American Gods Recap: Head Full of Snow

Season 1/ Episode 3/ Starz By now, American Gods knows what kind of show it is. It’s aware of what checkmarks it has to hit to be a good version of itself: clever moments from Wednesday, wild sex scenes, and mind-bending snapshots of a variety of deities. “Head Full of Snow” maintains this tradition and probably improves it without the shock value needed to hook viewers in the first two episodes. The first scene opens up in an apartment building in an unnamed city and focuses on an older woman standing on a wobbly chair as she reaches for something on her top shelf. After reaching the mason jar she was after, she continues cooking whatever’s on the stove before there’s a knock at the door. On the other side is a man she doesn’t recognize. She tries to get him to leave – admittedly, by assuming he’s here to see the “Black people family” or rob her. Instead, the man tells her she’s died and shows her her body lying on the kitchen floor. She apparently fell off of the chair she was standing in and didn’t survive. The man reveals himself to be Anubis, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. Although she’s a practicing Muslim, Anubis came to her because she was educated on his existence in her youth and never truly forgot. As a final gift, Anubis tells her how her family will live on after she’s been buried and let’s her know the food she was preparing was perfect. As the two walk up the fire escape to the roof, they end up in a desert. As the two sit down, Anubis rips the woman’s hear…