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Previously on Ash Vs. Evil Dead: Ruby (Lucy Lawless) spawned a toothsome baby demon that has a fleshy chainsaw for one hand, while a couple of hapless hitchhikers became baby’s first meals. Dalton (Lindsay Farris) reveals more about Ruby’s and the Knights of Sumeria’s origins. He mentions a sorceress named Kaya who was a Knight who turned evil, which means she’ll probably appear this season, given how she’s now bound inside the Necronomicon. Ash (Bruce Campbell) tries to bond with Brandy (Arielle Carver-O’Neill), which kinda sorta goes okay, maybe, except she’s really close to her guidance counselor, Ms. Prevett, who is really Ruby. Ash has an epically nasty battle at the local sperm bank because the Deadites are determined to destroy his seed. Meanwhile, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) have a heart-to-heart.

Recap

“Apparently Dead” opens at the church where Candy’s (Katrina Hobbs) funeral is about to take place. Brandy tells Ash he doesn’t have to do the dad thing, and that her counselor, Ms. Prevett, will take her in. Ash makes an actual effort to be a good father, so Brandy agrees to stay with him. The funeral director (Richard Felix) comes in to tell them they can view Candy’s body, saying he’s restored her head. Ash knows that’s bad news; he grabs a fork and heads to the casket, where he pokes Candy to see if she Deadites out. She doesn’t move. He says a few words about their relationship, turns to leave, then turns back to say one more thing, but Candy is gone. He slowly approaches the empty casket and leans in. Candy suddenly reaches out and drags him inside. She attacks and tries to initiate sex, but Ash says, “No Means NO!” as she crunches his balls. Candy bites Ash’s metal hand, shorting it out a little. Their fight is gruesome, culminating in Ash cutting her head off and quipping, “How was that for you?” The casket seals shut with Ash in it. Beginning credits!

The funeral director wants to start the funeral, but Brandy wants to wait for Ash. Ruby is there in a black veil, sympathizing with Brandy. Brandy gets up to say a few words about her mom while the organist plays a creepy sad song. The casket begins moving and the funeralgoers gasp. The movement stops and Brandy continues her eulogy, but it ends because Ash finally manages to open the casket. “Fucking hell,” he exclaims, and when he climbs out, Candy’s head falls off his crotch. He puts it back in the casket as everyone is grossing out. Ash is covered in blood and pus because this show can’t go one day without covering him in indignity.

The funeralgoers file out; Ruby then reveals herself to Ash. Brandy tell him that’s her counselor who she’s known for two years, but Ash says it’s Ruby, the evil hellbeast who turned Brandy’s friend and mom into demons. Brandy runs out; Ruby tells Ash to back off and threatens Brandy to top it off. She leaves, and the casket rolls open, spilling out Candy’s defiled body pieces.

Kelly, Pablo and Dalton arrive. Ash says Ruby is back, disguised as Brandy’s counselor. Pablo hears the Masked Woman (Hannah Tasker-Poland) calling him. She appears and tells him to listen to his Brujo, and to go find the Kandarian dagger. No one else can see her or the others who appear with her. Pablo, smitten, asks the Masked Woman her name and if she’d like to go on a date. What the hell, Pablo, you’ve got evil to fight! She tells him to set his destiny.

In the background, Dalton is telling Ash and Kelly they have to kill Ruby with the Kandarian dagger Pablo, fresh off his vision, says he knows where the dagger is. Ash tells them they have to go solo because he has to talk to his daughter.

The Ghostbeaters and Dalton arrive at the old cabin site at night, which is always a good time to visit the place where an ancient evil resides. As they dig around, whispers are heard. Kelly remarks that it’s creepy being back and that she last saw two Rubys there. Dalton remarks that they should “dig fast.” Pablo hits something hard—it’s the deer head! It doesn’t laugh, though. Pablo says the dagger is definitely there.

Ruby-as-Prevett drops Brandy off at Casa de Ash to get her things. In Cheryl’s room, Brandy plops on the bed and thinks. She sees a sketch Cheryl made of a young Brock (Lee Majors). At the cemetery, Ruby lays the Necromonicon down on a grave and pulls out a box with a moth. She impales the moth on a knife and places it on the grave. The book opens to the spell Ruby needs; she drips her blood on the moth and recites the incantation. The moth flies away and a hand bursts through the ground.

