeadDad isn’t a stool pigeon. He’s of no help to Ruby, refusing to cooperate. That is until she pulls out a wicked knife which just so happens to scorch deadite flesh on contact. Groovy. Where can I get one? We have to assume DeadDad talks. I hope he did. It’s about time Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell were on screen together. My patience wears thin waiting for this momentous occasion.
Over at the creepy as hell book store, Lionel is one happy puppy when Ash gives him permission to touch and read the Necronomicon. His joy is cut short when Amanda Fisher, still not back on duty but a pain in Ash’s backside nonetheless, bursts in thinking she’ll just snag Ash and end the newfound problems in her life. Think again. Pablo, fresh from his rejection after Kelly calls him “the little brother I never had,” rushes to Ash’s defense, clocking Amanda on the head with a femur. They cuff her to a ladder, leaving Kelly to watch over the officer while the guys go into the back to learn a little Necronomicon history and royally screw everything up some more.
Translating the book is about 25% skill and 75% talking out one’s backside, or so it seems when Lionel cannot find a clear answer to the Big Problem: How do they close the portal Ash opened in order to get laid? There’s some vague thing about the key being in The Man, which Ash assumes is him. Then the braintrust does exactly what they shouldn’t, plan to summon a lesser demon and ask it how to fix Ash’s boneheaded mistake. It’s Pablo’s idea, which he wants nothing to do with once things are in motion. Lionel is beside himself with joy at the prospect. Ash is still stuck figuring out why him. Don’t hurt yourself thinking, dude.
The women aren’t exactly making intelligent decisions, either. Amanda wakes and is understandably livid about being cuffed to the ladder. Kelly’s sympathy button broke when she watched Ash hack her mother’s head off. She’ll watch Amanda and let the guys do their thing. That is until whatever they’re doing in the back room makes weird things happen out front. Suddenly having another ally seems like a good idea. Amanda even agrees with her; if Ash and the others are trying to stop the deadites, then they should all team together.
They’re not cooking with the same kind of logic in Books from Beyond’s back room. Lionel is eagerly setting up the ritual space, creating an altar and a protective circle to trap the demon—safety first, kids. So long as no one breaks the salt circle, they’re good. I mean, it’s only a lesser demon. How bad can it be?
Bad. It’s bad.
Eligos isn’t some infant-sized demon, as they assumed from the picture in the book. It is downright terrifying, actually. The design for the demon is astounding. Better yet, it’s practical. As in, there was a guy in a rather hideous costume on set for the actors to work with and not a tennis ball on a pole to get the sight lines correct. The only computer effects came in when Eligos had to move and fight. Oh and they blurred his junk for the actor’s modesty. How kind.
Okay, back to what a poorly thought out plan this is.
The demon isn’t particularly helpful. Ash asks how they undo what he’s done. Eligos wants to barter—his freedom for the answer. Yeah, not happening. He asks again, what can they do? “Die quickly; that is my only advice,” Eligos tells the men. He’s so helpful, that Eligos.
Before Ash can make yet another vain attempt to get a straight answer, Amanda bursts into the room. She lied to Kelly. She’s still going to apprehend Ash. When Ash doesn’t comply to Amanda’s order to disarm, she shoots a warning shot beside his chin—it is the biggest target, after all. The show startles Ash. He breaks the protective circle. Eligos got his wish, he’s a free elf . . . I mean, demon.
Eligos attacks. Amanda is knocked out. He digs his powers into Ash’s mind, destroying it from the inside out. The demon is wicked fast, moving in quick jumps around the room, making it impossible to shoot him. Ash shatters a window. It gives Eligos the weapon he needs to prevent Lionel from reading the spell to return him to the other side of the portal. Lionel takes several huge glass shards to the face and dies. Poor Lionel.
