Ash vs Evil Dead - Home Again - Review: "Worst time to hatch a plan"

Ash isn't doing very well. I’m going to guess it was Kelley’s idea to have, the completely wasted, Ash confined to a small lot driving the Delta in circles where he couldn’t hurt anyone.

Ash is an extremely drunk basket case. If anyone ever doubted whether Ash truly cared for his team, his conversation with Pablo proved he really cared. The first part of the episode showed us how much he really cares. Heck, Ash actually acknowledged that Pablo was from Honduras not Mexico.

This is absolutely the worst time for Ash, of all people, to come up with a plan to save Pablo. It's a pretty simple plan, go back in time and never open the Necronomicon. The evil is never released. Pablo is never brought into it. Wham...Bam...Boom...Pablo is alive. It's a simple plan, but all I can see is disaster.

Ash slams on the gas pedal and aims the Delta for a building (and a poor homeless dude sitting in front of it) at high speed. Ruby is left with no choice but to read the time travel spell from Pablo's body. Ash drives the Delta into the portal and lands in 1982. (I loved Ash bellowing out the window to Linda that he'd be back for her. And, just in case she wasn't within ear shot he bellowed his request for someone to get her the message.)

I have a couple of reasons that I'm really rooting for this insane plan to work. First, I want Pablo back for season 3. Second, I really really want to watch Pablo's face when he reads the note Ash left for him.

I remember that there were shenanigans with the Necronomicon before Ash and his friends arrived at the cabin, so I wasn't surprised when everyone felt the arrival of Evil. They run for their lives and Ash ends up in the cabin.

Ash managed to have a few intelligent moments during his fight with the newly arrived Evil. He, wisely IMHO, decided to postpone going into the cabin’s cellar. Of course this wasn’t until after he stepped on a nail and ended up sucking evil poison from his leg. This led to another of those ridiculous, time killing, slapstick fight scenes we’ve come to love.

A woman’s cries for help draw Ash into the cellar where he finds an older woman that he’ll meet in the future, Henretta. In another wise move, Aah assumes Henrietta is a Deadite. He operates under this assumption until her husband walks in with one of his college students.

The college student steps into a bear trap, and Ash is convinced that he’s the bad guy and Henrietta is simply one of his victims. Of course about 30 seconds after Ash unlocks Henrietta (a Deadite, of course), her husband states that he’s chained Henrietta up because she has been possessed. Whoops.

The Professor locks Ash and the College Student in the cellar with the Deadite. I suppose the plan is to distract it with cannon fodder while he gets away with the book. Not good. Potential fun for us next week, but not good for Ash.

Kelley and Ruby didn’t get a whole lot to do in this episode. Aside from a tussle with a one-eyed tree, they mostly just talked. Kelley accused Ash of being a superhero whose power is ruining everything. I was a little surprised that Ruby considers Ash’s methods effective. Kelley considers it dumb luck. I gotta agree with Kelley.

I really enjoyed the opening sequences of the episode. Ash’s drunken reminiscences about Pablo were a highlight. Unfortunately, once we got to the cabin the episode lost a bit of its energy. I think if they’d given Kelley and Ruby more story in this episode and saved 90% of the cabin stuff for the next episode it would have worked better for me.

Does anyone have any guesses who the smoker in the shadows is? The camera focused on that cigarette for a long time. My first thought was Laura, but I dismissed that. Who do you think it is?

What did you think about the episode?