Back at the house, Brandy plays some of Cheryl’s music on an old cassette player. It’s “Crimson and Clover” as covered by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Brandy tries on Ash’s hardware store uniform as a dead thing comes up the stairs and…takes a shower! Brandy keeps looking through Cheryl’s things while the corpse showers, pulling off layers of dirt and skin. The song choice makes the scene extra-yucky. Brandy finally hears the shower being used and heads towards the bathroom, calling out “Ash?” The moth is on a light in the hallway. Brandy sees steam and the muddy footprints going toward the door. The door opens and…??

Ash arrives; he goes into the house and hears Brandy talking to someone. It’s Brock! He looks normal. Ash asks Brock what he’s doing. He and Brandy are watching Ash’s commercial and making fun of it. Ash tells Brandy that Brock is dead, but Brandy says Brock told her how he survived being hit by the Delta ’88. He also tells Ash to stop being “such an asshole.” Ash asks if he can speak to his dead father privately.

In the woods, the Ghostbeaters and Dalton have dug up have the cabin’s contents—the clock, the projector, and other items familiar from the films. Pablo hears weird noises as Kelly finds the dagger. Evil heads toward them, knocking down trees and turning on the items from the cabin. The three run. Dalton tries to shoot the evil, but it drags him off. Kelly searches for Dalton and Pablo, and finds Dalton impaled on a tree branch. He says Pablo did it to him; Pablo set them up, Dalton insists, and they should’ve killed Pablo when they had the chance. He asks for the dagger, but Kelly hesitates. It’s good that she did because Dalton Deadites out and snarls, “Give me that fucking dagger!” Pablo shows up in a truck and runs Dalton down. Kelly runs over to find where the truck stops, but it’s empty.

Back at Ash’s, Brock is nonchalantly looking in the fridge for food. Ash asks what’s going on while Brandy is in the den, laughing at Ash’s commercial. Brock says Ruby pulled him from the grave so he could look in on Brandy. Brandy comes in just as Brock attacks Ash, knocking out Brandy in the process.

The two men try to shove each other’s faces into the electrical stovetop. Brock basically gets the upper hand (ha!); he beats the tar out of Ash, who has to put the chainsaw on his hand and gores his father in the gut. Naturally, Brandy shows up just in time to see her newly met grandfather brutally murdered—she thinks he’s really alive—and she gets covered in his blood. Brandy is completely freaked out. Ash says the good news is that he can explain, but Brandy wishes Ash was dead instead and runs out of the house. Ash calls after her, telling her Brock was already dead, but she’s gone. “Kids!” Ash says as if he was a dad for Brandy’s whole life. End credits!

Review

“Apparently Dead” is a good place-setter for the big battle (predicted by Dalton last time) to come. The script by Ivan Raimi makes good use of both Brandy and Brock, and it’s great to see Lee Majors back on the show, even if Ash eviscerates him rather quickly. Majors has a natural rapport with Carver-O’Neill, helping to further integrate her character into Ash’s life, and his interactions with Campbell are golden. The two really up each other’s acting game.

The direction by Diego Meza-Valdes & Andres Meza-Valdes fits seamlessly with the series while emphasizing the horror a bit more. There’s a good jump scare when Candy drags Ash into the casket, and they convey the claustrophobia of being trapped inside a casket nicely before upping the horror by having Candy’s head appear seemingly out of nowhere. That it seems like the casket isn’t any larger than normal even as Candy crawls up on Ash is a neat bit of effects work, too.

Lawless makes Ruby nastier than before; her threat to Ash about Brandy has true danger behind it, bring Ash’s “papa bear” out in force. While it may seem rather sudden for Ash to care so much for Brandy, we’ve had two seasons to see him come to love Pablo and Kelly as family, so we already know he’s capable of having love for a daughter (despite his terror last episode that he may have a whole baseball team of children out there). Not so sure he’s going to love his demon child the same way, but time will tell.