Pablo, who spends a good chunk of the fight hunched behind a table with Kelly, grabs a gun and tries to shoot the demon. It does no good, but breaks it’s hold on Ash . . . just long enough for it to circle around and snag them both. As they only one left to save the day, Kelly grabs the Necronomicon—it started the mess, it should end it, too—and whacks Eligos with the book. The demon vanishes in a puff of black smoke. Nifty thing to remember next time they summon pure evil. That was sarcasm.
Amanda can’t catch a break. After Pablo and Kelly head to Ash’s can, Amanda wakes and still tries to apprehend Ash, cuffing him. He slips his wooden hand off and cuffs her instead. She’s left in the book store alone. Or not. Lionel returns as DeadLionel and he’s got his eyes set on Amanda. She better figure out how to escape.
Left at yet another dead end, the team’s spirits are low. What can they do? The most helpful thing Pablo can suggest is visiting his estranged uncle, the family brujo. Given the lack of anything better, off they go to talk to the uncle Pablo hasn’t seen in quite some time.
You guys remember Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness, right? If not, please educate yourself on some of the most hilarious cinema featuring murderous corpses. Well, some of them were corpses. Others were possessed. Either way, the Deadites are a force to be reckoned with.
Ash, our debonair hero, thought he’d put those suckers to bed thirty years ago. Flash-forward to present-day. He’s fat, hiding it with the most ridiculous girdle worn by man, and hornier than a chihuahua on Viagra. The opening sequence for the series is literally everything diehard Evil Dead fans want to reintroduce Ash. At the drop of a woman’s undergarments, he’s able to get laid—his sole goal in life, it seems. The mood is soured when his for-now lover’s face morphs into a Deadite. Hard to keep going after that, huh?
But why is Ash seeing Deadites at every turn? Well, see, he wanted to get laid by the blonde artsy woman with words tattooed around her wrists not long before the show’s timeline starts. StonedAsh managed to focus through the haze long enough to grab the nearest book—the Necronomicon. Whoops. So they read from the friggen book, of course, and here we are, smack in the middle of Deadite Country.
Elsewhere, two State Police officers are dragged into Ash’s mess when they’re called to a domestic dispute. Only, the house is abandoned. People had been there, judging from the table-load of drugs and booze left behind. Oh and the corpse crouched in a corner, hands still raised to fend off whatever scared her to death, could be a clue. I don’t know. I wasn’t a cop before turning undead.
Amanda Fisher and her partner, Carson, find one other person in the house—Ash’s blonde date who read from the book. You know where this is going, right? Fight time. Blondie cranks her head around 180* and dislocates her shoulders before launching at Carson. Amanda takes some wicked-huge scissors to the hand. Then things get really out of hand, ending with Carson and the blonde woman without heads. That escalated quickly. Later in the episode, we learn that Amanda is out on leave pending an investigation into the shooting and a psyche evaluation, because how many people say their partner went crawling on the ceiling before attacking them? A kind, and kinda hot, stranger—played by Lucy Lawless—more or less tells Amanda she’s not nuts. A fact Amanda confirms by going back to the crime scene, where she finds Carson’s shirt fibers on the chandelier.
Over at ValueStop, Ash attempts to swindle Mr. Roper out of his paycheck and possibly, maybe, forgetting Ash is supposed to work that day so Ash can run like a scared rabbit into the sunset before the Deadites find him. But first, he has to make a fool of himself in front of the new woman Pablo brought in to work with them. Hello, Kelly. I like your lack of accepting misogynistic nonsense and skill with a wrist lock. That’s how you introduce a female character, ladies and gentlemen. Take note.
Ash’s plans to bolt come too late. The Deadites are on his trail. In a scene calling back to Army of Darkness with the army of MiniAshs, he fights a possessed doll, only to be saved by clueless Pablo. Well, not totally clueless. Pablo’s brujo uncle warned about a man who would be the only one capable of defeating the evil dead, El Jefe. Putting two-and-two together, Pablo figures out Ash is that guy. Cool. They’re saved. Except Ash still wants nothing to do with the hero biz. He’s out of that game. Paid the ultimate price.
