It’s our longest “minisode†yet, with the flashback far outweighing the present-day content. Baby, these are maxisodes at this point. I don’t think doing the whole thing in chronological order would be any more valid of an artistic choice, but the whole “these flashbacks aren’t part of the main episode, disregard! Disregard!†thing feels very, very arbitrary.
Let’s get the present-day stuff out of the way before diving into the Nazi zombies of it all. There’s barely any of it to address. Shax tricks Aziraphale into confirming that he knows where Gabriel is and uses the powers of deduction to figure out he must be in the bookshop. Shax then asks permission from Beelzebub to invade Earth with a legion of hell. I feel like that breaks the truce or kayfabe or whatever that has been hiding heaven’s and hell’s existence from humans these past six millennia, but go off. Nina’s partner continues to send emotionally abusive texts. Gabriel was snoring. That’s about it. Oh, and hell apparently has been kiki-ing about Aziraphale/Crowley for years. Okay, zombies!
The bulk of the episode showed Crowley and Aziraphale during the London Blitz in 1941. I coulda sworn we were going to see one of the times Az did the “I’m sorry†dance, but apparently not.
We start in medias res, with Crowley performing a minor miracle to blow up some Nazis in a church. This was touched on last season, with Greta Kleinschmidt trying to get her hands on Agnes Nutter’s book of prophecy. Crowley performs a very specific miracle, one that blows up the Nazis yet saves the book. More important, he did that while inside a church — a.k.a. hallowed ground. What kind of demon can walk into a church and not start smoking from all the holiness, like the vampires in What We Do in the Shadows? A shitty one, that’s what. The recently departed Nazis strike a deal with the demon Furfur: Get evidence that Crowley is chummy with the angels, and they don’t have to be eaten and shit out by a giant spider for all eternity. Good deal.
Shout-out to British-telly mainstays Niamh Walsh, Steve Pemberton, and Mark Gatiss for their bumbling zombie trio. Walsh is a regular in Gaiman jawns. Besides being in the last season of Good Omens, she played Nuala in the Audible version of Sandman and Ethel Cripps in Netflix’s take on the material. Pemberton and Gatiss were both in The League of Gentlemen and have moved away from their sketch-comedy roots to a varying extent. But they’ve still got the chops to walk real silly.
Truly, who is Crowley kidding pretending to be a big evil demon? It’s World War II, and the naughtiest thing he’s getting up to is running liquor for an Allied nightclub. That’s barely even a crime let alone a sin. Unfortunately, his booze got all bombed to bits, and his nightclub connect is well pissed. She’s having a rough time of it since there’s no heat, and also her magician quit. Aziraphale, hearing this, begs to perform. The dude loves prestidigitation, which has been canon since the book. Remember when he was the saddest party clown ever at little Warlock’s birthday? We know Az is shit at magic; Crowley knows it too. The only one blithely oblivious about his complete lack of skill is Aziraphale.
Determined to give the Allied troops a good show, Aziraphale goes to the only magic shop still open during the Blitz. Me, I’d go to the country and maybe pick up with the whole rabbits-outta-hats business after VE day. (I’m guessing the owner of this magic store feels, in hindsight, it was too dangerous to stay in London, him getting eaten and all.)
Aziraphale decides he simply must do a trick where the magician catches a bullet in their teeth. Normally, that trick works by shooting a blank and placing a bullet in your teeth, but this one has a real projectile and has already taken multiple lives. But Aziraphale isn’t bothered because (1) he’s immortal and (2) he trusts Crowley with his life. This is some high-level shipping stuff. Bones did this — had Booth throw knives at a completely trusting Bones when they went undercover at a circus (murder of conjoined twins on the border between two states, if you’re wondering why the FBI infiltrated a freak show). And by the end of that season, they were talking about having a kid together. Just sayin’, nothing says “I can’t express my love, but I can display my trust in you†quite like letting your paramour lob deadly weapons at you.
The zombies learn of Aziraphale’s magical debut by way of eating the magic-show owner, and they summon Furfur. His miracle blocker puts a real wrinkle in Aziraphale’s magic act, and he gets a Polaroid of the two onstage together. All in all, it’s not looking great. But Crowley manages to perform the trick without infernal help, and Aziraphale finally does some close-up magic and sneaks the Polaroid away from Furfur. Our boys are learning a lot from each other. They cheers to “shades of gray†rather than black-and-white thinking. It’s something they’ve picked up from humans. The question remains: When will they learn the other big lesson from humanity, e.g., banging? Angels don’t know how. But they don’t know how to lie, either, and Aziraphale has gotten really good at that. Maybe this big showdown at the bookshop will finally put things into perspective.
Biblical Apocrypha
• Gay-O-Meter is still at DEFCON 3: ROUND HOUSE. Even the demons can see how in love these two jabronis are. Alas, Crowley and Aziraphale are doomed to be the last two people to know that they burn for each other.
• The song the tramp sings is a real song of unclear origins.
• So … are the Nazi zombies still around? Will they come up later? Chekov’s Nazi zombies.
• Chekov’s Derringer, for that matter. Aziraphale says he keeps one in a hollowed-out book in the shop, and Jimriel kept thwacking a book on the table last episode. Was that because it sounded weird because it was hollow and had a gun inside? Only time will tell.
• Miranda Richardson is doing a lot with the scant screen time she’s given. Seems like she’s being set up as the Big Bad, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s behind Jimriel’s amnesia in some way. But if that’s a payoff coming in the next two episodes, it’s going to feel less than fulfilling since she’s so rarely onscreen.
• Ditto the angels. Seemed a few eps back that Michael maybe got rid of Gabriel in order to be in charge for once, but I couldn’t pick them out of a heavenly choir now.
• I think one reason Aziraphale is terrible at magic is because stage magic is, at heart, lying. And angels suck at that.
• The 1941 flashback was Michael Sheen’s best hair so far. Why did he ever stop parting it like that?