American Gods TV Review
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Positive Messages
The most positive message at play here is the diversity of casting, with people of color in strong, main roles. Otherwise this show is full of brutal violence, female characters are sidelined, and even immortal gods prefer to solve problems with battle rather than reason or kindness.
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Positive Role Models
Shadow Moon is possibly the closest thing to a role model on this show as he attempts to walk a righteous path post-prison. However, he’s a drinker and a brawler, not to mention a henchman for the diabolical Mr. Wednesday, the show’s main character, who’s clever and tricky yet menacing (and sometimes evil).
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Violence & Scariness
Extremely violent and graphic set-pieces are frequent, such as men undergoing a ritual in which their right eye is stabbed out, a sword battle during which men decapitate, stab, slash, and cut each other in half with showers and fountains of blood, and numerous fistfights with spouting blood and sickening crunching sounds on the soundtrack. There are many deaths, wounds, disembodied limbs, as well as horror-movie dream imagery like a forest floor covered with human bones, stark trees reaching with spooky hands, a killing ground drenched with blood, henchmen with blank featureless heads punching and kicking a man until he’s bloody, then hanging him from a tree.
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Sex, Romance & Nudity
One character is a sexual goddess — we see her having sex nude (her breasts are visible at length) in an explicit extended scene with thrusting, moaning, and very graphic talk. It ends with her pushing the man down for what appears to be oral sex but is actually her devouring him with her vagina (not visible). Additional graphic sex scenes include full-frontal male nudity and passionate lovemaking. Vulgar words for body parts, jokes about sex, graphic proposals for various sex acts, a man pees into a urinal (his penis isn’t visible). A woman attempts to have sex with a man on a headstone near the grave of his dead wife.
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Language
Lots of cursing and strong language: “f–k,” “f–king,” “motherf–king,” “goddamn,” “a–hole,” “s–t,” “ass,” “hell,” “piss off,” a man calls a particular group of woman “bitches.”
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Drinking, Drugs & Smoking
Characters drink and mention specific brands (a “Jack and Coke,” “Southern Comfort and Coke”). A bereaved woman blames her cruel babbling on losing count of how many Ativan she took. A main character smokes “synthetic toad skins,” which appears to be some kind of drug.
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Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that American Gods is a surreal drama (based on the book by Neil Gaiman) that truly earns its TV-MA rating. There’s frequent brutal violence, with onscreen deaths by decapitation, stabbings, slashings, bludgeonings, with spouting blood, lingering shots of gore, dead bodies, and disembodied limbs. Men take part in a ritual in which one eye is stabbed out, men punch each other in the face until they’re bloody pulps, complete with sickening crunching noises. A woman kills a man during sex by devouring him with her private parts, and there’s a lot of horror-movie type imagery: henchmen with featureless heads, a ground heaped with human bones. Characters have sex nude; the woman’s breasts are visible for a long time as she thrusts and moans, exchanging very graphic talk with her partner; other scenes include full-frontal male nudity and same-sex couplings. There are vulgar terms for different types of sex, and for body parts (male and female); characters urinate onscreen. Many characters curse routinely: “f–k,” “f–king,” “motherf–king,” “goddamn,” “a–hole,” “s–t,” “ass,” “hell,” “teat,” “piss off,” a man calls a particular group of woman “bitches.” Characters drink, take Ativan to deal with emotional blows, and in one vivid scene a god smokes “synthetic toad skins” (a hallucinogen?) in a vape-like pipe.