Lastly, while “Crimson and Clover” took on a creepy vibe, as I mentioned in the recap, the song that plays over the end credits, “Kids” from the musical “Bye Bye Birdie,” fits just as perfectly here as it does in its original context. That it’s sung by Campbell and Lawless may also be foreshadowing Ash’s eventual meeting with his demon progeny. We’ll see. As always, stay tuned for the next episode!

This week in Ash (and other) one-liners (plus other stuff I liked):

“Oh, no, this ain’t the Kroger parking lot!” Also, Ash has a flashlight on his metal hand. Pablo thought of everything!

Kelly at the funeral: “Fuck me! It looks like a snuff film in here!”

“I love the smell of old man in the morning!”

Bruce Campbell’s and Lucy Lawless’ singing is damn good. More, please!

Linda B. Watch: Linda B. is not mentioned. I should probably give up (or Google Michelle Hurd to find out why she hasn’t been on the show), but this is more fun. No one ruin it for me!

All photos courtesy of Starz.

The post Ash vs. Evil Dead Recap – S3, Ep 303, “Apparently Dead” appeared first on The Nerd Element.

When I spoke with Luke Hemsworth, who plays Ashley Stubbs on Westworld, at a recent junket, it sounded like he hoped that Stubbs might be a force for good in Season Two. Though, at this point, what constitutes “good” anymore is subjective, given the kind of show Westworld is.

Stubbs is Westworld’s Head of Security, and Hemsworth insists that while most of the humans in Westworld are complete garbage people, he’s always seen Stubbs as a humane worker bee.

“The way I’ve always played him is that he was not a torturer,” he explains. “And did not enjoy any of the sadistic stuff. He was a worker, he would get stuff done, but didn’t take any pleasure in any of the pain. Very empathetic, I think. I found that more interesting, because every other human in the park is a complete asshole. So, there’s gotta be a ray of sunshine here somewhere. Some hope for our species. Hopefully…Stubbs is that hope?”

Hemsworth seems like a really chill and upbeat person, which definitely conflicts with the down-to-business character he plays in an almost oppressively dark world. Westworld has certainly given him a lot to unpack when he’s off the clock.

image: Teresa Jusino

“I think I’m quite a positive person,” Hemsworth says. “And the show examines the human race’s propensity toward violence. And that was jarring for me, that it is something that people really respond to with violence. That we have an innate nature to be able to hurt things, and the point of view that these people, the people who are holidaying [in Westworld], are mainly doing horrendous things to these creatures who are able to simulate emotion or pain, and just because they’re simulated, does that mean it’s not real? And if you know it is, and you do it anyway, what does that say about you? That brings a whole lot of dark questions about what we do when there are no consequences.”

Still, Hemsworth ultimately has a sense of hope: “We examine a lot of dark things, and we shine the light at ourselves, and it is dark. We are dark. Sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But maybe by shining a light on the dark stuff, we are evolving. We can evolve.”

Of course, beyond the general questions about humanity, there are also the show’s mysteries, and what Hemsworth absolutely cannot tell us under any circumstances. He, like Angela Sarafyan, whose interview posted yesterday, struggles with the secrecy. Still, I managed to get some bits and pieces out of him. For example, what’s Stubbs’ actual agenda?

“It was always a question: who does Stubbs actually work for?” he says. “I guess I can say that that aspect of Stubbs is explored. We pull that apart. Where comes from and where he’s going.”

image: HBO

Of course, I had to ask him what the deal is with Elsie (Shannon Woodward). We know that she’s returning this season, and she and Stubbs seems to have a lot to do with each other in Season One. “That’s addressed as well, for sure,” Hemsworth replies. “We shot a whole lot of stuff last year that didn’t make the cut with me and Elsie. I think we’re kinda destined to cross paths in more ways than one.”

After a while of answering questions as cryptically as possible, Hemsworth talked about what that feels like: “It’s frustrating for sure. Whether they do it on purpose or not, there are things that they change at the last moment no matter what. And as an actor, you want as much information as you can get, I think. And sometimes you get drip-fed with what’s given you. But there’s a method to the madness, and it’s worked. So, who am I to say to do it differently?”

