Ash Vs Evil Dead 02 09 Home Again Discussion [SPOILERS]

[DyD]

Not like those really well fleshed out characters like Ed from the movies.

Like I said, my problem is not with how her character was portrayed, but a matter of narrative. Ed was there from the beginning of the film. What they did with Tanya would be basically the same as if Ed had shown up in the last 15 minutes of the film just to turn into a deadite. Ed entered the story naturally while Tanya feels shoehorned in.

Yeah, to me a Knowby was more of that pipe-smoking, fatherly professor who is all historical and curious, but entirely ignorant to the reality of the supernatural. The guy comes back as a ghost in ED2 to even confirm this. He's such a basic character it's weird they made him like... semi-evil? Incompetently evil?

Plus how did that old skinny professor manage to lock up his wife down there when she's like superman-lite and giving Ash a ton of trouble.

BTW good catch on the whole Ash being senile and forgetful crap they keep trying to make a trope. The reality is no one can read from the book unless they know Sumerian. The idea you can read from the book comes from the ED remake which IS A DIFFERENT BOOK/UNIVERSE.

Knowby has the book and can translate it. He also seems to be a pretty smart, upstanding guy. So why would he apparently immediately jump to bringing one of his students to the cabin to try and transfer the demon who possessed Henrietta into her body? That's a pretty big step towards evil and sounds very much like a last resort type of thing. Why wouldn't he try to use the book to undo what he did? Even though we never got to see what actually happened to Knowby, what I always thought had happened was that Henrietta got possessed and attacked him, he was forced to kill and bury her in the cellar and then he tried reading from the book to dispell the evil, failing miserably in the process and getting himself trapped between worlds as a result. From the little we've seen of him, the character always seemed to me like he would do anything to fix his own mistakes and put his own well-being on the line before hurting others. I guess maybe that's why what they did with him feels so wrong to me. It also has a lot to do with the show's annoying tendency to gleefully bring the worst out of every character. Knowby is just another character they decided to turn into an asshole for no good reason.

About the book, I'm also bothered by how easy it is to identify spells and read from it in the show... But even though that feels forced, even I can admit it's a minor nitpick compared to other narrative issues in the show. To be completely honest, I'm getting pretty fed up with the damn book already. Everything revolves around it and the story always goes back to "we gotta find the book!" - "we gotta destroy the book!" - "the book is the key!" - "we need the book!". It's getting pretty repetitive already, and all that stuff has been already explored to death in the movies. I mean, the book wasn't even supposed to exist anymore. Yeah, I haven't forgotten or forgiven that yet, I just stopped talking about it. They "un-destroyed" it in the show just so it could be the eternal McGuffin Ex Machina they needed. They even gave it a voice and the ability to communicate. It wouldn't be that much of a problem if at least they were doing anything interesting or original with it, but no, the book is still just a run of the mill McGuffin and nothing else. Pablo turning into a manifestation of it was kinda interesting, but now it has already returned to business as usual. I really wish they would successfully destroy the damn thing already and maybe focus on something new going forward.

I'd rather Tonya was young Ruby pre-possesed instead of Lucy in a blond wig.

Then things would have a point and we'd actually get more world building instead of rehashing.

That could've been interesting.

 

[Nick el Ass]

I have an increasing suspicion that one of the reasons none of the death's (except Pablo's) were mourned at any great length this season, is because

Spoiler

maybe they're planning on restoring Chet and Brock through whatever meddling they do in 1982, and possibly other characters as well.

Maybe.

I just think the reason Ash took Pablo going down harder is because he has spent more time around him, and Pablo was the one who looked up to him. Pablo believed in him too when no one else did. 

Spoiler

However, I can't see them bringing back anyone other than him because they hardly have enough time to devote to others like Linda as it is. 

It would also be cool to see Ted direct an episode in season 3 because he has been posting little videos on Facebook and Twitter with him behind a camera instead of in front of it.

 

[mhb2862]

Not like those really well fleshed out characters like Ed from the movies.

Like I said, my problem is not with how her character was portrayed, but a matter of narrative. Ed was there from the beginning of the film. What they did with Tanya would be basically the same as if Ed had shown up in the last 15 minutes of the film just to turn into a deadite. Ed entered the story naturally while Tanya feels shoehorned in.

