Season 1, Episode 4
Git Gone
Anubis: Death is not a debate! How many, do you think, have come before you, all with promises and threats of glory, gold, love? Who are you to misguide me from my duty? You are but a man, not even one I should remember! You shall go into the darkness, and I shall forget having ever met you.
Laura: FUCK Y— [Laura is pulled out of death, much to Anubis's surprise]
Laura Moon: The Untold Story. Essentially, a How We Got Here, from Laura's perspective.
Once upon a time, a bored casino worker named Laura caught a thief named Shadow trying to pull a chip-switch. Rather than call her pit boss, Laura quietly pointed out the cameras that record everything, from every angle possible, and suggested he walk away and take his 'business' elsewhere. Wisely, the thief listened to her advice, but instead waited for her shift to end - and while he wasn't able to talk her into helping him rob the casino, he was able to talk his way into her home and bed. Laura's best friend Audrey approved of the new man in Laura's life, and so did her husband Robbie - he even talked Shadow into learning how to train, and giving him a legit job. Soon they were married. It was the perfect life...
Until it wasn't. Shadow was happy, but Laura was bored. Her unconventional solution? Shadow robs the casino, after all. She had a foolproof plan - so naturally Shadow got caught. She knew she couldn't handle three years on her own, so she pleaded with Shadow to let her come forward, so she would hopefully get his sentence halved and serve it herself, but Shadow wasn't having it. Not able to cope, she ended up in bed with Robbie, with her best friend Audrey none the wiser - until the crash that killed both Laura and Robbie.
Though Laura believed in nothing, she finds herself in Anubis's company. Anubis wants to weigh her heart, but she's having none of it. She already knows that the scale will read heavy. She argues with Anubis, but Anubis is implacable - like death must be. It's to the surprise of them both when, mid-curse, Laura is plucked back into the land of the living. Crawling out of her grave, not understanding what is happening, she sees a strong golden light, pulling her towards it. Following it, she finds - Shadow, the source of the golden light, being lynched at the hands of the Technical Boy's Children. With a new swiftness and strength, she rends the mooks apart easily and gets Shadow down, but at the cost of losing her arm, or at least having it disconnected from her shoulder.
Looking for something to reattach her arm, Laura first goes to her old home to clean herself off. As she starts looking for something to re-attach her arm, she sees the golden light approaching, and afraid of Shadow seeing her in this state, she hides in the now-empty hot tub. Instead, she decides to slip away to the Burton residence, hopefully to use some of Audrey's crafting thread, which she finds - but then Audrey finds her, and promptly freaks out. After a very awkward conversation with Laura, um, expelling embalming fluid from the rear into Audrey's toilet, while Audrey is aghast in her bathtub, Laura has an only loosely patched up arm, and Audrey's taking her towards Chicago, in the direction of the golden light - when she nearly runs into a dog. Then the dog becomes a man Laura recognizes - Anubis, naturally - and we see his companion, Mr. Ibis, who writes the Coming To America stories. The pair of them run a funeral parlor called Jacquel and Ibis, in the Illinois town of Cairo. It's with their expert help on corpses that they give Laura both the use of her arm back, and a (albeit temporary) decent looking pallor to her skin. Jacquel/Anubis's help comes with a warning - once things are settled with her and Shadow, Anubis will take her to the darkness after death that still waits for her.
The episode ends where the last one did - in a motel room, Laura waits, until a golden light passes through the windows, and a man opens the door from the outside. As Shadow stands there, confused, Laura just says, "Hi, Puppy."
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- An Arm and a Leg: Laura loses an arm in the fight with the Technical Boy's Children, and just carries it around until she can get it reattached.
- Aura Vision: When Laura comes back from the dead, she sees Shadow emitting waves of light that she can see from miles away. It's left deliberately unclear whether this is because of their connection, or if there is something unique about Shadow that any zombie would see.
- Bait-and-Switch: The first shot of the episode is on some Egyptian hieroglyphs set in stone, so you might be tempted to think we're going to see a Coming to America story for an Egyptian god. Nope - it's actually part of the decoration for the Egyptian-themed casino where Laura works.
- Berserk Button: Going by his reaction, Anubis does not appreciate attempts to negotiate with him for a better afterlife.
- Brick Joke: In Episode 1, Audrey tells Shadow that she discovered Laura's affair when Robbie's cock was separated from his body by Laura, when she bit down during the crash, and follows this up by saying the coroner had the audacity to ask what they should do with the dismembered member — "I had them put it somewhere special." In this episode, she reveals her answer to the recently risen Laura: Robbie was buried with his cock pushed up his ass.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Invoked. Anibus coldly tells Laura that she's just one more soul out of the millions he's judged, and after she goes to her eternal fate he'll have no reason to remember any of this. Of course, what happens next probably sticks in his mind a bit more.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Laura mops the floor with Technical Boy's Children.
- Curse Cut Short: Played with: Laura had already said the Fuck in "Fuck You," but got pulled back to the living world before she could finish the second word.
- A Day in the Limelight: This is, unreservedly, Laura's story. In fact, Shadow is the only other regular cast character who appears in this episode.
- Didn't See That Coming: Anubis just stares in disbelief when Laura suddenly goes flying out of the afterlife.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Anubis gets pretty snippy when Laura tries to negotiate for a better afterlife, but other than that he is perfectly cordial. Even when he finds her as a zombie, he just helps patch her up and sends her on her way—though he does promise that he will eventually complete his task.
- Gilligan Cut: Laura lays out her plan to rob the casino to Shadow saying "there is no way you can get caught." It then jumps to Shadow in the prison meeting room with Laura muttering "how did you get caught?"
- Groin Attack: Laura kicks one of Technical Boy's goons in his privates, causing his skull and spine to fly off his body.
- How We Got Here: This episode is devoted to Laura's backstory - from her first meeting with Shadow, to their dating and marriage, the crime that took him away from her, her death, and then everything that happened after she came back from the dead.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Laura is barely fazed at losing an arm during the fight with the Children. Being undead helps.
- The Nothing After Death: According to Anubis, this is what awaits Laura due to her lack of belief.
- Once More, with Clarity: The scene where the Technical Boy's thugs try to kill Shadow is played again, only now we actually see what happened: Laura killed them and saved Shadow.
- Potty Emergency: Laura's having bowel trouble in Audrey's home, when Audrey finds her and freaks out at seeing Zombie Laura in her house. She goes to the bathroom and locks herself in - then Laura bashes in the door and goes... right to the toilet, to noisily expel what (we hope) is embalming fluid from her bottom, as Audrey looks on, utterly bewildered.
- Self-Inflicted Hell: Anubis implies that this is how the afterlife works:Anubis: (to Laura) In life, you believed in nothing, so you will go to nothing.
- Taking the Heat: Shadow takes a longer sentence to keep Laura out of jail.
- Tempting Fate: Laura does this twice, with similar phrasing to boot:
- "There is no way you can get caught" right before Shadow gets caught for the casino heist.
- "You fucked around and you didn't get caught" to Robbie, right before their car accident and their cheating revealed to their partners.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Anubis appears on the road in the form of a black dog, before resuming his human shape.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The first thing Laura does after climbing out of her grave is throw up an awful lot of embalming fluid.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- We also don't see what happens to Audrey after Anubis and Mr. Ibis meet them on the road.