A common thing we hear from all the Westworld cast is the huge amount of trust it takes to do a show like this. Hemsworth says that, “If Jonah weren’t as good as he is, or as smart and articulate as he is, then it would be another question. But he’s a wealth of knowledge. And he’ll answer your questions until he gets tired of them. (chuckles) But he’s very precise as well. He’s open to interpretation, but he knows exactly what he wants [as a director]. When you’re in the hands of someone like that, it’s much easier to let go.”

Westworld Season Two premieres Sunday, April 22 on HBO.

(image: HBO)

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Previously on Ash Vs. Evil Dead: Ash (Bruce Campbell) attended Candy’s (Katrina Hobbs) funeral to support Brandy (Arielle Carver-O’Neill). Candy’s corpse reanimated and Ash had to re-behead it, to everyone’s dismay. Ruby (Lucy Lawless) revealed herself to Ash. Ash filled in Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), Pablo (Ray Santiago), and Dalton (Linsday Farris) about the Ruby/Prevett situation. Pablo had another vision of the Masked Woman (Hannah Tasker-Poland), who says he must find the Kandarian dagger and listen to his Brujo. The Ghostbeaters and Dalton headed back to the cabin site to find the dagger, where Dalton was overtaken by the Evil Dead. Pablo rammed Dalton with a truck and then disappeared. Ruby went to Brock’s (Lee Majors) grave and reanimated him; he headed to Ash’s and met Brandy, who believes he really survived having his head smashed in by the Delta 88. Ash showed up, fought with Brock, and gored him with the chainsaw, soaking Brandy in his blood. Bloody Brandy stormed out.

Recap

Ash dismembers Brock’s body, saying that Ruby couldn’t fool him. Brock reappears as a ghost, then solidifies (but he’s still a ghost). Ash tells Ghost Brock about Brandy. “Damn, you miss so much when you’re dead!” Ghost Brock exclaims, then says he’s going to show Ash what he meant to tell him right before Brock died. Ash remarks that it cost $300 to pound out the fender of the Delta 88 where it crushed Brock’s head, and Ghost Brock says Ash is a cheapskate because his funeral cost less. Ash sheepishly says, “That’s not true…ish,” God, I love their relationship!

Kelly shows up at the house to tell Ash about Pablo, but Ash is already gone. Brandy, however, comes back, still covered in her grandfather’s blood. She relates what she saw to Kelly. “Makes high school seem a lot less awful, amirite?” Kelly tries to joke. Kelly defends Ash, “the perverted drunk with racist tendencies,” because he has his moments. She tells Brandy that evil killed her parents, too. As they are about to leave in the truck, a motorcycle heads right at them and a body flies through the windshield. Bloody opening credits!

It’s Deadite Pablo, who attacks and bites Kelly’s calf, causing her to drop the dagger. “All Out Of Love” by Air Supply plays on the radio as Kelly and Brandy try to escape. The truck stalls. Pablo torments them after Kelly grabs the dagger. She and Brandy run and hide inside Ash’s trailer, with Pablo mounting an all-out assault.

Ghost Brock brings Ash to a snowy day in Brock’s past at the hardware store. It’s 2012 around Christmastime. Ghost Brock phases through the front door; Ash bonks right into it; I laugh like a lunatic. Ghost Brock references It’s A Wonderful Life, but I don’t think Brock will get a pair of wings after this is over. In the memory Ghost Brock is showing Ash, a man in a leather trench coat (Will Wallace) comes in to ask Brock about his son. We find out that Ash’s middle name is Joanna; again, I laugh like a lunatic. The man tells Brock about Ash’s prophesy; he also wears a “KOS” ring and has the lost pages of the Necronomicon. Brock won’t tell him where Ash is because Ash has gone through enough. Brock kicks the man in the junk and the man falls down the stairs into the cellar, possibly dead.

Back at the trailer, Brandy thinks Ash is probably on a beer run. Kelly won’t kill Pablo; she wants to help him. Brandy curses Ash again, and Kelly gives her a “come to Jesus” talk about Ash, revealing also that Prevett is a demon. Kelly’s wound starts hurting badly, but she continues to defend Ash.

