Ash vs. Evil Dead - Bait

In El Jefe, Kelly learned from her father while he was on the phone with her that her mother had supposedly returned home. It is pretty much believed Kelly’s mother had perished after going off a bridge, however, her body had never been found so it was slightly possible (but not probable) she could still be alive. Mimi Rogers guest stars as Kelly’s mother, claiming she had been suffering amnesia while Ash considers her a Deadite masquerading as a car wreck victim returning from a bout of “lost time”. Kelly’s father (Phil Peleton) is fully committed to the idea that his wife has indeed returned from amnesia. So now Ash must convince Kelly and Pablo that Rogers is a member of the Evil Dead not the mom they find hospitable, genial, and sweet. Ash tells Pablo that if it is too good to be true, it normally is. Ash also tells Pablo that it was quite convenient of the mother to just up and return right after the Book of the Dead had been accidentally read from, releasing the Evil Dead upon the Earth.

The fast-paced half hour features Ash and Pablo contending with their former employer, Mr. Roper (Damien Garvey), possessed by the Evil Dead, interrupting their trip to Kelly’s house by trying to kill them while driving down the road in Ash’s car. Then once Ash finally “encourages” (with a good, old fashioned slug to the chops) the Evil Dead to emerge from the façade of Kelly’s “normal” mom, he’ll need to take care of her as well. The cramped space of the car gives Ash some difficulty with Mr. Roper as Pablo tries to help. Pablo and Roper fight for the steering wheel as Ash repeatedly stabs the Deadite in the throat with a broken beer bottle. That is the first of the two big special effects sequences involving Ash and his combat with the Evil Dead as Pablo and Kelly become embroiled in the danger of it all. The second, eventually involving Mimi in Deadite form, has Ash getting his chainsaw stuck in a shelf while she attempts to maneuver his shotgun into his chin. Even with Pablo stabbing her in the head, it will take Ash’s extreme methods to take her down (chainsaw impaling her and then severing her head!).

Ash compares himself to “the big whale” and Kelly as the “bait” (hence, the title of the episode); meanwhile, Pablo hoped to impress her parents so he had a shot with Kelly. Sufficed to say, impressing her parents goes awry! Amanda is on “pending investigation leave”, after losing her partner to the Deadite in El Jefe, and she continues to pursue the truth regarding what she’s up against. This will lead her to a book store…the same book store Ash is looking for so he could have the Book of the Dead transcribed in the hopes of returning the Evil Dead back to where it/they came from.

Bait is once again a quick 27 minutes that gives fans their sequences of blood and gore, as Ash posits zingers such as, “Let’s tango, bitch”. While Kelly and her dad celebrate the return of their beloved, Ash consistently reminds them that it is all a fraud and that the Evil Dead are cruel, using what they cherish against them. Ash tells Pablo and Kelly he knows how it feels to bury those he loves, although when he uses wooden stick crosses for their gravesites, she tells him they were Jewish…certainly plays on his cross burials from the Evil Dead movies. Pablo stabbing mom in the head and her pulling it out…his reaction is priceless. While Amanda doesn’t get much time (Lucy Lawless’ Ruby isn’t around at all in Bait), her story regarding how the Evil Dead has her involved still gets a bit of development. There’s a whole season, so time can be afforded them in further episodes. I can tell that those behind the creation of the show felt the need to give the Evil Dead fans their grue early and then gradually introduce details involving other characters besides Ash. Providing Ash with teammates like Pablo and Kelly will keep the series from depending solely on him to carry it, and a series does need to evolve past just our hero slaughtering the Evil Dead.