*Spoilers Ahead*
As the title of this week’s episode reveals Ash visits Elk Grove’s morgue and what follow is a scene that is equal parts funny and disgusting.
Ash is sent to the morgue by Ruby to find the Necronomicon, which she has hidden inside a body there and immediately gets to work sawing open corpses before stumbling across a body with an obvious book-shaped protusion in it’s chest. “Look first, cut later,” he yells at himself.
From there the scene takes a turn as Ash battles demonically-possessed intestines and eventually gets dragged, head first, into the cadaver’s anus. Bruce Campbell has shown off his physical comedy skills numerous times throughout the Evil Dead franchise but he takes it to another level here as he shambles around with a literal corpse on his shoulders, covered in shit and desperately trying to keep the cadaver’s cock away from his face. It’s dumb, gross, and everything I’ve ever wanted from the show.
Elsewhere, Pablo volunteers to watch Ruby but it’s merely a ploy so that he can seek answers as to what these visions he’s having are. Ruby deduces not only that they are visions of the future but when Pablo has one in which Ruby ties him up and slits his throat Ruby determines that the person who has caused this whole mess and turned her children against her is her ex-husband, Baal.
While all of this is going on, Brock Williams has a hot date with a former female friend of Ash’s, unbeknownst to him his hot date has gone cold and become a Deadite. Thankfully, she has no interest in murdering Brock and is there solely to kill Ash. Unfortunately she runs afoul of Ruby and ends up decapitated for it.
Lee Majors remains a delight as Ash’s perpetually grumpy father, managing to fit in perfectly when interacting with the cast, especially Lucy Lawless, who he refers to as “Bigfoot” when seeing her. Here’s to hoping that Brock sticks around for as long as possible.
On the way back to the house, Ash and Kelly flip off some punk teens who are standing on the road but it turns out to be a poor choice as they come back to steal the Delta as well as the Necronomicon, riding in the backset, from our heroes. One step forward two steps back, as always.
One of the most admirable traits of Ash vs Evil Dead is it’s efficiency, it manages to put across as much info as most hour-long shows in half the time and it rarely feels overstuffed. In just this episode alone we get three separate story threads, all of them managing to come together by the end and scenes in which every member of the cast gets some time to shine. It’s economical while also being highly entertaining.
“The Morgue” is a high-octane laugh riot that reminds me why I love this show so very much. It’s got everything you could want and probably a bunch of stuff you didn’t know you wanted until you see the episode.
Bits ‘n Pieces
- Shout out to Dana DeLorenozo for bringing the funny this week as Kelly. Not only does she knock out the sheriff and briefly tussle with a vending machine to get her Faygo but she has some great lines.
- If you were worried that the show wouldn’t get some mileage out of the rest of the cast reacting to the, surely foul, smell coming off of Ash after his battle at the morgue, fear not!
- “That is horrible, and also awesome.” “Which is everything that I do!”
- “I will shoot us both. Me first.”
- “You smell like Lysol wipes.”
Jesse Swanson is a would-be writer, podcaster and funny guy who covers TV shows of all shapes and sizes. You can find him on Twitter @JesseSwanson