They’re only hope gone, Kelly and Pablo don’t know what to do next as things get weirder around the store. Kelly receives a video call from her father, with guest star—her undead mother! Off to save Mr. Maxwell. But first, a pit stop.
For a man living in a trailer, it sure is taking Ash a long time to skedaddle. He’s gotta think about Eli, man. Poor bearded dragon didn’t ask for any of this. He just wants to chill and eat. But it’s a good thing Ash is so ill-prepared to leave. Pablo’s pit stop requires the man himself to fight Kelly’s Deadite mother. Yeah, Ash isn’t on board with that plan, either. He doesn’t get much of a choice. The Deadites are in the trailer park, changing his weird, yet kind neighbors into joke-cracking killers. One grabs Kelly, strangling her through the trailer’s window.
He’s always been a sucker for a woman in need. Ash flings an ax at the Deadite, severing its arm. The trailer starts rocking—and not for any goodtime reasons. Cue the quick change into GoodAsh. Admit it, you all swooned when you saw the blue shirt. Bonus badassery, a foot-trigger, spring-loaded shotgun storage compartment in the trailer’s floor. I want one of those. But Ash loses a point for admitting he needs to do cardio.
There’s one more Deadite fight, this time with sweet as cream Vivian. She’s silly enough to stand between Ash and . . . wait for it . . . are you sure you’re ready? The chainsaw. They knock each other all over the trailer. Ash ends up, yup, on the ground. Pablo is pinned to the wall with a knife in his right shoulder, leaving Kelly to fend for herself against something she’s never seen before. Her bravery flees, though she manages to hold DeadViv at bay just long enough. For what? For the most awesome moment in the show. Pablo flings the chainsaw to Ash using his foot. Angels sing. The engine revvs. DeadViv is so excited her head just flies off.
This week, horror fans got their fill of character’s brains on the ground. While the other show took every opportunity to draw out the drama from the character’s deaths, AvED went full splatstick, showing close-ups while Ash attempts to piece his father together again after the Classic mowed him down. It’s no use. There’s not enough skull intact to hold it all in place, plus Brock’s missing an eye—which is neatly embedded in the Delta’s grille. It stares down Pablo and Ash while they discuss a plan of action over Brock’s corpse. The plan, apparently, is for Pablo to charge the possessed car by himself and become its captive alongside the sheriff’s daughter. Pretty sure that’s not how one wins the war against evil.
Pablo’s newfound bravery is a farce. He’s reacting purely from fear and Evil knows it, manipulating Pablo to do what it wants through his bizarre connection to the Necronomicon. Matter of fact, the fallout from one conversation with the book changes everything for Ash and his team. We’ve waited so long for Pablo to finally step up and be the hero, but he’s going about it the wrong way. So now we get to sit and watch him set the world ablaze. Neat. Maybe we’ll get more super-intense visions, like the car crash, along the way. I loved the mild shock from watching Pablo stagger around with a steel bar longer than he is tall through his chest.
Ash enlists some help to make sure this party rages hard enough to coax the teens who stole the Delta from whatever shadow they’re hiding in. Chet’s introductory scene is the perfect way to bring Ted Raimi onto the show. It’s bizarre, laced with weird inside jokes, and radiates Ted’s unique charm. Not to mention, it gives us a chance to see a sillier side of Kelly for a few moments—we’ll just ignore that two older, pervy men pressure her into drinking a Ketamine-laced cocktail, first. I will note the tongue-in-cheek PSA after the episode urging viewers not to ingest any cocktail mixed with drugs. They know it’s wrong to include laced drinks, but they’d rather apologize than ask permission. It’s pretty much how everything goes on this show, to be honest.
So, where exactly is the Delta while the party planning session commences? Getting high and fraternizing with teenagers. Basically, Ash with even less morals. With the Necronomicon left to work its influence on the Delta, things turn to crap fast for Amber, Tyler, Lacey, and their pals. Tyler gets the worst of it, losing his manhood after Amber reads from the book and becomes a deadite. The sheriff’s daughter, Lacey, has a front row seat for each death caused by the Delta—including the final, and most tragic, murder after the dual showdowns during the most awkward party ever at Chet’s bar.
