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Ash vs. Evil Dead 3.4 Review – ‘Unfinished Business’
Loading...Ash vs. Evil Dead Review: 3.4: “Unfinished Business”
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the review of the fourth episode of season 3 of the hit Starz series Ash vs. Evil Dead. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.
Two weeks back Ash vs. Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell hinted that if AvED did get cancelled a potential Evil Dead 4/Army of Darkness 2 could happen. Now, two weeks later, it sounds like if AvED is cancelled that’s the end of Bruce Campbell playing Ash.
Go ahead and read this article and take in the sobering news. Episode 10 of season 3 really could be the end of it all.
Is that what Evil Dead fandom wants? I don’t think it does, especially since it’s been clamoring for another movie since Army of Darkness hit home video and television. It’s even been clamoring for a new movie in the middle of the TV show. But if you don’t watch the TV show, the odds of another movie happening are slim to non-existent. Who is going to pay to make a movie of a TV show that was cancelled?
Sam Raimi is busy with other stuff. Robert Tapert has other stuff to work on (aren’t Raimi and Tapert looking at rebooting The Grudge?). Bruce Campbell claims to have all sorts of scripts and projects lined up in the event that Ash vs. Evil Dead gets cancelled. Why would they spend time on making something that no one apparently wants?
So it’s up to us, the fans of the show, to watch, to pay for Starz or the Starz app, and to get other people interested in the show. That’s the only way this thing is going to continue. We can’t rely on Netflix picking up the show in the event it gets cancelled.
And now, the fourth episode of season three of Ash vs. Evil Dead.
Episode 4: Unfinished Business
Directed by: David Nettheim
Written by: Nick Paluga
(All images courtesy of Starz)
Unfinished Business begins with Ash (Bruce Campbell) cutting up the body of his recently returned father Brock Williams (Lee Majors) via his chainsaw. Blood and gore, as you’d expect, flies everywhere, and it’s all quite (beautifully) disgusting. Ash stops for a moment to take a break, switches out the chainsaw for his robot hand, and downs a can of Shemp beer. Ash then tries to crush the beer can but his robot hand malfunctions. As Ash “fixes” his hand, Brock’s ghost suddenly appears in the living room. This particular version of Brock isn’t necessarily the same Brock that Ash gutted at the end of the last episode. This Brock is sort of happy to see Ash and interact with the world that he unexpectedly left in the middle of season two. Brock is “back” to talk to his son and finally tell him something that he tried to tell him last season before he was hit by Ash’s car and run over. Ash, who definitely feels more comfortable around this Brock, is receptive to his father’s claims and wants to know more. So Brock takes Ash to the “other side” and “back in time” (to around 2012) to tell him what he failed to tell him before.
And what did Brock not get to tell his son Ash? A guy came into the hardware store asking for Ash and claiming to be from something called the Knights of Sumeria. The knight had weird book pages in his possession, pages that were missing from the Necronomicon. Brock didn’t believe a word the guy said and assaulted him, eventually kicking him into the basement. The guy then died from a broken neck (falling down any flight of stairs is no picnic, that’s for sure). Brock decided right then and there to lock up the basement, hide the basement door, and then act like he didn’t know anything about the knight or the hidden place. This news pisses Ash off big time, as he would have loved to have known about all of this Knights of Sumeria/Chosen One bullshit a long time ago. And with a dead body in a basement he didn’t know anything about, that just leads to major trouble (as we all know, Ash doesn’t have the best history with basements).
While all of that is going on, Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) drives back to Ash’s house with the Kandarian Dagger in tow. It’s here that Kelly runs into Ash’s daughter Brandy (Arielle Carver-O’Neill). Brandy is still upset about what she experienced at the end of the last episode and wants out of Ash’s orbit. Kelly tries to assuage Brandy’s fears about Ash while telling her that since she’s Ash’s daughter she will have to be protected. With Evil out there running rampant it will do whatever it can to kill Brandy and everyone close to her, just to get at Ash. Even with this information Brandy wants nothing to do with Ash and wants to get away from it all. But before she can get away, a motorcycle riding Pablo (Ray Santiago) appears out of nowhere and smashes into Kelly’s truck. This isn’t the Pablo Kelly knows, though. This is a different Pablo. A deadite Pablo.
