[rating=9.00] “Fire in the Hole”
After weeks of teetering on the brink terrible—with its formulaic predictability and beat for beat rehashing of every episode thus far—Ash vs. Evil Dead finally hit some impressive notes, winning me back over completely and delivering its best episode since the premiere. While “Fire in the Hole” still more or less stuck to the established formula, it was just subversive enough to be interesting and harkened back to everything that made the franchise glorious in the first place. With surprising ease, the episode was funny, scary, gory, and satisfying, doing all of this while setting up what looks to be a fantastic final run.
As ever, the episode picks up almost immediately after the previous one left off. We find our quartet of heroes stumbling onto the militia camp Ash’s friend directed them towards last episode, and things are already looking bad. They find bodies lying everywhere in various states of dismemberment and death. As one of the unfortunately still living men begs to be put out of his misery—the bottom half of his body missing and entrails hanging out precariously—the militia rushes in, screaming something about him being “one of those things,” and shoots him in the head. We have, ladies and gentlemen, stumbled onto a deadite siege.
Despite the danger posed by the deadites, the militia is still more concerned about the strangers in their midst. Classic militia, really. Their initial concerns is that Ash and his cohorts are from the government, and that the government somehow poisoned the air and water around the compound as part of their attacks against their rights. While Ash does an impressive job at assuaging their concerns, it all goes to shit when one of the gun happy country boys recognized Detective Fisher from his lock up a few years ago. One cop, of course, makes all of them cops, and hell breaks loose.
Pablo and Kelly are able to escape but Ash and Fuller aren’t so lucky. The two are handcuffed together and thrown into a bunker, where the militiamen have trapped Lem, Ash’s friend from the diner who met his unfortunate demise in the woods at the end of last week’s episode. Being literally stuck together means the two of them will have to work as one if this is going to work, but Ash’s insistence on continually hitting on Fisher might hinder their attempts (“I’m old school,” he tells her, justifying his amorous displays).
Meanwhile, Pablo and Kelly are trying like hell to both save their asses and the asses of their friends, with varying results. I joke about the militiamen, but it’s hard to hide from people who know the woods and are armed to the teeth with high powered weaponry. They’ve certainly got their work cut out for them. They come up with a decent plan to obtain a gun of their own, and it almost works, until they’re ambushed and taken prisoner once more.
Back in the bunker, Lem is stalking Ash and Fisher, having doused them both with kerosene to make extra certain the danger is high. This whole alone-in-the-dark-with-a-monster motif works shockingly well as the two work their way through their labyrinth. In a moment of quiet, Fuller warns Ash about Ruby who we see rise from the pyre she was pulled into last episode, naked but unburnt. Clearly, she’s more evil than we’ve been led to believe so far. We see Ruby drive off in her car, albeit angry over Ash’s missing hand having, well, gone missing. No matter. She knows where to go. Like Ash, she has to make her way to the cabin.
Kelly and Pablo are trapped in a pickup truck—Kelly in the bed, Pablo tied up front. It all looks pretty bad, and it gets worse as they’re ambushed by the deadites. Their driver killed, and Kelly under attack, a handcuffed Pablo slides to the driver seat and throws the truck into reverse, slamming the lone deadite into a tree. Thinking they could use his militia uniform and gasmask as a disguise, Pablo attempts to remove the mask only to be reminded that deadites are never easy to kill, and leading to one of the best and most over the top moments in the series so far.
Kelly, picking up a high powered assault rifle, shoots the deadite in a gory, bloody, hilarious moment of levity in an episode that’s been packed with terror. This is Evil Dead, after all, and the horror must be mixed with humor if it’s going to work. Humorous it is—Kelly just doesn’t have the strength to handle that sort of weaponry and the recoil puts Pablo in the precarious position of having to dodge both bullets and a deadite.
Meanwhile, Ash and Fisher have lured deadite Lem into a trap of their own. Seemingly cornered and with nowhere to go, Lem taunts the pair by throwing matches at their direction, threatening them with immolation. At Fuller’s command, Ash grabs a shovel and, moving in unison, the two take Lem out with the shovel, crushing his skull and impaling him with the handle. As soon as they’ve defeated him, Kelly and Pablo come to the rescue, releasing the pair from the bunker and their handcuffs.
The team makes their way off into the sunset, as has become the theme for the show, and Ash hangs back, just a bit. While Kelly, Pablo, and Fisher bask in their victory, Ash looks on with a sense of pride mixed with pain. He knows what he has to do—he doesn’t want to put these people in harm’s way anymore. He’s the one who started this, now he’s the one to finish it. While they’re preoccupied and not noticing, Ash slips away into the woods, headed towards the cabin by himself. As the episode begins to end, we see the old familiar cabin as an old friend crawls towards it. The first to arrive to the impending battle royale is Ash’s severed hand.
A lot happened in this episode, and what an episode it was. It was everything that’s ever made Evil Dead enjoyable to fans packed into a succinct half hour of terror and gore. Moreover, it totally revitalized the season, which has been threatening to fade into the stupidity for the last few episodes. They’ve promised something big for the finale, and while there’s still three episodes left, I’m once again happy to be on board.
