American Gods - 'A Prayer for Mad Sweeny'

It's that woman again.

Another change of pace this week, as we devote almost an entire – Shadow and Wednesday free – episode to a Coming to America story.

The tale is that of Essie MacGowan(1) a young lass who grows up on stories of the good folk and – almost – never neglects to leave a little something for the leprechauns. She leads a proper Moll Flanders of a life – an affair with a rich man, framed for theft, transported to the Carolinas, returned, a long career as a thief, arrested again after failing to leave bread for her ‘sponsor’, sentenced to death but transported after pleading her belly – before finding a good, quiet retirement with a kind man on a tobacco plantation. As an old, old woman she finally passes, and her life-long guardian comes to collect her.

Mad Sweeney.

Movin' right along.

Now… I’ll be honest, I can’t remember if the one that came for her in the novel was Mad Sweeney, but it’s a brilliant move here, tying this episode-length Coming to America to Mad Sweeney’s current reluctant road trip with Laura Moon and – until he slips and Laura is able to pass on the location of the meeting of gods – Saleem(2). The doubling of Emily Browning of course strengthens the mirroring, and between the now and the flashback, the writers develop the character of Mad Sweeney, like a scruffy, ginger Oliver Queen. He was a king, before he fled the battle he knew would be his death, and now he works for Wednesday because he owes a battle; not to Wednesday, but perhaps to himself.

And – and this is a big and – we learn that Mad Sweeney killed Laura Moon on Wednesday’s orders. Clearly, he feels somewhat badly for this, as when a car crash gives him the chance to take back his coin, he instead returns it to her, to be reclaimed once he brings her to the resurrection man.

In many episodes of Arrow, the flashbacks feel intrusive. While they provided vital development in American Gods’ second (original to the TV series) thread, the present day elements of ‘A Prayer for Mad Sweeney’ kind of interrupt the flow of the amazingly realised Coming to America. They aren’t bad, indeed they’re pretty good and make both Mad Sweeney and Laura Moon more explicable; just… a bit of an oddity. All in all, it’s one hell of an episode, with Browning and Pablo Schreiber acting up a storm in what is almost a two-hander.

I guess we’ll be going back to Shadow next week, but with this and ‘Git Gone’ it’s apparent that the show is building a world that is bigger than its lead.

(1) Tregowan in the novel, but I guess that either Emily Browning, doubling up as Essie, couldn’t do a Cornish accent, or the Irish production lobby was stronger.

(2) Saleem has only a tangential role here, with the most important development for him being that, when given the likely location of the djinn, he abandons his prayer mat.