There were some rather dodgy statements coming from cable company Starz! and the people behind Ash vs. Evil Dead that season three of the beloved cult show may well be the last.
As I said above, there were hints this was going to be the case. Bruce Campbell, Ash Williams himself, mused during an interview that if the show wasn’t renewed for a fourth season, that would effectively be the last time he’d play the character.
It was a curious statement to make and it made me think he knew more of what was going on than he was willing to say…
I’ve seen all but the last three episodes of this season and, though I’m a huge fan Bruce Campbell’s Ash and love me some Evil Dead, this latest season was… not particularly good. In fact, I’m still where I was, stuck on episode 5, when I wrote about my ambivalent feelings about the latest season of the show.
I will repeat something I’ve said many times before: I’ve enjoyed the first two seasons of the show, the second more than the first, but felt each season had a weak ending. Nonetheless, there was a beautiful balance between the absurd and the gory and I really, really liked the characters introduced around Campbell’s Ash.
This season, though, the original writing show runner left due to clashes with one of the series’ original producers (I wrote about that here), and strangely enough his plans to make Dana DeLorenzo’s Kelly Maxwell turn out to be Ash’s daughter (something which, if you watch the first two seasons of the show realize was in the works from the start) was replaced with… bringing in another actress to play Ash’s daughter.
I don’t want to slam the actress, but the role to where I’ve seen the show has been… thankless. There would have been, IMHO, much more meat in the bone if Kelly’s character turned out to be Ash’s daughter and we wouldn’t have had to introduce a new character and try to incorporate her into the story in any significant way.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Again, I’m repeating stuff I wrote before (and, if you click the link above you’ll read what I originally wrote), but this season of Ash vs. Evil Dead has featured our main characters curiously split from each other, doing their own thing and that, too, is dull. It was fun to see Ash reacting to the others and vice versa. But now, they’re spread out and floundering.
Now, I haven’t seen any of the episodes after #5 and, therefore, have half a season -when its done- to go. I hope things pick up. I especially hope, given that this is likely the last we’ll ever see of Ash, that the show finally has a strong ending.
Several years ago the term “jumping the shark” was coined by a very clever fellow to explain the point where a popular/enjoyable TV show reaches a point where it suddenly is no longer that.
The term/reference, for those unfamiliar, relates to an episode of the once very popular TV show Happy Days (it had a whopping 11 seasons, airing from 1974 to 1984), and had one of the most popular characters in Henry Winkler’s Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli. It was his character in an episode presented in the 1977 season of the show that had the proverbial “jumping the shark” moment.
Quite literally!
Here it is -and, yes, Ron Howard (that Ron Howard) was still in the show and driving the boat. He was still primarily known as an actor and hadn’t yet transitioned to the powerhouse director he subsequently became:
The absurdity of the scene and subsequent pointing out of it made the term “jumping the shark” shorthand for the moment a TV show crosses the great Rubicon and, through the silliness of that moment, is no longer looked upon as the powerhouse it used to be.
In the case of Happy Days, the show would continue for several more years after presenting audiences with this particular sequence, so while it was silly (and that’s the nicest way to describe it), it was hardly “fatal” to the TV show.
The fact is that TV shows that become popular can do so in several ways. It can be a relatively slow process, where the show may start out barely hanging on while interest grows each and every day to the point where the show becomes a powerhouse. It can explode almost from the get-go, a so-called “water cooler” type show that almost everyone comes to love almost right away (The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are two such recent examples).
Here’s the thing though: Good as any TV show is, there is always a risk that things will get… stodgy. Dull. Repetitious. As funny and fascinating as the term is, many shows lose steam and audiences and eventually get cancelled without necessarily giving a “jumping the shark” type moment.
Way, waaaaaaaay back when a cartoon show appeared on one of the “big four” networks and, to put it bluntly, the show absolutely blew me and my future wife away. The show premiered in 1989 and it was so damn funny I distinctly recall gasping for air in a few of those very early episodes, so hilarious was the product.
