[Discuss Thrower]

So, perhaps by incident or by intention, Episode 5 was structured in a way that made Episode 4 totally skippable since the end of Ep.3 would flow seamlessly into Ep.5.

Spoiler!

The only thing that's lost by skipping the Laura episode is seeing Anubis deal with a nonbeliever (which may or may not have relevance to the narrative or to the mythos), the explanation as to why Laura can find Shadow seeing that he's her source of light and the detailed explanation as to why Shadow was locked up in the first place.

If this was intentional... then Green / Fuller should kick themselves in the dick for an episode that can be written off as chaff outside of some comical moments between two characters and some backstory.

If it were done by incident, then people who are still on the fence about the show after the first two can be told to skip the Laura-centric episode and continue on with #5.

All of that aside, tonight brought us some action and some further revelation as to what's playing out in the world of American Gods and I think it was enjoyable.

Spoiler!

Green and Fuller went off-book again with creating the Laura and Mad Sweeney scene at the motel; the intent was solely to have fun with the characters and to showcase how much those two are dickheads to each other as well as to anyone they come across. As much as the pratfalls are pretty hilarious, it almost feels like a waste of Pablo to have him get racked in the nuts escaping a cop car instead of snarling wise ass remarks to Shadow or Wednesday.

Credit to Emily Browning for being naked for a large part of the episode and to, at least in my mind, successfully pull off some sort of cinematic uncanny valley of being a revenant corpse that's trying to pass off as being normal and alive but failing to do so with her mannerisms as well as being pretty blase about the whole being dead thing. Also the fact she killed an innocent mortician but couldn't care less about that whole event.

But the important part is the Shadow and Wednesday storyline and the continuing arc of the show in pitting the old gods versus the new. Media is trippy and disjointed which fits. Technical Boy is a prick that still has to kowtow to Media and Mr. World. Mr. World is... ****ing out there. But I like it.