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.
Yo, where are you going? ID, please. The show we’re discussing uses profanity and contains adult situations.
Kelly still thinks she’s going to bat her eyes and get Ash to help. Man, she’s not paying attention. Ash is out to care for numero uno. In order to save his bacon, and by default everyone else’s, he’s gotta figure out what’s actually written in the Necronomicon. Thirty years schlepping the thing around and he didn’t think to do this before the end of the world is nigh? Man, and I thought I procrastinated hardcore. Kelly gives up simply asking for help and steals Pablo’s motorcycle so she can save her dad.
Oh and Pablo says she took the Necronomicon.
Cue a miraculous cleanup for Ash and Pablo, then we join them on the road. They’ve picked up a hitchhiker—Mr. Roper. Well, he’s DeadRoper now, and he still hates Ash with the fire of no less than ten-thousand suns. Most people do. He’s not unique. What is unique is the in-car fight between DeadRoper, Ash, and hapless Pablo. Pablo thinks he can learn to fight like Ash. He takes one hit, all Ash needs to get into Fight Mode. Pablo, “…but I just got hit; I don’t know what to do!” You’ll learn, Pablo, or you’ll die. He makes a valliant attempt to save Ash, smashing a bottle over DeadRoper’s head. Yeah, that’s not going to work. But it does give Ash something he can partially hack the Deadite’s head off with before pushing it out the window for an oncoming car to behead. Now they have to clean up again. Will someone test to see just how much blood a moist towelette can remove? For science.
Amanda Fisher is on Ash’s trail, following the weird breadcrumbs to what was once his doorstep. His neighbors have nothing nice to say. Nothing useful, either. Amanda finds the business card for the book store Ash is trying to get to, thanks to the severed arm he left behind. Not his own. Her chase for clues ends abruptly when the state police arrive, shooing her away because she’s still suspended. That’s okay. She’s got the card and saw the police sketch of Ash. It’s a no-brainer from here on out. Just like the Deadites Ash offed.
At Mr. Maxwell’s place all is . . . comfy and cozy? Well, crud. Ash and Pablo look like asylum escapees, covered in DeadRoper’s blood and wielding weapons. Surprise, Mrs. Maxwell wasn’t dead. (Liar) She had amnesia after the car accident. (Pants so on fire) But she’s slowly remembering everything again. Yeah. Right. Ash sees through her game. But is he just paranoid or is Mrs. Maxwell really DeadMom? They should stay for dinner and find out.
Ash oozes charm at dinner. No, wait, that’s the roast beef oozing. Never mind. Just when the schtick has hit the, “Maybe she’s not a Deadite,” point, Ash takes matters into his own fist. One shot to the jaw does the trick, bringing DeadMom to the surface. There’s a couple weird boomstick point-of-view shots, which I actually don’t hate despite the camera jiggling, during the fight. As usual, the physical action is astounding. The gore which comes as a result of the fighting is just as wonderful, done primarily with practical effects with a little digital to augment—which is how you do it, folks. DeadMom kills Mr. Maxwell. Then she and Kelly vanish.
Kelly runs upstairs to hide and figure out what’s going on with her family. DeadMom is there, pretending to be regular ol’ Mrs. Maxwell. Maybe they can find a way to help? Yeah, no. DeadMom attacks when Ash and Pablo join them in Kelly’s childhood room. Poor Pablo tries again to jump into the fray, stabbing DeadMom in the head. No good. It’s gotta be decapitation. And the only thing they have handy capable of severing heads ends up stuck in a wall at one point. Get control of your chainsaw, Ash. Sheesh. He does, of course, unleashing about five gallons of blood on Pablo and Kelly.
They bury Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell in the front yard. Kelly officially joins Team Badass. But, uh, what about the book? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Pablo had it the entire time. That’s okay. They’re back on the road again, on the way to the bookstore. They better hurry. Amanda is waiting.
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.
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.