Ash vs. Evil Dead - Books from Beyond

The book itself is harmless unless wielded by someone either very evil or very stupid.

Clearly an irresponsible hero, Ash, nevertheless, has his goal in the right place, even though the methods are ill-advised: find an expert in the occult that can read from his Necronomicon and find the means to return the evil he accidentally unleashed back into the book where it belongs. Where it goes to pot is when Ash encourages the expert, Lionel Hawkins (Kelson Henderson), who owns a crusty bookstore titled Books from Beyond, to summon a “nerdy, weaker demon” that will give them the information needed to return the evil back into the book. This demon (who has a voice familiar to those who grew up in the 80s watching Inspector Gadget or has watched Night of the Demons a lot) named Eligos has no eyes with no lips, just thin flesh, teeth and gums. Ash’s idea is to “put the genie back in the bottle” but, of course, it goes all horribly wrong. Initially it seemed ideal: find the least among the demons and coerce it into helping them. But the book’s drawing of Eligos makes it out to be non-threatening when the real thing is quite the opposite. The reactions of Ash and Pablo when Eligos arrives are priceless. Lionel appears quite out of his league although he does effectively conjure Eligos and tells Ash that no one must cross a chalk outlined “protective circle” that holds the demon within it. Of course that is undermined by “rogue cop”, Amanda (Jill Marie Jones), out to find Ash, considering him the one responsible for the death of her partner and the crazy shit she’s been witness to. Amanda pointing a loaded gun at Ash moves him into the circle and Eligos is freed. What is Eligos to do? Oh, just attempt to brain scramble Ash and Pablo, impale Lionel with broken shards of glass, and bring the world to an end…yeah, this is the “weakest among the demons”!

Okay, look, if we get this done quick enough, we might have time to stop for churros.

I have noticed that Bruce’s eyes really shine through dark scenes. Just an observation that is striking to me. His Ash often disregards bad ideas in favor of cleaning up his own messes even as such decisions just produce further complications. And typically someone winds up dead. In this episode, it is Lionel who get obliterated by flying, levitated glass thanks to Eligos, shutting him up so that he can’t use a spell from the Necronomicon to send it back to where it was conjured from. Nagging as she is, Amanda considers her mission to find and stop Ash a necessity. The trail of bodies left in Ash’s wake Amanda sees him as the party responsible. While Ash certainly led to the evil’s re-emergence due to incompetent mishandling of the book while high on grass, he hadn’t killed anyone that wasn’t possessed by the evil influence…tell that to law enforcement, though. Amanda sees first hand some seriously freaky activity, but her mission’s focus is Ash, for whom she feels is behind it all. In this episode, Amanda is clunked across the noggin by Pablo as she was pointing the gun at Ash, later handcuffed to keep her from interfering. Kelly realizes Ash saved her from certain death and owes him for that, but Amanda attempts to appeal to her objectivity when it comes to all that has happened thanks to him. Eventually Amanda and Kelly are witness to Eligos’ shenanigans, as Ash and Pablo appear doomed. Kelly takes it upon herself to use the book to stop Eligos…and it seems to work!

Lucy Lawless, at this point in the season, is still enigmatic as it pertains to the overall evil-dead-on-the-loose story arc. She has a mysterious blade (with a peculiar handle) that appears to hurt the Deadite possessing the body of Kelly’s father. Lawless’ Ruby wants to know where Ash and the Necronomicon are, but the Deadite mocks her instead. Impaling him on one of Ash’s wooden crosses, and pecking on the knife stabbed in the body’s eye, Ruby is ruthless and demanding to know. She forwards ahead down that road to find Ash, full of intense purpose and guided by a laser focus agenda.

Kelly’s story is of interest as she sees Pablo as her go-to friend she can trust. Considering she lost her parents in the previous episode, Kelly needs someone to rely on and believe will watch her back. Ash has his intentions elsewhere, obviously, so depending on him for anything besides trying to get rid of the Deadites appears logical. There’s no reason to suspect she’d be anywhere near Ash if it wasn’t for this series of unfortunate circumstances resulting from the evil dead causing mischief and mayhem. Ash's confidence in Lionel is a bit misguided as the "expert" has never dealt with summoning legitimate demons before. That it all goes awry isn't a surprise. Once again Ash escapes a terrible ordeal, but the Deadites aren't even remotely through with him...as Amanda is left behind, she looks on seemingly helpless as the body of Lionel becomes possessed.

The special effects and production value of this show continues to impress me. It looks fantastic for a thirty-minute show and clearly Raimi has the resources available to him to make Ash vs. Evil Dead appear as if it were operated with a big time Hollywood budget. The advantages of having Raimi involved clearly is a benefit to the show.