Ed was most certainly deadite fodder. He contributed absolutely nothing to the story. He barely had any lines and he did absolutely nothing but chew some hair and get chopped up. Remove his character and literally nothing in the story changes at all. And I do mean literally. The point is, weak characters who exist just to be hacked to bits or turn into monsters is really nothing new in this franchise. It's like when people get all upset about the continuity not matching. Like, wtf people. Have we not been watching the same movies all these years? Evil Dead continuity doesn't match from shot to shot, let alone movie to movie (to series).

 

[DyD]

Ed was most certainly deadite fodder. He contributed absolutely nothing to the story. He barely had any lines and he did absolutely nothing but chew some hair and get chopped up. Remove his character and literally nothing in the story changes at all. And I do mean literally. The point is, weak characters who exist just to be hacked to bits or turn into monsters is really nothing new in this franchise. It's like when people get all upset about the continuity not matching. Like, wtf people. Have we not been watching the same movies all these years? Evil Dead continuity doesn't match from shot to shot, let alone movie to movie (to series).

I never said he wasn't. As I clarified in my last post, my point is that Ed entered the story naturally from a narrative perspective, but Tanya felt shoehorned in at the last moment - both in the show and in the movie's story. I see a difference in that. You may not see a difference, but I do. It may not bother you, but it does bother me - and a lot of other people have felt the same way. Concerning continuity, to say we shouldn't care about plot details and consistency on the show because there are inconsistencies in the movies is a very slippery slope and an ugly way of finding excuses for lazy, careless writing. It's also a completely different situation now. The minor inconsistencies in the movies never affected the overall story and were never done on purpose. They're the product of rights issues and the trilogy never being a planned three part story to begin with. The writers on the show, on the other hand, are doing it on purpose, not caring about any of it or they have the attention span of a ferret on speed. And to that, all I have to say is... That is why we can't have nice things.

 

[mhb2862]

I suppose it comes down to what's important to each viewer. What is natural to one person might not seem natural to another. Personally, I'm really not bothered by the admittedly poor writing of the series. Evil Dead, to me, has always been about its visuals and ideas. This season has had a lot of great visuals and really fun ideas. I mean, we can't pretend the OG film is well written. I'm not even sure Sam would try and defend the screenplay. But we all love it because of its visuals, and the fact that it went further than a lot of the films we had seen at the time. This show will never be in the same league as the original trilogy to me, but that's because I saw them at such a specific time in my life that they had a profound impact on how my little pea brain developed. I never expected the series to do that. I just want to have fun and laugh for 30 minutes each week and think to myself "Wow, it's 2016 and I'm watching Ash Williams have an argument with a puppet version of himself. What a time to be alive!" Your mileage may vary on that, but I personally have fun with it. I think maybe throwing around terms like "slippery slope" and "This is why we can't have nice things" may be taking the entertainment media you consume just a hair too seriously. I'm not trying to devalue your opinion of the show. If you think it sucks, you think it sucks, and that opinion is as valid as mine. But it's not really the end of the world. It's just a TV show. I don't know. Just my thoughts on the matter. We come to these communities for discussion and dissenting opinions, so I'm glad there are different voices keeping this from being an echo chamber. Some other fandom's message boards/communities are awful like that.

 

[DyD]

I suppose it comes down to what's important to each viewer. What is natural to one person might not seem natural to another. Personally, I'm really not bothered by the admittedly poor writing of the series. Evil Dead, to me, has always been about its visuals and ideas. This season has had a lot of great visuals and really fun ideas. I mean, we can't pretend the OG film is well written. I'm not even sure Sam would try and defend the screenplay. But we all love it because of its visuals, and the fact that it went further than a lot of the films we had seen at the time. This show will never be in the same league as the original trilogy to me, but that's because I saw them at such a specific time in my life that they had a profound impact on how my little pea brain developed. I never expected the series to do that. I just want to have fun and laugh for 30 minutes each week and think to myself "Wow, it's 2016 and I'm watching Ash Williams have an argument with a puppet version of himself. What a time to be alive!" Your mileage may vary on that, but I personally have fun with it. I think maybe throwing around terms like "slippery slope" and "This is why we can't have nice things" may be taking the entertainment media you consume just a hair too seriously. I'm not trying to devalue your opinion of the show. If you think it sucks, you think it sucks, and that opinion is as valid as mine. But it's not really the end of the world. It's just a TV show. I don't know. Just my thoughts on the matter. We come to these communities for discussion and dissenting opinions, so I'm glad there are different voices keeping this from being an echo chamber. Some other fandom's message boards/communities are awful like that.

