In Review: American Gods: Season 2 Episode 4

Synopsis: While Shadow and Mr. Wednesday take a secret meeting in St. Louis, Bilquis arrives at the funeral home in Cairo, where she engages in debate with Mr. Nancy and Mr. Ibis. Laura rejoins Mad Sweeney, and Tech Boy pays a visit to his first worshipper.

Review: This episode not only gives us ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, but it also escalates things to a whole new level.

The Story

This episode begins with the story of how Tech Boy came to be worshipped and birthed as one of the modern gods. Then it moves back to the funeral home as Wednesday and Shadow Moon prepare to hit the road for St Louis where they have a meeting planned with Money.

Elsewhere, Mr. World is majorly ticked off at Tech Boy for allowing Wednesday to kill Argus, who they were hoping to use as a means of keeping tabs on the old gods. Tech Boy thinks he can persuade his first worshipper to come up with another means of surveillance via modern technology.

Back in Cairo. Bilquis, Mr. Nancy and Ibis debate whether to join the war or not. Nancy is in favor of joining Wednesday whereas Bilquis and Ibis are more on the fence about it.

The Acting

Bruce Langley puts in a superb performance this week in what looks like his final episode of the run given how things end. The scenes where he is trying to make a sales pitch to his first worshipper are pretty compelling to watch and tie back wonderfully well to the beginning of the episode.

Overall

There was a lot to like about this episode, which served to further the storyline at a more pacy rate than previous episodes as we begin to see that not all the old gods are on the same page as Mr. Wednesday. The debate that Bilquis has with Mr. Nancy and Ibis comes up with a lot of pros and cons.

I also liked the narrative involving Tech Boy and his first worshipper, which illustrates that even the new gods can fall out of favor with their followers. A great metaphor for the power of belief in pretty much anything.

The final few moments in which Mr. World meets with Mr. Wednesday appears to be setting things up for episodes to come. Mr. Wednesday still has a point to prove but given the cost of war. He may struggle to state his case without a decent box of tricks at his disposal.

I look forward to seeing where this story goes next. Especially given the fact that the casualties on both sides of this war are starting to grow.