El Jefe

I know I'm in the minority saying this, but I never really liked the humorous direction that Sam Raimi took with Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness: I wanted more gruelling horror, not slapstick. Unsurprisingly, I avoided Ash vs The Evil Dead for a while after hearing it was even more zany than the films. However, having finally succumbed and watched Episode One of Season One, I have to admit that the funny stuff actually works very well within the TV format - Sam Raimi delivers one hell of an entertaining pilot, serving up some genuinely hilarious silliness, while not forgetting to deliver on the outrageous splatter.

Bruce Campbell returns as scourge of all deadites, Ash Williams, who has spent 30 years in hiding, now living on a trailer park. But after Ash gets stoned with a hooker and reads from the Necronomicon, evil finds him once again. Meanwhile, cop Amanda (Jill Marie Jones) has her own run in with some deadites, including her partner, who she is forced to shoot. Can Ash, with help from co-workers Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) triumph against the dark forces?

With some really cool effects (the deadites are great), including buckets of blood, this is a real crowd pleaser of a start to what I hope will be a consistently entertaining show.

Directed by Sam Raimi, the first episode of Ash vs Evil Dead is all what the Evil Dead fans had been waiting for these last 20 odd years.

After the end of "Army of Darkness" there was talk of a new movie, but it never came out; what we got in the end was the 2013 remake.

But then, they decided to do a TV series, of which this is the first episode. And it delivers.

Of course, in the years that have been gone since the last movie, a lot has changed in the movie and TV world, so some fans may be disappointed with the result, but I think that we may be in for a treat with this series.

It all starts as you would imagine, with Ash being his old lazy, sexy (and a little bit fatter) self, working in a little store and just letting the days go by. But things don't take long to go wrong, and the deadites are back with a vengeance. We have some homages to the old movies, some cool nice action, over the top situations, and Ash, a lot of cool old Ash, which makes you wonder how could it take so long to have him back.

This first episode is a blast, even if not perfect. Let's just hope the level keeps throughout this whole season.

So, waiting for the beginning of Season 3 I decide to write a technical review of the Pilot of the Series. It will be short and divided by categories.

DIRECTION It's pure Raimi at his best. Long sequences, slow motions, action, suspense and dosed humor. In the next 19 episodes rarely this timing has been respected (also because this Pilot is 40 minutes and episodes are 25-30 minutes).

SFX The only bad point of the Pilot are the special effects. The Post production work doesn't fit well and make the intense Fisher/Carson scene so lame. A cheaper and hasty work, but just for this episode because next episodes are truly better (just for example in 1x03 The Host). So AVED is a series that have both bad and good special effects at the same time. And this is wonderful

PLOT and PLOT EVOLUTION In this pilot Ash is serious, Ash is scared about what he avoid for 30 years. And at the same time he laugh and act to show that he can handle it.

The evil dead speaks to the characters has it know their victims creating a shadow of mystery behind what evil wants.

The Catchphrase "We know who you are" scared a lot and also the other things form the other Deadites. These demons know a mystery and the real origins of everyone fears. They scares people not with blood or bad words, but because they knew them.

During the series we didn't see the evolution of the Evil, because of a lazy scripts that prefers jokes to expand the mythology behind the book.

IN CONCLUSION This Pilot is what every pilots need to have.. and much more. I don't know why Raimi don't make at least an episode per season. Because the directors of the series (that are also into it and extremely masters) need to breathe more and focus on what this series can unleashed in history of television. Hope that the new Showrunner is better than DiGregorio that he just forgot what to do as Showrunner. Maybe he just needed to re-watch the Pilot overtime before wrote a new episode.

Evil Dead was one of those first scary movies I watched as a teenager back in the mid 90's. It was so scary I was afraid of the dark for a while. First two parts were kind of serious scary, so the third movie was such breath of the fresh air with it's twisted dark humour. I think watching this third part made me less scared of all the creeps in the night.

That is why I loved the direction this show went. It's scary/funny/silly. Without going to the extremes of violence. It is easy to see, that creators and cast had a real fun working together, creating the beasts and spilling the blood all over the place.

Ash is a cool guy. He might as well become a new great character on TV, cracking silly jokes and heads of the monsters. Hope we'll see development of other characters as well. For now we met Amanda - cop, struggling to keep her sanity. Pablo and Kelly - two now ex colleagues of Ash from the store. Both are pretty weak so far. But good and important in regards to waking up the inner hero in Ash. And mysterious Ruby. Who we have yet to figure out. Beautiful women in white.

First episode definitely made me excited about the rest of the season. It is a good 30 minute format. Hope the humour will be at the good level without going to silly. Feels like there is some really fresh and great potential here. With creating a new kind of superhero. Without him being too much of the serious Comic book's hero.

The games kept the tradition of Ash being a regular guy but out of his depth and fed up with the deadites, necronomicon, and anyone who wants it. This pilot scrubs all that, makes him FAR more insipid than he EVER was and really shows that no one involves, especially Cambell himself, really doesn't care about these characters or the world they once created. It goes downhill from here.