As season 2 of American Gods continues, the show has diverged more and more from the book.  The creators have introduced more characters and made a point to focus on some of the darker atrocities in American culture.  I am not quite sure where they are going with the story this season.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do hope that we’ll start to see how some of these tangential threads will be woven together.

This week, Mad Sweeney and Laura Moon go to Louisiana to visit Baron Samedi, which is a really interesting choice.  Both Voodoo in Louisiana and Paganism in Ireland have lost some of their cultural identity with Christianity assimilating some of their foundational elements.  On paper, both Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day are Christian holidays; however (just like Christmas and Easter), traditions are borrowed from other cultures.  Over the years, some Voodoo figures were merged with Catholic ones, and when Christianity spread to Ireland, the church reduced the size of Pagan gods to diminish their importance and were rebranded as leprechauns.

America is a nation that is a melting pot of people, cultures, and ideas.  The book of American Gods grabbed my attention by focusing on this blending by anthropomorphizing these concepts.  The show has the ability to spend more time and expand on the world by depicting such wild concepts as a loa and a leprechaun sharing an adventure.