I followed the show for a number of years but somewhere around the fifth season or so it was like a switch had suddenly turned off in both me and my (by then) wife and, quite suddenly, we no longer had an interest in seeing the show. In fact, the show, The Simpsons, continues today, having reached an incredible 30th season, easily the longest running TV show out there today.
And neither my wife nor I have seen a full episode of it in some 25 years. In fact, the very last full The Simpsonsanything I saw was the feature film, which I felt was pretty damn mediocre and didn’t exactly change my mind and make me want to see the show again.
Please note: There was no “jumping the shark” moment regarding the show. We just felt like we’d gotten our fill and no longer felt the need to catch any more of it.
As the saying goes, your mileage may vary and, given the show still airs today, clearly there is still considerable interest in the series. But for me, there is absolutely none.
Yesterday I watched the latest -the fifth- episode of Season 3 of Ash vs The Evil Dead. This represents the half-way point of Season 3 as there are 10 total episodes in the season.
I’m a HUGE fan of the character of Ashley “Ash” J. Williams (and Bruce Campbell, the actor who plays him), who first appeared in the movie Evil Dead, then Evil Dead 2 (the best of the lot, IMHO), then Army of Darkness, before disappearing for many years before being revived in the Starz! series.
As I said, we’re in the third season of Ash vs. The Evil Dead and as much as I like most of what’s come before, I’m finding this season… not that good.
Don’t get me wrong, the regular nonsense is there: Plenty of blood and guts mixed with tongue in cheek humor and a main character who remains a complete idiot. However, something about this season seems… off.
To begin with, the cast has been curiously split apart, with Bruce Campbell’s Ash often doing things on his own while the various other main characters we’ve followed to date (Ray Santiago’s Pablo Simon Bolivar, Dana DeLorenzo’s Kelly Maxwell, Lucy Lawless’ Ruby Knowby), seem to be off on their own doing their own thing. In fact, it occurs to me we’ve seen very little of these characters together. They are often split up in their own stories and, frankly, while interesting characters they don’t have the same level of interest in this viewer as Ash does. In fact, their best moments are their incredulous reactions to Ash, something that can’t happen if they’re not around him.
But it goes beyond that.
The story itself, after two solid season (which, for the record, I felt nonetheless stumbled in their conclusions), is starting to show its seams.
Ash is a blowhard idiot, a delight to watch stumble along yet somehow always get the upper hand over evil. But its becoming clear many of the show’s ancillary characters are simply cannon fodder, killed without much thought which makes you realize how capricious the story lines are. We present a new character, we kill them off, they come back evil, and are subsequently dispatched by Ash.
Ash, still standing, doesn’t seem to suffer so much as a scratch, even though he does get slapped around like one of the Three Stooges.
Thing is -and I realize I’m offering a “serious” critique on what is, at its heart, a purposely goofy show- why hasn’t the Evil simply gotten rid of Ash already?
I mean, he’s mortal.
If its too difficult (now anyway) to take over Ash’s body, why not simply have a spirit take over a human body, purchase a gun, stalk Ash, and when he least expects it, blow his brains out?
Instead, the Evil creatures are becoming tediously predictable in their actions, taking over their human hosts, showing off their ugly mugs (usually while screaming/cursing at Ash), then moving around and around, slapping -or worse- Ash before he gets a bead on them and takes them out with maximum gore-age.
I really liked seeing this for a while but now, after three movies and while in the third season of the Starz! show, its becoming… predictable.
Dull.
There are still five episodes to go in the third season and, intriguingly, in an article by Nathalie Caron over at SyFywire.com, she notes…
The fact of the matter, it would appear, is that Starz! may well not renew the show after this season. Perhaps the costs are too high and the ratings no longer justify a continuation. Perhaps the principles in the show also recognize this particular creative endeavor is reaching its end-point.
Who knows.
But based on my current feelings regarding Ash vs The Evil Dead’s third season, I’ll repeat what I said before: The formula is starting to become too apparent and I’ve found myself far less impressed with this season versus the ones that came before.
Maybe it is time to lay poor Ash to rest, before he “jumps the shark”.