The Williams men face off twice in this episode. First, to win Amber’s attention for a bathroom fling. Then a mechanical bull-riding challenge to prove who is the better man. Brock wins both. Which is so not a good thing. Pablo kicks Ash’s mopey backside into gear after they discover Amber is a deadite. That’s one fight Ash actually wins. Victory is short-lived. As are Brock’s praises. The Delta arrives at the party just in time to miss the big fight. It doesn’t miss Brock as he’s in the midst of telling Ash something life-changing. Too soon, we’re waving goodbye to Lee Majors and the grumpy charisma oozing from his pores. He made a fun addition to the show and gave them the chance to build Ash’s backstory at last.
The team is all about divide and conquer. They don’t trust Ruby further than Pablo can throw her, which is about a foot. So he stays behind to grill her about the freaky hallucinations he’s had since popping out her hellspawn. Turns out they’re precognitive visions, but only Ruby can translate the jumbled mess vomited into Pablo’s mind through his connection to the book. According to her, the misbehaving hellbrats want to wake daddy dearest, Baal. Judging from the ferocity of Pablo’s vision, the guy is the worst of the worst. Because that’s just what Ash needs when he’s supposed to be retired.
While the gang scrambles to save the world—again—Brock dims the lights and settles in for a romantic night with his current favorite lady. Lillian Pendergrass also happens to be Ash’s ex-lover. Well, technically, she’s an ex-ex-lover. Poor Lillian kicked the bucket and a Deadite took her for a joyride. It finally brings the danger Ash faces daily right into Brock’s living room. The fallout will be astounding with these hard-headed men.
With too many bodies to pick from and no description to work from, Ash reverts to his old ways, using a chainsaw to hack through each body he finds. Should’ve looked, first. The Necromonicon is in the final body, but it’s been there long enough to influence the flesh hiding it. Ash realizes he got the crappy job rather quickly. This scene is by far the most hilarious, graphic, and disgusting gag I’ve seen anyone film. If there was any wonder if this show is okay for children, Ash getting his head rammed up a dead guy’s backside firmly answers the question—no, now quit adding to your kid’s future therapy bill.
Pablo and Kelly sling beer at a dive bar in Jacksonville, FL while Ash makes himself the life of the party. For one of them, life after the deadite invasion is golden. There’s plenty of hot chicks, alcohol, and his little lizard buddy is there to play wingman. Ash’s happiness is hollow and fleeting, like a chocolate bunny left in an oven. Things are amiss with the dark side. They’re gonna need the bumbling savior once again.
There’s no waffling around, when Ash reaches Elk Grove, he stops by the old homestead. Enter Brock Williams—Ash’s cantankerous, unsupportive father, who greets house guests by firing a warning shot past their ear. There’s no love in his heart for his wayward, murdering son or his sidekick, Pablo, but he really wants a date with Kelly. The offer is shot down before he finishes asking her out.
The glorious parallels to the film franchise were few and far between, but at least they started it off right. We catch up with Ash walking in the woods, communing with undead birds. Then, the cabin appears. The porch swing bangs against the wall—thump, thump, thump, thump, stop. My shriveled heart actually beat when Ash hit the porch. But from there on out, each reference fizzles or only manages to illicit a, “Huh, I remember that.” They even brought in the dreaded ex-girlfriend scenario. Now, it may be nostalgia coloring my memory, but was Linda always so insufferably obnoxious? I remember she did whine a little, but the actress they brought in to be Linda’s head took whine to professional levels. There is no authenticity in the performance. She phoned in what she parroted, poorly, from the source material. There’s a scene where evil flings things at Ash and steals his technohand, marred by Linda’s incessant whining and fellatio jokes. We get a BadAsh in this episode, for heaven’s sake. That alone should make plotting through Pablo and Kelly’s B-story of nothingness worth it.