A deadite Pablo? How the hell did that happen?
There’s a major scuffle, with the deadite Pablo taking a chunk out of Kelly’s leg. Kelly and Brandy make a break for it and run into Ash’s trailer. The deadite Pablo follows. The deadite Pablo can’t get in, though, as Ash apparently reinforced the trailer’s structure and installed bulletproof glass. The trailer’s alterations won’t keep the deadite Pablo out forever, but they will give Brandy and Kelly some breathing space in order to come up with a plan.
Back to Ash and Brock, Ash descends down into the hardware store’s basement, ready to do battle with a possible deadite Knight of Sumeria. All Ash finds is a skeleton, a bunch if opened cans of Spam, and weird writing on the wall. Ash recognizes the writing as Sumerian and tries to decipher it. It’s at this moment that the wall attacks Ash, sprouting tentacles and grabbing at our hero. How the hell does one fight a wall? Ash revs up the chainsaw and starts slicing, but the wall is a formidable enemy, and it takes some time to break free. It’s at this point that Ash decides that he’s going to have to go straight at Ruby (Lucy Lawless) and taker her on, hand-to-hand (or, really, as best he can).
While all of that is going, Ruby is talking with the Necronomicon. A woman who resembles the naked woman that keeps communicating with Pablo tells Ruby that there’s a rift brewing that, if it’s completely opened, will send out all of the Dark Ones and the world will end. Ruby also finds out about the Knights of Sumeria, people she thought she defeated years ago. She goes to the forest and finds deadite Dalton’s remains and, with the help of some Necronomicon what have you, is able to remove the evil from Dalton’s body for a short period of time in order to interrogate him. What will she learn?
The episode concludes with Ash entering Ruby’s house and finding out about the demon baby in the crib. The malfunctioning robot hand comes into play again. Ash also utters a truly epic line: “What’s Norway for up shit’s creek?”
How much you like Unfinished Business will likely hinge on how you take two things, the section where Ash interacts with ghost Brock, and the scene where Kelly deals with her leg wound. Bruce Campbell and Lee Majors have terrific antagonistic chemistry and excellent comic timing. I love it when they’re on screen together going back and forth. The whole ghost thing is a little goofy, but both Campbell and Majors make it work. And it’s interesting how Majors shows you where Ash got his lovable asshole attitude from. Brock’s back and forth with the Knight of Sumeria that he kicks into his basement is exactly how Ash would act with a customer right before the store closes. Ash just wants to go home. Brock just wants to go home, too.
Kelly’s leg wound is a nightmare. We don’t see deadites bite people all that often, but when they do it’s terrifying. How would you like it if the wound created by the bite becomes a small deadite inside your body? How the hell would you deal with that kind of thing? That’s where the episode leaves Kelly. Is she going to cut off her own leg and become Bionic Kelly by the end of the season?
The deadite Pablo part of the episode is unexpected. Pablo saved Kelly in the woods from certain death at the hands of the deadite Dalton, slamming a pick-up truck into Dalton, but then Pablo disappeared. Where did he go? And how did the evil get to him? Is the deadite Pablo even the real Pablo? It probably is, since the deadite Dalton is the real Dalton, but isn’t it possible that the evil is just using Pablo’s image to attack Kelly? And what about the whole “brujo” thing regarding Pablo? How does that fit into the deadite Pablo?
Dalton sure goes out with a bang, doesn’t he? That may be one of the greatest self-inflicted exploding heads in the history of television. The blood just goes everywhere. Insane.
Do you think Brandy, at this point in time, still believes that Ruby is her kindly high school guidance counselor and isn’t pure evil? She really hasn’t seen Ruby in her full on evil guise yet, but with Ash and Kelly telling her that Ruby is no good and then experiencing the deadite Pablo attack, Brandy has to be close to accepting the truth, right?
What the hell is Ash going to do with the demon baby? He’s dealt with little evil creatures before, but this baby seems to be more dangerous than all of the others combined. Are the chainsaw and boomstick going to be enough to take the little bastard out?
Unfinished Business is gory, funny, and pure Ash vs. Evil Dead awesomeness. What the hell is going to happen next?
Bring on episode five!