In the memory, Brock boards up the cellar. Ghost Brock brought Ash to this moment because he wanted Ash to see that he was being a good father and trying to protect Ash, despite their differences. Present-day Ash goes into the cellar, but the man’s body is gone. Ash doesn’t trust the scene and puts on the chainsaw. Ghost Brock chides Ash that he’s scared, but Ash retorts, “I’ve had a little experience with dead bodies in cellars, dad!” The lights, which didn’t work at first, come on and things in the cellar move a little. Ash finds the man’s skeleton—the man tried to survive on Brock’s Spam rations, poor bastard. The man also wrote a lot of words and symbols on the cellar wall, and Ash finds the lost pages of the Necronomicon.

The show cross-cuts between somewhere else, where the Necronomicon flies open right as Ruby shows up to see it, and the cellar. Ash thinks maybe Pablo can decipher the lost pages, then studies the symbol on the wall and sees Rachel (Ellie Gall) inside it, begging for help. The book bubbles up with blood. Tentacles come out of the wall and grab Ash. Ghost Brock can’t help because he’s incorporeal. The tentacles mess with Ash and bind him to the ceiling. He uses the chainsaw to escape, landing with a hard THUD on the floor. Ghost Brock, realizing his time is up, mentions that he used to go bowling with the real Prevett. Before he disappears, he tells Ash, “And son, you’re gonna be a great father.” Ash responds, “You really mean that?” “No,” Ghost Brock says as he fades out, laughing softly.

Ruby sees Kaya (Chelsie Preston Crayford) in the pages of the book where the blood had bubbled up. Kaya tells Ruby that the Knights of Sumeria are still around; the two briefly discuss the Dark Ones. Kaya says she needs to be freed; Ruby will free her when she finds a suitable host, Ruby notes. Uh oh. Watch your back, Brandy! Back in the trailer, it sounds like Pablo has gotten inside, but he’s not in the trailer—the lower half of his face is coming out of Kelly’s leg wound. Yuck!

Ruby goes back to the cabin site and finds Deadite Dalton with the branch still sticking out of his chest. She casts a spell on him to turn him back to normal briefly so she can talk to him. Ruby thought she killed all the “delusional morons,” but Dalton says there are plenty KOS out there. He says they can send her back to Hell. “For the record, Hell is not my turf,” Ruby says, then twists the branch and pulls it out. Dalton’s wound spews blood; Ruby says she’ll wait for evil to take him again and then get her info, but while she’s distracted talking like a Bond villain, Dalton pulls out a gun and blows his own head off. I told you he wasn’t going to last long in Ash’s world!

Ash arrives at Prevett’s home and calls out for Ruby. Prevett’s house is big and spooky-looking, filled with lots of rooms and ancient décor—a perfect haunted house for Ruby, really. Ash sees a picture of the real Ms. Prevett in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, then hears singing upstairs. He goes to investigate and finds a room locked from the outside. The door opens on a set of stairs Ash uses to access the attic. Inside, he finds Natalie (Samantha Young) and Ruby’s demon spawn. Ash thinks it’s just a kid sucking his thumb, but Natalie, horrified, says, “Not his thumb.” Nope, it’s a finger. The two use hand signals to develop a plan so Ash can set Natalie loose, but it still wakes the spawn, who’s a toddler now.

Natalie keeps singing to keep the child calm. However, it doesn’t work; the child shows up, his maw gaping and toothy. He screams loudly. “What’s Norway for ‘Up shit’s creek?’” Ash cries. End credits as Joe Tex’s “You Said A Bad Word” plays!

Review

Writer Nicki Paluga’s script has so many awesome moments of Ash and Brock interaction that I didn’t want this episode to end. Campbell and Majors have an easy blend of camaraderie and competition, and they are a joy to watch acting together, as I’m sure I’ve said before (and will say again if we get more Brock in the show). The two pros seem like they’re really related.

