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American Gods on Starz


Mark Antony

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Great show, great adaption of the books with added clarification for book readers. The Coming to America parts have been my favorite. Easter and Media, perfect. I don't see where the complaints come from, you know, other than the usual people around here that bitch, moan and pick apart everything. Pretty par for the course. I live it though, because I find it hilarious at how no one can ever be happy, must be miserable to wake up of a morning and face yourself.

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12 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Great show, great adaption of the books with added clarification for book readers. The Coming to America parts have been my favorite. Easter and Media, perfect. I don't see where the complaints come from, you know, other than the usual people around here that bitch, moan and pick apart everything. Pretty par for the course. I live it though, because I find it hilarious at how no one can ever be happy, must be miserable to wake up of a morning and face yourself.

I'd say the complaints that the show is slow paced are pretty justifiable. 

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Yeah, I agree that certain complaints about the show are completely valid. Tbh, I was also expecting an unsubtle overindulgence on the visual imagery given Fuller's involvement. It was the same on Hannibal which was quite frustrating at times.

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13 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Great show, great adaption of the books with added clarification for book readers. The Coming to America parts have been my favorite. Easter and Media, perfect. I don't see where the complaints come from, you know, other than the usual people around here that bitch, moan and pick apart everything. Pretty par for the course. I live it though, because I find it hilarious at how no one can ever be happy, must be miserable to wake up of a morning and face yourself.

Odd because people, including myself, are being pretty specific on explaining why we have issues with the show.

It's odd how you assume that people who aren't enjoying this show are somehow living lives devoid of joy. It's a TV show - it doens't make me miserable if it isn't perfect. It wouldn't make me miserable if it was awful. Life would be either going pretty badly or incredibly well for a mediocre episode of TV to spoil my day.

24 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Yeah, I agree that certain complaints about the show are completely valid. Tbh, I was also expecting an unsubtle overindulgence on the visual imagery given Fuller's involvement. It was the same on Hannibal which was quite frustrating at times.

I agree. That aspect is not a surprise after watching "hannibal". I was braced for it.

 

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I finally got to catch up with this.  I think I appreciated it more having been able to binge the last six episodes.  I really like it.  It's so weird.  

That said, there are enough elements of Fuller's overdone style that I began to really get tired of on Hannibal that I can see myself getting annoyed with on this show.  I hope he pulls it back a bit.  

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5 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I'd say the complaints that the show is slow paced are pretty justifiable. 

@red snow, I was just being sarcastic. I know, its hard to tell sarcasm over the written word. Yes, I've seen many justifiable complaints. I just have really liked the show. Don't really have any complaints.

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ooh, I just found this thread so I popped in to say hello.  

Good show, not great.  I spent a lot of time looking for Easter eggs and little details, but I was left frustrated at the end of the season when very few were confirmed.

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On 7/5/2017 at 10:50 AM, red snow said:

It's my issue with it too. It's like a sketch show where 30% of the sketches aren't that engaging. It's also why I think episodes would benefit from being a bit more cohesive. I can see why they are doing things the way they are - if trying to impress us with the scope of the show is their goal. I do need to watch episode 4 though as people have told me it's essentially one narrative and does tie a lot of the loose elements together. Thing is TV is so good these days, a show has to impress me pretty consistently because as soon as I start watching something else (usually in binge format) it's hard to come back to the ones I've put on hiatus.

I assume they must be coming up with extra material to keep the show ticking over for multiple seasons. It's so long since I've read the book I'm hazy on the details especially the middle of it which I just recall as being hard work and uneventful. It doesn't sound like a recipe for a good season of TV.

I've finally finished the book (which I started a couple of months ago, and then binge watched the show in the meantime), and while I really enjoy both the book and the show (and Fuller's style works for me perfectly), the weaknesses of the show are also the weaknesses of the books: so many of the side plots are very loosely tied or not tied into the main plot. (Most of the time, it's just a thematic connection.)


There are some things I prefer in the books, and some things I prefer in the show to how they are done in the books, especially the expansion of some of the characters (Laura, Mad Sweeney, Salim...) and I've loved all the Coming to America stories (well, maybe not the Viking one on the show... that one was kinda dumb). I also liked the additions like the Mexican Jesus story and the Vulcan gun-loving town story. 

Something I definitely didn't like and that seriously marred the finale for me was Bilquis. I don't like her in Gaiman's book and I don't like her in the show, and it's worse in the show because they're giving her more screentime, and even tried to force the idea that she's some kind of feminist hero (what??) when all she does is murder people/literally swallow people with her vagina. Yeah, most of these gods are assholes, but are they seriously trying to make me like her and root for her? What was that "men don't like strong women" bullshit? She fucking murders innocent people! And the entire concept they went with (both Gaiman and the show - because apparently that's not really what Bilquis is like in Islamic tradition, where they use that name, and she's also nothing like that in the Bible, where they call it just Queen of Sheba) is a silly archetype of a man-eater, it feels like a misogynist's idea of what an "empowered woman" is. 

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I enjoy this show quite a bit, but I wanted to love it. I don't love it. Will absolutely agree that the best bits are Mad Sweeny and Dead Wife. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the 'leads' are less compelling than the sidekicks.

