#if any of them have aftershows tho....

[shitty-check-please-aus]

I've gone 28 years without wanting to go to Lollapalooza but now they've got like three artists I'd love to see on day 1 (Hozier, Chappell Roan, Daði Freyr)

gonna say this is not ideal for lolla, as a 28 year old I should be geriatric by their audience's standards. this festival is for teenagers from the suburbs not taxpaying adults who live in the actual city

[sweeneyxlaura]

Review Round-Up, 2.04

With Laura and Sweeney taking a bye this week, there isn’t much to report, however, two critics did unhappily note their absence as a detriment to the episode:

New York Magazine: The fourth episode of the lackluster second season of American Gods does actually achieve a bit of thematic coherence, but you have to dig for it and end up hoping it amounts to more in terms of storytelling. Worst of all, it sidelines Laura Moon and Mad Sweeney for an entire episode, and they’re arguably the two performers keeping this show afloat, by bringing an energy that the rest of the show notably lacks.

Paste: I missed Laura and Mad Sweeney in this episode -- two characters who generally prefer action over talking. Laura and Sweeney’s stakes are also alot more personal, which makes it easier to get invested in their storylines. Mad Sweeney wants his luck back, and Laura wants to be alive. Whatever the old and new gods want from their war - and at this point, I’m not sure what that is - hopefully it won’t be boring.

So...yeah. It’s getting kinda depressing. The general swath of critics didn’t like 2.04, even though I think the fans did (I know I did) or at least felt it was a stronger episode than the last three. I know what’s done is done, but goddamn, part of me wonders if Fremantle is kicking themselves for letting Fuller/Green go, and notably for forcing them out when they wanted to stay on. It just seems to me that without the Fuller credential here, that some critics seem convinced that this season will never actually live up to any potential that it could’ve had under Fuller’s tutelage. I don’t think that’s fair, but I think that’s partly what’s going on (even if I generally agree on the quality of the episodes we’ve gotten so far).

But also worrisome to me is that there is a marked decrease of media outlets covering this show. Last year, there was a ton of media attention, and many devoted to episodic reviews. Now? There are only a handful of major outlets who are punching it out every week with the rest being smaller blogs, Youtube and podcast reviewers. This...isn’t good? With the ratings already low, it doesn’t help the show that there aren’t more eyeballs being exposed to the series via major media outlets. You can also tell they’ve scaled down the press tour. The EW aftershow is gone, and so is the prolonged media blitz throughout the season as well as the live Twitter events the cast used to do during the live episodes.

S3 has been greenlit, which is great, but I really hope the show kinda takes stock into some of the criticisms being lobbed now in shaping S3 - namely, less talking and more doing. IMO, they need to define the stakes of this war, get Shadow to be more proactive and sharpen the writing and pacing of these episodes. But that’s just me. I love this show, but I want it to be better. 

*steps off the soapbox* Sorry, guys....these reviews, tho. Feels bad, man.