I pretty much said the same thing before, but arrived at a different conclusion. What made me fall in love with the movie was the inventiveness of it all, the visuals and sound design and how amazingly cool everything was, but to me, the show hasn't offered me much of any of that up until now. It was also a part of my life growing up, and I certainly don't expect it to live up to the experience I had when I first discovered it. I do, however, expect it to live up to its potential. And to me, so far it hasn't. Also, on the matter of writing, the story in the movies might be absurdly simple but it most definitely wasn't poor. It was inventive, original, surprising, had decent characters (albeit thin) and from a screenwriting perspective, it was technically perfect. Also, there weren't any inconsistencies within each separate movie. The writing in the movies is Oscar worthy compared to the writing in the show. Also, while you say "wow, it's 2016 and I'm watching Ash fighting a puppet version of himself, what a time to be alive!", I'm thinking "wow, I'm watching Ash fighting a puppet version of himself, what an incredibly stupid idea!". You say you just want to have fun and laugh for 30 minutes, but I want more, because ED is more than that to me. It was never just about being outrageous and going further than anything else. That's a very minor aspect of what makes it special to me. As a matter of fact, that's one of the things that bothers me the most about the show. It's the reason why we get stuff like Ash having his head shoved up a corpse's ass while a dick dangles on his forehead and Chet masturbating on Cheryl's clothes. About taking the entertainment media I consume seriously... Well, of course I do. They're tackling something that I've loved for decades and they're expecting me to tune in week after week and contribute with my time and money. It's a product to be consumed for sure, but it's also more than just a product, know what I mean? The least I expect of them is to take it as seriously as I do. So I repeat (and I don't mean it in an offending manner), that way of thinking is why we can't have nice things.

I don't think your opinion is less valuable than mine and I don't mean my opinion to cancel out your enjoyment of the show. Like both you and me have said before, fans have different ideas of what Evil Dead is supposed to be. This show hasn't given me anything that I wanted from it, hasn't lived up to its potential, I don't see much of Evil Dead in it and it isn't even a close substitute to what I wanted it to be. But that's just me - even though I know I'm not alone in this. The same way you're not alone in loving it. If you're enjoying it thoroughly and aren't bothered by anything the people who expected more from it keep bringing up, more power to you. I'm not bothered by the people who are happy with it and the people who are happy with it shouldn't be bothered by the people who aren't. Different strokes for different folks.

From what I've been noticing, the fanbase has been pretty divided ever since season 1 premiered. I just hope they listen to everybody and eventually reach a middle ground that pleases both sides.

 

[Joem1k]

Just my two cent's on "tanya" inclusion 

I felt personally they explained her character very well and what she  was doing there, to me it made sense in a prequel sense, yes she may be a shoehorned in character but hey at least they actually gave her some backstory and some slight characterization before they give her the axe, She's slightly better then heather was IMHO.  


And no worries MNB, we all have varying opinions on the show and that's a good thing, i do agree with ya on one thing it's quite mind blowing to think we could be seating here seeing ash williams again in 2016, yeah this show isn't gonna match the movie trilogy in any way shape or form no doubt about that, but i'm having a damn ball visiting the character again plus getting introduced to the new characters as well and getting to know them better and seeing how they evolve as the show progresses  to me personally it's been awesome to see that happen and take place over these past two seasons ending.  

This show has been just one big surprise gift i didn't know i was going to get and i'm just happy it even exists in the first place.

*end rambling*

@DYD

Ok i don't know why everybody keeps saying this and it kinda frustrates to me no end. Chet was not masturbating on her clothing or that picture and i'm gonna end this debate right now with this photo. 

