From Page to Screen - A Book to TV Comparison of Episode 7 of 'American Gods'

Written by Scott Murray

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

This is your weekly reminder that I will spoil book and show events that have occurred so far, but I will not spoil any book events that have not yet occurred on screen.

This week we got one of those episodes a show occasionally does where the main character never appears. My memory for these kinds of things is actually quite positive, probably because I’m more inclined to remember the excellent ones (like 'Zuko Alone' from Avatar: The Last Airbender) than the awful ones. I think for American Gods I’ll file this away under 'excellent one,' as I had a wonderful time.

Our main plot about Essie was taken straight out of the book and mostly unchanged. Even some of the dialogue was spoken word-for-word. There are a few minor changes of things which do not alter the overall plot or the end result (she is caught shoplifting by Bartholomew in the book, for example, but she is still saved from the gallows by a pregnancy, albeit from an unknown father, and she doesn’t encounter Sweeney in the prison, or at all until her death.) Overall, I was very happy with the presentation and it was an absolute delight to hear and see Essie’s tale, and especially at the end when Sweeney comes to get her.

Back in the present, we get a little information about the Buffalo, Salim is set free, and we find that Sweeney is still working for Wednesday. I have no choice but to speculate about the Buffalo, since it seems to be standing in for a Buffalo-headed man from the book, and the information we did get about him was not always terribly clear or specific. Perhaps he falls into some of the holes in my memory, but I am not quite sure how they fit together yet.
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Seeing Salim go free was quite nice. In the book he is only mentioned once in passing after his 'Somewhere in America' encounter with the Jinn, and I do not know where he’ll end up after his drive with Laura and Sweeney, but I hope he finds something better. He certainly deserves it.

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Having Wednesday’s Ravens follow and talk to Sweeney along the way revealed two interesting things: first that Sweeney is still under instruction from Wednesday, and second: that Wednesday is actively working to remove Laura from play…again. Although we do find out that Wednesday was responsible for having Laura killed in the book, it’s never stated who exactly did the deed: Wednesday or one of his cohorts or associates. I can see why they decided to have Sweeney do it for the show: it adds a bit of depth to him and helps spur his development along. In the book Sweeney appears only twice after his bar fight with Shadow and then no more, and it would seem he is not working for Wednesday but simply trying to get along with his own life. (And, of course, recover the coin.) Whether he was still working directly for Wednesday or not was not definitively stated. Having Sweeney undoubtedly be an agent of Wednesday in the show does work at least to provide us a direct connection to our main characters. As for what other significance it will have, only time will tell.
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It was surprising to me (yet also, somehow, not a surprise, in the 'how did I not see this in front of me' kind of way,) that Wednesday seems to want Sweeney to remove Laura from the field of play. Since Sweeney wants his coin back anyway, it all fits together very conveniently. In the book Laura is definitely an unforeseen presence, and she causes problems for the old and new gods alike. She remains mostly out of their direct knowledge, however, except for Shadow relaying to Wednesday and one of the Zorya sisters that his wife is alive. Nobody but Shadow ever deals with her directly until towards the end of the book, (except for a few lackeys she kills like we saw earlier in the season, but they don’t really count,) and certainly nobody seems to take too much interest in or take any direct action against her. Since Wednesday encountered her in person in the show (driving quickly away from the motel as he turned up the radio,) it makes absolutely perfect sense that he would seek to remove her as a variable: Wednesday has a Plan and she is not part of it. He doesn’t need any Unknowns screwing things up. The fact that Sweeney also happens to need his coin back means Wednesday has the perfect man for the job.

Seeing Sweeney give the coin back to Laura was, for me, the most shocking part of the episode, and not just because we knew that Wednesday wanted Sweeney to re-kill Laura. (Or should I say un-revive her?) Knowing what I do about the importance of the coin makes me feel that there is absolutely nothing that would get Sweeney to part with it ever again, so this felt uncomfortably out of character. Unless he really believes in his promised resurrection and thinks he can hold out until then, or he’s changed the way he views and values life (which was hinted at by his 'saw my death in the fire' bit, which was original) then I can’t see any reason he’d ever give up that coin again. I feel like Sweeney changing his view is the most likely answer here, and we’ll see more evidence of his changing mindset in the future. If not, I can only hope we’ll get an explanation for this odd behavior somewhere down the line.

Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about Essie being played by Emily Browning. I have no complaints about the quality of her performance, which was excellent, but I’m worried about potential broader implications. If this is simply a nice, artistic thread of consistency, where Sweeney sees in Laura the image of someone he once knew, then that’s fine. However if it’s going to create some kind of direct connection between Laura and Sweeney, or even Laura and the Gods in general, I’ll be worried. In the book Laura always stood distinctly apart from gods of any kind, so to change that here would be to fundamentally change the way all the many 'sides' align in the narrative. Some of the drastic changes we’ve seen so far have certainly proven the showrunners can pull off such alterations and still end up with a fantastic final product, so I won’t be so stupid as to knee-jerk my way into pessimism, but I must admit a note of trepidation.

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