BadAsh gets lumped in with the Ashmanda plot. Of course. We see what may be character growth from Ash and it’s his psycho half manipulating the heck out of Amanda by hinting at a happy future between them. How did BadAsh come about? Well when a severed hand and a demon love each other . . . . Basically, the hand grew an Ash. BadAsh has Amanda fooled up until she realizes he’s got a rather funky appendage. They fight. She loses. Of course she does. The boss fight in this whole thing has to be Ash against a deadite woman. Because if fans haven’t figured it out by now, his worst enemies are himself and love. Even in Army of Darkness Ash’s greatest enemy isn’t the skeleton army at the gates, but the possessed woman he once fell for out of the blue and BadAsh. Literally everyone else is in the movie to fight or die in the background; they don’t matter. So why even attempt to get Pablo and Kelly into the episode if they’re doomed to similar fate? Why not make the episode focus on the fights with Linda and Ash, Amanda and BadAsh, and finally Ash vs BadAsh? They planned to leave the final fight on a cliffhanger, anyway. Why not put more focus on what’s obviously the sole goal in the episode?
Unconcerned with potential pursuit, the gang stops for a bite. Ash attempts to dump his baggage early, telling Pablo and Kelly they can’t go to the cabin. They call BS, no amount of danger will keep them from seeing this through now they’ve been dragged in. Kelly lost her family; and Pablo has no one left aside from his awkward feelings about Kelly and a half-hearted friendship with Ash—neither have anything left to lose. Pablo proves his mettle by telling Ash, “If I were a deadite, it’d be an honor for you to cut my head off.”
We already know Ash isn’t the most stellar guy. After he offers to pay for the gang’s food, he tries to back out. Pablo and Kelly call him on it and he moves on to hitting on the waitress, promising her the best sex of her life to work off the bill. He’s not even concerned when Nancy points out her menacing husband working in the kitchen. Ash just wanders to the bathroom to await his next easy conquest.
There may be a snag in the plan to reach the cabin. At the restaurant, Ash runs into an old pal, Lem. Lem has joined forces with the local militia. When the deadites hit the fan, Lem bolted into the forest behind the restaurant. He’s put in a call for backup. Hope there’s extra bunks at the cabin, looks like the gang will have company. The other snag? Kelly may not be ready to say goodbye to revenge killing. After everything, she lives for the confrontation with evil. During the main fight for this episode, she uses a meat slicer to carve away DeadNancy’s face. She’s seriously into the kill. If they bury the Necronomicon, all her anger will have nowhere to go.
Translating the book is about 25% skill and 75% talking out one’s backside, or so it seems when Lionel cannot find a clear answer to the Big Problem: How do they close the portal Ash opened in order to get laid? There’s some vague thing about the key being in The Man, which Ash assumes is him. Then the braintrust does exactly what they shouldn’t, plan to summon a lesser demon and ask it how to fix Ash’s boneheaded mistake. It’s Pablo’s idea, which he wants nothing to do with once things are in motion. Lionel is beside himself with joy at the prospect. Ash is still stuck figuring out why him. Don’t hurt yourself thinking, dude.
Amanda Fisher and her partner, Carson, find one other person in the house—Ash’s blonde date who read from the book. You know where this is going, right? Fight time. Blondie cranks her head around 180* and dislocates her shoulders before launching at Carson. Amanda takes some wicked-huge scissors to the hand. Then things get really out of hand, ending with Carson and the blonde woman without heads. That escalated quickly. Later in the episode, we learn that Amanda is out on leave pending an investigation into the shooting and a psyche evaluation, because how many people say their partner went crawling on the ceiling before attacking them? A kind, and kinda hot, stranger—played by Lucy Lawless—more or less tells Amanda she’s not nuts. A fact Amanda confirms by going back to the crime scene, where she finds Carson’s shirt fibers on the chandelier.