[img=200x133]http://www.farfarawaysite.com/section/evildead/gallery2/gallery6/hires/7.jpg[/img]

He was wiping the dust off the picture frame and you can clearly see that when he puts the photo down as you can see the dust marks where he was wiping it off, you could speculate/ argue he would have done that if ash never entered that room but i think there was more to there relationship then just that aspect. I could go on more about this but that is for another time for another day

 

[DyD]

@DYD

Ok i don't know why everybody keeps saying this and it kinda frustrates when people even say it.Chet was not masturbating on her clothing or that picture and i'm gonna end this debate right now with this photo. 

[img=200x133]http://www.farfarawaysite.com/section/evildead/gallery2/gallery6/hires/7.jpg[/img]

He was wiping the dust off the picture frame and you can clearly see that when he puts the photo down as you can see the dust marks where he was wiping it off, you could speculate/ argue he would have done that if ash never entered that room but i think there was more to there relationship then just that aspect. I could go on more about this but that is for another time for another day

You can hear the sound and see a jerking off motion when Ash enters the room. Even if he wasn't actually masturbating, they obviously meant for we to think that he was as a joke, which doesn't make it any better. It's the same type of sleazy, juvenile humor a lot of people have been complaining about, just a little less sleazy than it might have looked at first glance. This isn't a case of people seeing things that weren't meant to be seen. Also, the fact that people wouldn't put it beyond these writers to have Chet masturbating in a scene speaks volumes about the issue at hand.
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif]Salvar[/font][font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif]Salvar[/font]

 

[Joem1k]

Still i just wanted to point that out in case anyone still thought that about that scene, and yeah i'm in agreement with ya that they went a bit overboard with the sleazy stuff this year but i've looked past that aspect all together and have focused more on the characters and there interactions and how they've developed over this season and that part has probably been main highlight for s2, i'm gonna elaborate more on this when the finale airs this weekend and i give my overview of s2 and what  i liked more about it then s1 and what they could do better for s3. my hope for s3 is that mark and the new writers dial back on that nonsense and they focus more on the storytelling aspect in general and from i've heard so far i think we could be getting that with s3.

 

[DyD]

Still i just wanted to point that out in case anyone still thought that about that scene, and yeah i'm in agreement with ya that they went a bit overboard with the sleazy stuff this year but i've looked past that aspect all together and have focused more on the characters and there interactions and how they've developed over this season and that part has probably been main highlight for s2, i'm gonna elaborate more on this when the finale airs this weekend and i give my overview of s2 and what  i liked more about it then s1 and what they could do better for s3. my hope for s3 is that mark and the new writers dial back on that nonsense and they focus more on the storytelling aspect in general and from i've heard so far i think we could be getting that with s3.

Looking forward to reading your thoughts! Despite my vast list of criticisms, I'm in complete agreement with your assessment that s02 was better than s01 and your hopes for s03.

 

[MaidOfKandar]

Not like those really well fleshed out characters like Ed from the movies.

Like I said, my problem is not with how her character was portrayed, but a matter of narrative. Ed was there from the beginning of the film. What they did with Tanya would be basically the same as if Ed had shown up in the last 15 minutes of the film just to turn into a deadite. Ed entered the story naturally while Tanya feels shoehorned in.

Yeah, to me a Knowby was more of that pipe-smoking, fatherly professor who is all historical and curious, but entirely ignorant to the reality of the supernatural. The guy comes back as a ghost in ED2 to even confirm this. He's such a basic character it's weird they made him like... semi-evil? Incompetently evil?

Plus how did that old skinny professor manage to lock up his wife down there when she's like superman-lite and giving Ash a ton of trouble.

BTW good catch on the whole Ash being senile and forgetful crap they keep trying to make a trope. The reality is no one can read from the book unless they know Sumerian. The idea you can read from the book comes from the ED remake which IS A DIFFERENT BOOK/UNIVERSE.

Knowby has the book and can translate it. He also seems to be a pretty smart, upstanding guy. So why would he apparently immediately jump to bringing one of his students to the cabin to try and transfer the demon who possessed Henrietta into her body? That's a pretty big step towards evil and sounds very much like a last resort type of thing. Why wouldn't he try to use the book to undo what he did? Even though we never got to see what actually happened to Knowby, what I always thought had happened was that Henrietta got possessed and attacked him, he was forced to kill and bury her in the cellar and then he tried reading from the book to dispell the evil, failing miserably in the process and getting himself trapped between worlds as a result. From the little we've seen of him, the character always seemed to me like he would do anything to fix his own mistakes and put his own well-being on the line before hurting others. I guess maybe that's why what they did with him feels so wrong to me. It also has a lot to do with the show's annoying tendency to gleefully bring the worst out of every character. Knowby is just another character they decided to turn into an asshole for no good reason.

