American Gods 1×04 Review: Git Gone

The idea of “Git Gone” centering around Laura Moon didn’t appeal to me at first, but by the end of the episode, I was even more hooked on American Gods.

While the show certainly hasn’t followed the source material word for word (that would be pretty impossible), “Git Gone” was the first episode where it really strayed off the beaten path. While this took some getting used to, overall it was masterfully done. I never thought I would want a Laura Moon origin story, but that was obviously because I didn’t know what I was missing.

Don’t get me wrong; Laura is still a very frustrating character. But seeing the kind of overall crappy life she was leading before she met Shadow, her proclivity toward depression even when he was around, and her descent back into despair once he went to jail, definitely shed a new light on things. That doesn’t mean that “Git Gone” was easy to watch, though – in fact, between Laura’s cat dying and my personal ‘bleh’ feelings about Dane Cook, who plays Robbie, it was the exact opposite…but it was only seeing this episode that made me realize how much better off we are knowing more about Laura.

And it’s not just Laura that we saw more of, either – after being brought back from the dead and fighting off Technical Boy’s faceless men (reference absolutely intended), Laura broke into Audrey’s house to use her craft supplies. (I mean, how else was she going to sew that arm back on? Ha.) This led to what was a pretty gross scene, seeing as it was punctuated by Laura, err, releasing a lot of embalming fluid…but it was also a great scene, in a lot of ways. I loved Laura and Audrey’s interactions, especially Audrey’s constant and on-point quips; I definitely hope we see more of her in future episodes!

The events in “Git Gone” took place before and during what we already saw in the first three episodes of American Gods, but by the end we caught up with Shadow again via Laura – who, by the way, met with Anubis not once but twice during the episode, and even got to visit the funeral home he shares with Mr. Jacquel. Thankfully they did a much better job of patching Laura up than she and Audrey were able to accomplish, and as I’ve already mentioned, I believe we as viewers are far better off seeing how she got to the point of meeting back up with Shadow – which was where this episode left us.

Admittedly, it took me about half of the episode to get used to the fact that the writers felt this need to ‘go back to go forward’, for lack of a better term, but I am so glad they made this creative decision. Not only do I have a new understanding of Laura Moon as a person/character, but I also love that it was the first proof of their promise to give more depth to the women in this story.

What did you think of the choice to have an entire episode centered around Laura Moon? Did you like this little segue, or are you just itching to get back to Shadow and Mr. Wednesday? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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