Daniel Nettheim keeps the action throbbing along (like Kelly’s wound, ha!), and he makes excellent use of the space of Prevett’s house to make it seem both unconquerably large yet claustrophobically small. I’m looking forward to what Ruby’s house of horrors has to show us next episode.

This is also one of the funniest eps in a while, from the “Three Stooges”-esque Ash vs. Wall Tentacle fight, to Ash walking right into a door after Ghost Brock passes through it. Such a great script from Paluga—I loved every moment. “All Out Of Love” playing as Pablo attacks Kelly was also funny if a little too on the nose, but “You Said a Bad Word” made up for it by being both sexy and menacing in the context of the show (sample lyric: “Cuz good little girls don’t talk like that”).

As for Dalton’s exit: I’m kind of sad that he won’t be around to keep taking a knee for Ash, but Dalton was kind of a cipher anyway (no fault of Farris—he did what he could with the character). I said when Dalton first showed up that his type of personality usually doesn’t last long in Ash’s world, and I was right. I would have liked him around a little longer, though, just so his noble sacrifice would mean more, but them’s the breaks in Ash-land.

Anyway, now that Ash has met Ruby’s spawn, will he realize where the child came from, or will he shoot its horrifyingly tooth-filled face off first and ask questions never? Will poor Natalie ever be freed? And how will Kelly and Brandy fend off a crazed Pablo, especially as half his face is already embedded in Kelly’s leg? Stay tuned, fellow AVED watchers!

This week in Ash (and other) one-liners (plus other stuff I liked):

Kelly: “Pablo is dick deep in trouble.” Kelly was wonderfully vulgar this episode.

The “J” in “Ashley J. Williams” stands for “Joanna.” Hahahaha! Brock was sticking it to Ash from day one!

“Did I mention I hate cellars?”

Ghost Brock’s last word to Ash was hilarious. I hope he can come back in a future ep just to give his son heaping loads of grief. Also, Ash’s reaction to Ghost Brock’s rather lascivious memory that “Sasquatch” was Ruby had me rolling.

When Ash sees the kid sucking a hitchhiker’s finger: “Ok, that’s a choking hazard!”

Linda B. Watch: Linda B. is not mentioned. Yes, I am running this joke straight into the ground!

All photos courtesy of Starz.

The post Ash vs. Evil Dead Recap – S3, Ep 304, “Unfinished Business” appeared first on The Nerd Element.

Dash: *reaches for egg roll*

Violet: “Did you wash your hands?”

Dash: *Speed Forces to the bathroom and back* *reaches for egg roll*

Violet: “With…soap?”

Violet is all of our mothers.

She is also all of our sisters when they reach that special part of their lives, you know when their body goes through changes while she experiences an evolution in her telekinetic force field projection. We know it all too well.

Violet interrupts Dash’s complaints about dinner being vegan to address their mom securing the bag by reviving her career as a solo superhero. She was chosen over Mr. Incredible and Frozone by their mysterious new employer to rebrand supers after the events of the first film.

Sidenote: Why were Bob & Helen rocking the retro-fits when they were meeting with the superhero temp agency? Maybe to hide the fact that they’re married? We’ll see.

Elastigirl got tagged in, and Mr. Incredible’s in charge of the kids, which includes teaching Dash new math, keeping Jack Jack from summoning the Infinity Gauntlet, and dealing with a fed up Violet who clearly doesn’t want to super anymore. Girl put her super suit IN the garbage disposal, then yeeted it across the room when she realized that Edna Mode thread count was too strong.

It’ll be fine, tho. She’s all up in the action montage with the Incredibles horn section blaring in the background, so once she puts some pages in her diary she’ll be ready to put some force in the field. Did you see her split one of her fields and throw them? Violet’s definitely getting her stats up this year.

It’s all fun and games until the new villain comes through. He’s dressed like a Borderlands character and looks like his MO is hypnotizing folks Mad Mod style (good thing Beast Boy ain’t around). These new looks at Incredibles 2 are just getting the 90s kids even more hyped for this movie. Once again, if you were born after 97, you should wait your turn or you might catch the fade on opening night. Just saying.

Incredibles 2 hits theaters June 15th.

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