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2 hours ago, Gertrude said:

I enjoy this show quite a bit, but I wanted to love it. I don't love it. Will absolutely agree that the best bits are Mad Sweeny and Dead Wife. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the 'leads' are less compelling than the sidekicks.

well said. I'm looking forward to season 2 to see if they tinker with the recipe a little... the show gets a solid B... but with the source material and the actors involved.... we were all expecting an A

 

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6 hours ago, Gertrude said:

I enjoy this show quite a bit, but I wanted to love it. I don't love it. Will absolutely agree that the best bits are Mad Sweeny and Dead Wife. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the 'leads' are less compelling than the sidekicks.

Makes sense for Shadow to be less compelling, since he is a very passive protagonist. I believe that is intentional. Wesnesday I love just as much as Sweeny and the Dead Wife though. That was truly an inspired pairing

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Passive doesn't mean boring. In the book he's all internal and I know it has to be hard to transfer that to the screen. I like Shadow more than Wednesday right now. Maybe it's because Wednesday doesn't have any mystery for me. I know what his goal is. By rights the same should hold for Shadow as I know his story, but he's different enough that I'm interested in him. The actor brings more life to Shadow than the book does (for me). I like seeing his reactions play across his face rather than through his mind.

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19 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

I've finally finished the book (which I started a couple of months ago, and then binge watched the show in the meantime), and while I really enjoy both the book and the show (and Fuller's style works for me perfectly), the weaknesses of the show are also the weaknesses of the books: so many of the side plots are very loosely tied or not tied into the main plot. (Most of the time, it's just a thematic connection.)

Pretty much what I have been thinking. I actually said this during the tedious Bliquis opener (where I left the room to make tea as I was so disinterested in what was happening): 'Was the book this boring? I read it so long ago I can't even remember.'

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19 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Something I definitely didn't like and that seriously marred the finale for me was Bilquis. I don't like her in Gaiman's book and I don't like her in the show, and it's worse in the show because they're giving her more screentime, and even tried to force the idea that she's some kind of feminist hero (what??) when all she does is murder people/literally swallow people with her vagina. Yeah, most of these gods are assholes, but are they seriously trying to make me like her and root for her? What was that "men don't like strong women" bullshit? She fucking murders innocent people!

It's certainly easily missed because the show doesn't explain it very well, but the people Bilquis absorbs aren't dead as such. We see a flash of the guy she absorbs in the first episode, who basically appears to be in some alternate dimension frozen in his ecstasy. This might be effectively the same as killing in some ways but in terms of a series focusing on religion and gods, it's a distinction that does seem to matter.

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1 hour ago, Isis said:

Pretty much what I have been thinking. I actually said this during the tedious Bliquis opener (where I left the room to make tea as I was so disinterested in what was happening): 'Was the book this boring? I read it so long ago I can't even remember.'

The book was definitely slow paced and frustrating at times, but nothing comes close to that Bliquis sequence which basically encapsulates some of the issues with the show.
 

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27 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

The book was definitely slow paced and frustrating at times, but nothing comes close to that Bliquis sequence which basically encapsulates some of the issues with the show.
 

It's ironic because I put off watching that last episode because I'd lost interest in the series...then I finally got up the 'enthusiasm' to watch it and then was rewarded that drawn out, borefest. Proof, if any was required, that sex and nudity is not inherently entertaining to viewers, regardless of context/duration/intent etc..

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On 7/13/2017 at 10:02 AM, mormont said:

It's certainly easily missed because the show doesn't explain it very well, but the people Bilquis absorbs aren't dead as such. We see a flash of the guy she absorbs in the first episode, who basically appears to be in some alternate dimension frozen in his ecstasy. This might be effectively the same as killing in some ways but in terms of a series focusing on religion and gods, it's a distinction that does seem to matter.

If that was the case, the show should have made it clear. (There's no hint of it in the book.) Not that it makes it OK, either.

On 7/13/2017 at 9:31 AM, Isis said:

Pretty much what I have been thinking. I actually said this during the tedious Bliquis opener (where I left the room to make tea as I was so disinterested in what was happening): 'Was the book this boring? I read it so long ago I can't even remember.'

It seems that I enjoy the show much more than most people here seem to. It doesn't bore me, and I find it almost always enjoyable and interesting. But if someone is looking for super-coherent storytelling, where everything ties up and there are no loose subplots that go nowhere... they aren't going to find it, either in the show or the novel. In both, a lot of the characters, subplots and scenes are there more for thematic significance or because they're just a cool little story (or the author thought they were), but don't actually have a real importance to the plot. This is not necessarily a bad thing - I particularly love the "Coming to America" stories, and they typically barely have anything to do with anything else, except as a part of the general theme of immigration and history of USA, and people bringing their different cultures and beliefs with them (and the concept of gods coming with them due to their beliefs). But the storytelling is intentionally very loose. For instance, Lakeside is a really good story, but it has only a very loose connection to the main plot, and there are a lot of characters/subplots (like Samantha Black Crow, Salim and the jinn, Bilquis...) that don't actually tie into anything. You could easily split the novel into a shorter novel about Wednesday hiring Shadow and recruiting gods and the 'war' between gods etc.,  a novella about Lakeside, and a bunch of short stories about people "coming to America" etc.

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