About the book, I'm also bothered by how easy it is to identify spells and read from it in the show... But even though that feels forced, even I can admit it's a minor nitpick compared to other narrative issues in the show. To be completely honest, I'm getting pretty fed up with the damn book already. Everything revolves around it and the story always goes back to "we gotta find the book!" - "we gotta destroy the book!" - "the book is the key!" - "we need the book!". It's getting pretty repetitive already, and all that stuff has been already explored to death in the movies. I mean, the book wasn't even supposed to exist anymore. Yeah, I haven't forgotten or forgiven that yet, I just stopped talking about it. They "un-destroyed" it in the show just so it could be the eternal McGuffin Ex Machina they needed. They even gave it a voice and the ability to communicate. It wouldn't be that much of a problem if at least they were doing anything interesting or original with it, but no, the book is still just a run of the mill McGuffin and nothing else. Pablo turning into a manifestation of it was kinda interesting, but now it has already returned to business as usual. I really wish they would successfully destroy the damn thing already and maybe focus on something new going forward.

I'd rather Tonya was young Ruby pre-possesed instead of Lucy in a blond wig.

Then things would have a point and we'd actually get more world building instead of rehashing.

That could've been interesting.

IMO, their decision to flesh out Knowby by making him more vicious was a bad idea, mostly because you have to make this make sense with the movies and it fails that test.  This version of Knowby is both craven and power hungry, I never got that impression from what we got of his character in TED and ED2.  My impression was much like DYD's; it seemed like he was translating it for educational purposes and ended up unleashing the demons, chopped up Henrietta to save himself and stuck her in the cellar, was attacked and killed by the force, which then lurked in waiting for the original cabin 5 to screw up.

I'll give them a pass on the book; it's an iconic part of the franchise, and at least we don't have Kelly and Pablo speaking Kandarian suddenly.  We just have Ruby conjuring stuff, which makes sense because she wrote the book.

I have an increasing suspicion that one of the reasons none of the death's (except Pablo's) were mourned at any great length this season, is because

Spoiler

maybe they're planning on restoring Chet and Brock through whatever meddling they do in 1982, and possibly other characters as well.

Maybe.

I just think the reason Ash took Pablo going down harder is because he has spent more time around him, and Pablo was the one who looked up to him. Pablo believed in him too when no one else did. 

Spoiler

However, I can't see them bringing back anyone other than him because they hardly have enough time to devote to others like Linda as it is. 

It would also be cool to see Ted direct an episode in season 3 because he has been posting little videos on Facebook and Twitter with him behind a camera instead of in front of it.

I'd buy that if these weren't people he was either a blood relative of or someone he was best friends with for years.   Did they even bother to bury Chet after he died?  I hope Kelly and Ruby actually did that after they finished the time warp.

Ed was most certainly deadite fodder. He contributed absolutely nothing to the story. He barely had any lines and he did absolutely nothing but chew some hair and get chopped up. Remove his character and literally nothing in the story changes at all. And I do mean literally. The point is, weak characters who exist just to be hacked to bits or turn into monsters is really nothing new in this franchise. It's like when people get all upset about the continuity not matching. Like, wtf people. Have we not been watching the same movies all these years? Evil Dead continuity doesn't match from shot to shot, let alone movie to movie (to series).

I never said he wasn't. As I clarified in my last post, my point is that Ed entered the story naturally from a narrative perspective, but Tanya felt shoehorned in at the last moment - both in the show and in the movie's story. I see a difference in that. You may not see a difference, but I do. It may not bother you, but it does bother me - and a lot of other people have felt the same way. Concerning continuity, to say we shouldn't care about plot details and consistency on the show because there are inconsistencies in the movies is a very slippery slope and an ugly way of finding excuses for lazy, careless writing. It's also a completely different situation now. The minor inconsistencies in the movies never affected the overall story and were never done on purpose. They're the product of rights issues and the trilogy never being a planned three part story to begin with. The writers on the show, on the other hand, are doing it on purpose, not caring about any of it or they have the attention span of a ferret on speed. And to that, all I have to say is... That is why we can't have nice things.

