1GF Watches TV: Ash vs Evil Dead

Ash vs. Evil Dead

Season 2 - Part 2

Trapped Inside - Ash, Ruby, Kelly, Linda, and Lacey return to Ash's house with Pablo, who's body is turning into a reproduction of the Necronomicon. Ruby hurries to decipher the text while Kelly and Linda hold off the angry mob that wants to lynch Ash. But the task gets complicated when Ash's sister Cheryl is resurrected and is still possessed.

Delusion - Ash wakes up in a mental asylum where his doctor looks like Baal and tries to convince him that the last thirty years have been a delusion and he murdered his friends at the cabin on that fateful night with no demonic presence.

Ashy Slashy - Ruby, Pablo, and Kelly track Ash down to an abandoned asylum where Baal has broken him and convinced him that Pablo must die, and take the secrets of the Necronomicon with him.

Home Again - Distraught over the death of Pablo, Ash devises a plan to go back in time to the 1980's with Ruby and Kelly to prevent his past self from finding the Necronomicon.

Second Coming - Ash kills Henrietta while past Ruby kills future Ruby, but Ash and Kelly successfully alter the past. However, instead of resurrecting Pablo they accidentally resurrect Baal. In a last ditch effort to stop the evil from spreading, Ash challenges Baal to a fist fight to decide the fate of the world. But both of them fight dirty.

In watching Ash vs. Evil Dead lead to it's second season conclusion for the first time several years ago, something seemed off by the experience.  The finale seemed a bit undercooked, like it was something that was trying to pass off as something being built toward, but was really slapped together suddenly in a search of somewhere to go.  This was certainly apparent in the final five minutes, where Ash successfully changes the past so he never went to the cabin, but returns to the modern day and it's exactly the same.   The episode states directly that the events of the episode have altered the course of history (Ash's hand reappearing, ect), but the series itself seems to neither note this nor care.

That's not even noting the Linda character, who seems pretty chipper and horny for someone who just saw her husband and daughter get murdered/possessed.  The disconnect between this ending and everything else this season is startling.

After experiencing the finale, I had looked into it online and it turned out the series showrunner was fired before these final few episodes were filmed, and the final episode was hastily rewritten.  Baal wasn't meant to come back at all for any sort of final battle.  Ash apparently was supposed to escape the cabin with the Necronomicon and bail into town, where he unknowingly meets Kelly's mother at a bar and the two have sex, which makes Kelly Ash's daughter.  But Kelly leaves with 1982 Ruby, which sets up a third season where Ash and Pablo try to save Kelly from Ruby.  Apparently Kelly being Ash's daughter was the straw that broke the camel's back and everything went to hell.

What's funny is that the third season does deal with Ash having a daughter, but it isn't Kelly.

I'm not going to say it that sounds like a better finale.  If nothing else, the finale has a lot of action and gore, which is what you would expect from Evil Dead.  The original finale sounds very light, though it's an interesting idea.  I don't know how I feel about Kelly being Ash's daughter seeing how Ash was trying to get into her pants in the very first episode of the series (I call this the Luke/Leia cockblock), but it would have been interesting to explore.  The only thing I can say for certain is that from a writing standpoint, the finale that resulted is all flash but no payoff.

That's not saying Ash vs. Evil Dead season two doesn't do anything right in its second half.  They have a lot of fun stuff, including some returning castmembers from the original Evil Dead trilogy.  Ellen Sandweiss returns to play Ash's sister Cheryl for the first time since playing her in the original film, and she is hamming it up like no one else.  In addition to playing Chet earlier in the season, Ted Raimi returns for the final two episodes to play his famous role ast the Deadite Henrietta from Evil Dead II, and it hits me right in the nostalgia area.

There is also a fun two-parter where Ash is trapped in a mental asylum and Baal is trying to convince Ash that the last thirty years have been a delusion.  It's an overused plot in shows like this, but what makes it fun is Ash's interplay with a demon puppet named Ashy Slashy.  This set of episodes has a lot of great stuff, like Kelly getting into a fist fight with Ashy Slashy and Ash unveiling his master plan at the end of it.

And have I mentioned how much I love Kelly?  If I'm watching this show for any reason that isn't Bruce Campbell, it's to get more Kelly.  And I love her relationship with her powerful vagina AKA Pablo.

Halloween is over. Go watch something else.

I need you to watch every Mike & Molly thanksgiving episode.

There is never a wrong time of year to watch Evil Dead. 

Relevance to stuff I will be posting:

Own it on blu-ray.

Doomsday SnoBorderZero

PhantomKnight SnoBorderZero thebtskink PG Cooper


Doomsday recently hosted a discussion on books about the film & TV industry, which you read here:

comingsoon.boards.net/thread/2098/film-books


It was in 7th (or maybe 8th) grade when my interest in the entertainment industry was so high that I’d go to the library and check out books on people in the business. This was before the Internet was mainstream, back when people had to educate themselves with physical books (or sometimes magazines) and I was the weirdo reading a Steven Spielberg biography.

Anyway, long story short, I’ve been a fan of this woman for over 20 years and feel that she’s super underrated. For those of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, she was one of the great architects of our childhood. If 1godzillafan and I ever get hired by Shout Factory, we’re creating the definitive documentary on Fox Kids.

IanTheCool PG Cooper docstop


This is the worst thing Canada ever did to the United States.