American Gods ‘Git Gone’ feels like Neil Gaiman’s love letter to Laura Moon, Shadow’s wife, who surprised him by appearing in his room at the end of last week’s episode. Like so many characters in American Gods I never felt like they gave her enough time for us to understand her life, motives, or fears.
‘Git Gone’ gave us all that and more.
To start off, Laura Moon might anger some people. Might piss them off because she has a job, a home, friends, and a husband who loves her. She has everything and somehow it isn’t enough. And while that might piss some people off and make them brush off her story as the musings of a whiny woman who’s complaining for nothing…I love her.
I love Laura Moon for how real, messed up, and complicated she is.
There’s no sugar coating when it comes to her character and American Gods doesn’t shy away from showing what kind of woman she is. She isn’t some cheesy ‘heart of the show’ character that drives the male protagonist. She’s the spleen, essential to the body of American Gods but with a whole set of woes that are all her own and nothing to do with what drives the show.
She’s us, those who are surrounded by so much good in our lives, but somehow are still incapable of touching it or feeling it. We desperately seek out the next high, the next thrill, in an attempt to feel something different from the nothing that plagues us inside. That’s why Laura jumps in the jacuzzi with bugspray, plans to rob the casino, and cheats on Shadow while he’s locked up.
Laura is trying to feel something, even if it’s pain, fear, and guilt.
I can understand Laura in this aspect and in many ways see my life reflected in hers. Like her, I’ve always had a hard time connecting with family, love, friends, passions, and felt like I was living in a body that wanted to live with a mind fighting to die. The only difference is that I got help. Laura Moon didn’t and her spiral to feel something, anything, eventually led to her death.
It’s heartbreaking to watch her realize that in death she had everything she was always desperately seeking out, right by her side in the form of the love she had with/for/from her husband aka the one person who accepted her for what she was, warts, depression, and all. It’s a wake up call, a shock to the system, that makes her do the unthinkable, come back to life. (A lot of it is due to the power of Mad Sweeney’s Sun coin but her strength, stubbornness, and determination definitely has to be a contributing factor.)
Sure, she’s a grump and a bit of an asshole 75% of the time during this episode, but it makes her more real and makes me more invested in seeing how far she’s willing to go to fix what she broke with Shadow, come back to life (for real this time), and work on herself. Laura’s on a journey and it doesn’t matter who she’s got to tear apart or fight against, she’s going for it.
Laura isn’t going to waste this second chance because every second she does, she rots away just a bit more and loses ground on getting back what she lost.
Favorite Scene from ‘Git Gone’:
Anubis will never forget Laura Moon.
http://wynonasrider.tumblr.com/post/160915702197/i-lived-my-life-good-and
American Gods airs Sundays at 9/8c on Starz.