JMO RE this thought process and to both of you: to me this is all about the difference between a movie and a TV show.  In a movie, you don't have to care about canon fodder like Ed because you only spend an hour or two with him.  In a TV show, where we get about five hours total of new material every year, there needs to be more character establishment, more work done to make us give a damn about these people.  Especially when the deaths aren't super creative or some out of nowhere (see: Lacey). 

Still i just wanted to point that out in case anyone still thought that about that scene, and yeah i'm in agreement with ya that they went a bit overboard with the sleazy stuff this year but i've looked past that aspect all together and have focused more on the characters and there interactions and how they've developed over this season and that part has probably been main highlight for s2, i'm gonna elaborate more on this when the finale airs this weekend and i give my overview of s2 and what  i liked more about it then s1 and what they could do better for s3. my hope for s3 is that mark and the new writers dial back on that nonsense and they focus more on the storytelling aspect in general and from i've heard so far i think we could be getting that with s3.

Joe, y'know I'm all for the notion of putting that scene in a nicer frame of context  - but it's a plain canonical fact.  He was jerking off.  The sound effects and editing confirmed it.  The AvED Twitter even RT'd you to basically confirm he was jerking it.  I know you'd rather infuse the scene with more tender meaning (so would I), but he's pulling off.

 

[Joem1k]

@Maid 

I'm not trying to make the scene into something it's not i just noticed the small details and he was not whacking it in my eyes, yeah the sounds and the angle make it sound like his doing just that but that photo i posted and the dust marks after he sets the photo down proof otherwise. Plus in the scene before ash interrupts him his holding the photo frame with both hands and is rubbing the dust off with his sleeve. If i'm wrong im wrong but there's too many small details there that say otherwise to me.

Plus that twitter will jump on any chance to make a dirty joke out of something, i was making a valid point and they decided to turn it into a joke  :dodgy:

 

[MaidOfKandar]

Eh, they've done that to lots of people (I think I'm the only person they've ever RT'd to complain about my complaining, which forever amuses me). I'm wondering if that still actually comes from a deleted scene at this point, since in the episode we only get to see Ash's POV.

I suppose the season 2 episode commentary will clear everything up.

 

[DyD]

JMO RE this thought process and to both of you: to me this is all about the difference between a movie and a TV show.  In a movie, you don't have to care about canon fodder like Ed because you only spend an hour or two with him.  In a TV show, where we get about five hours total of new material every year, there needs to be more character establishment, more work done to make us give a damn about these people.  Especially when the deaths aren't super creative or some out of nowhere (see: Lacey). 

Thank you very much for being much smarter and more eloquent than I could ever be.

Joe, y'know I'm all for the notion of putting that scene in a nicer frame of context  - but it's a plain canonical fact.  He was jerking off.  The sound effects and editing confirmed it.  The AvED Twitter even RT'd you to basically confirm he was jerking it.  I know you'd rather infuse the scene with more tender meaning (so would I), but he's pulling off.

I went back and rewatched the scene. Joe might be right. Now that it was brought to my attention, it does seem like the scene was really meant to make it look like he was jerking it when he actually wasn't. Like I said before, making it a bait-and-switch joke doesn't make it better and the people thinking he was really doing it (nearly everyone who watched it, me included) are completely justified in misinterpreting the scene, but it seems it really was meant to be just a joke. The official twitter basically confirming it was for real really doesn't help making things any clearer or better, though.

 

[MaidOfKandar]

@DYD - You're welcome, but you're just as eloquent as I am!

And yeah, I want to contextualize it in a nicer way and it'd be nice if it could be contextualized that way. I think the commentary track will confirm if he was dusting the picture or his...well, area.

 

[Joem1k]

@dyd 

Like i said before, they will turn anything into a sleazy one note joke even to throw a good tragic character under the bus.  :dodgy:

This is all i have to say to that twitter at this point . 

[img=300x169]https://media.giphy.com/media/w6MNHOoLEzBVm/giphy.gif[/img]

 

[MaidOfKandar]

@Joe - the Twitter is at least slightly classier than the Tumblr. At this point the intern who's winning the social media wars is whoever's taking care of the Facebook.