‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’ 2.02 Recap: “That Is Horrible, and Also Awesome”

Goofy slapstick humor is of course a prime ingredient of the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise, but does this week’s episode of ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’ push it to too much of an extreme?

Still in Ash’s hometown of Elk Grove, Ash and his friends, with Ruby in tow, return to his father’s house to regroup and plan how to stop the Deadites. They go up to Ash’s old bedroom, which is a preserved shrine of his horndog adolescence. The walls are of course covered in nudie pin-up posters and lined with empty beer cans. I’m sure it smells lovely in there. Ruby says that they’ll need to retrieve the ‘Necronomicon’ book to defeat her children. She hid it inside a corpse that should be at the town morgue.

Around this same time, a corpse at the morgue revives and kills the coroner. That’s got to be a crazy coincidence, right?

Ash and Kelly head to the hospital while Pablo stays behind with Ruby. Pablo plans to interrogate her, torture if necessary, to find out what she did to him that’s causing him to have weird visions. No surprise, Ruby overcomes him easily.

On the way out of the house, Ash spots a former flame, a Phys Ed teacher named Lilian Pendergrass he had a fling with in high school. He assumes that she heard he was back in town and wanted some more sweet Ash lovin’, but in fact she’s dating his father, Brock (Lee Majors). Ash is disgusted.

When they get to the morgue, Ash tells Kelly to stay outside and guard the entrance while he goes in and gets the book. Numbskull that he is, he didn’t consider that there might be a lot of corpses at the morgue and he should have asked Ruby which one he’s looking for. Because apparently nobody has cell phones, he decides to chainsaw apart all the bodies in a gory mess until he finds the right one. Naturally, it’s stuck in a man’s body with a big floppy cock pierced with a ring.

Outside the door, Kelly is confronted by Sheriff Emery, Ash’s old high school rival. He tries to intimidate her into telling him what she’s doing at the morgue. She knees him in the balls and knocks him out.

As Ash tries to pull the book out of the corpse’s stomach, its intestines come alive and attack him. This leads to much bumbling around as Ash fights the intestine monster. The guts wrap around Ash and pull him inside the body – up through the butt. He flails around with a whole naked body on his head until he finally kills it and claims the ‘Necronomicon’ for himself.

Before leaving, Ash notices that the name on one of the morgue drawers is Lilian Pendergrass. His dad’s girlfriend is a Deadite! Ash isn’t terribly concerned about his father, but he is worried about Pablo. Covered in feces and smelling even worse than usual, he collects Kelly and hops in his car. On the way, they encounter some obnoxious drunk teens who make fun of Ash and his car. Ash and Kelly flip them off.

Pablo wakes up to find his arms and legs bound. His body has been hoisted into the air and is hanging from the ceiling. One of Ruby’s fingers morphs into a nasty claw and she slits his throat with the nail.

Pablo then wakes up again. He’s fine. Ruby tells him that he’s been cursed with precognition, but that she doesn’t plan to kill him.

Suddenly, Deadite Lilian busts into the room and attacks Ruby and Pablo. Ruby fights her off and beheads her. Ash and Kelly arrive just a little too late to be helpful. Ruby says that Pablo’s premonition means that her children are trying to raise their father. She doesn’t elaborate on that. She asks Ash for the ‘Necronomicon’ and he says he left it in the car. Just then, they hear the sound of tires squealing. The drunk teens from earlier stole Ash’s car, book still inside.

Ash bemoans that his day has gone “right up the pooper.”

Episode Verdict

The slapstick was a bit too dopey for me this week. However, keep in mind that I say this as someone who’s not a particularly big fan of the ‘Evil Dead’ movies. I actually like this show better than any of the films. If you really love the zany ‘Three Stooges’ stuff in ‘Army of Darkness’, for example, this may play a lot better for you than it does for me. Even so, I still enjoyed the episode overall. Ash’s old teenage bedroom is pretty much perfect.

4 comments

  1. Darkmonk

    These first episodes are a lot more sophomoric (in a bad way) than the first season.
    I am not digging the vibe of adults acting out like High School Kids. (This may be a problem with the writers themselves). The first season was not like that. So I hope this vibe doesn’t continue.
    And I really hated Ash breaking the fourth wall in episode one. The ED is goofy, but it was never a fourth wall breaker – and it doesn’t work.

  2. agentalbert

    I’m enjoying this season (granted, through only two episodes) more than the first which I found a bit disappointing.

  3. Wayne

    Whoa. That was one poopy episode. I liked it a lot. I love Ash’s dad. The “up the butt” part was a little too much, but I’m OK with that. There were a couple of scary parts too. Can’t wait for more.

  4. This episode was really too good ! I like this one. I couldn’t agree with you @Darkmonk … I think this season is better then previous one. I don’t know why you didn’t like this one !!!

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