Good Omens Recap: We’re Going to Edinburgh!

Good Omens Recap: We’re Going to Edinburgh!,Angels really have no undercover skills, do they? A recap of ‘I Know Where I’m Going’, episode three of season 2 of Amazon’s ‘Good Omens.’

Good Omens Recap: We’re Going to Edinburgh!

Season 2 Episode 3 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Mark Mainz/Prime/Mark Mainz/Prime Okay, first of all: This mystery is too slow. The mini-sodes weaving through the main episode like a serpent through the Garden of Eden isn’t helping in that department, but maybe there’s not enough plot to keep the engine moving. At this point, it’s supposed to be enough to spend time with our favorite lads, and in many ways it is, but it still feels like something is missing from this season of Good Omens. Maybe it’s the lack of ancillary characters. Sure, there are angels and demons around, and our beta couple to fret over, but season one had so many stories coming to a head. You had Aziraphale and Crowley, but also Adam and the Them, the witchfinders, the witch, and the Horsepersons of the Apocalypse. That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air. In this season, the air feels a little empty. Not enough balls.

One ancillary character this season we are only now just getting to know is Muriel, the wet angel who found the matchbox. She goes undercover as a human policeman in order to witness the “25 Lazari miracle” Crowley and Aziraphale did. I think I agree with Crowley; resurrection is a bad measurement for miracles. It seems too big. Like how Celsius is more sensible but less tailored to human experience. What of a minor miracle like finding your keys? Is that a millilazarus? A microlazarus? Anyway, Muriel’s enthusiasm is adorable, but Aziraphale’s pitying gaze is what sells these scenes. He feels so bad for this innocent little dummy. They should go on adventures together, and Aziraphale can be the world-weary mentor instead of the naïve heavenly city mouse.

Aziraphale does indeed borrow Crowley’s car, in which he has indeed been living. I was right: The apartment came with the job, and now Shax has it. Pity. Aziraphale talks to technology, and the technology seems to listen, which is very cute. As we learn, angels have no facility with subterfuge, but apparently, asking very nicely is their superpower. It’s also fun that the car changes to fit the driver’s vibe: very Terry Pratchett–y detail.

While in Edinburgh, Az visits the pub with the weird record player, and Gabriel did visit it a while back. The publican does that thing all Law & Order bartenders do and says there’s no way he’d remember one specific person coming to his pub, only to remember one specific person coming to his pub. Unfortunately for Aziraphale, and for the mystery moving forward, he doesn’t remember who was with him. Except that they were a Mason, as there’s a Masonic lodge nearby. Are Freemasons looking to take over heaven?

Gabriel apparently has quite the fondness for Edinburgh, as an eerily accurate statue of him stands in one of the city’s cemeteries. It’s been there since at least 1872 when Crowley took Aziraphale to see it and they stumbled upon a grave robber.

Poor Aziraphale gets another harsh lesson in applied ethical theory in this mini-sode. Believing grave-robbing to be a sin, he prevents a street urchin from selling a body to a surgeon. Crowley and Aziraphale are debating whether the poor and the rich have the same ability to lead good lives. According to Aziraphale, being poor only gives you more opportunities to be pious by rejecting sinful ways to get ahead. The Bible does have that thing about a rich man entering the kingdom of Heaven and how it’s highly unlikely. But Crowley, ever the Engelsist, feels that most of the pious ways to live require start-up capital. Only after Az fucks over the would-be grave robber does he learn that the man buying the corpses is doing so to teach surgeons how to save lives. Oopa-doopa.

Now wanting to help rob some graves: Crowley, Aziraphale, grave-robbing Elspeth, and her … uh … close friend Wee Morag. Only an anti-grave-robbing device shoots Wee Morag, and we have a slight bury your gays. It’s not like Elspeth and Wee Morag were going to live a long and healthy life — Morag already had a cough of death — but c’mon! We don’t need lesbians dying to teach us lessons anymore. It’s 2023. Or 1872, whatever. At least it was a lesbian dying to teach a queer-coded character a lesson. That’s progress, I guess?

It would have been a double-troper, had Aziraphale and Crowley not stopped Elspeth from offing herself. Crowley gets fucked up on laudanum, pulls an Alice in Wonderland and gets wee, then giant, and forces Az to fund a good life for Elspeth. Maybe she’ll buy that loom now. Crowley, once again, did a good thing. Only it seems like time Hell noticed since he gets yeeted into the ground. In voice-over, Aziraphale says it was the last time he saw Crowley for a while. Presumably, in the next episode, we’ll find out why. We’ll also probably find out how Hell is planning to take down Aziraphale since they know he’s mixed up in this Gabriel business.

Biblical Apocrypha

• Gay-o-meter is DEFCON 3: ROUND HOUSE. Skinheads on Grindr, definite movement on the Maggie/Nina front, and a partial aversion of the “bury your gays” trope. Partial fulfillment of that trope, too, but hey. A win’s a win.

• Adding to the G-o-meter in this episode is how Hell chooses to go after Az instead of Crowley. Heaven is straightforward; they think Aziraphale is involved, so they go after Aziraphale. Hell thinks Crowley’s involved, so they’re going after whom Crowley loves.

• The title sequence appears to mostly reference the mini-sodes this season. There’s the exploding goats from “A Companion to Owls” and the body in the pickled-herring barrel from this episode. An observant fellow could watch the credits for clues as to what’s going to happen. Not me, though. These credits are like dreams that are only prophetic in hindsight to me.

• Always nice to hear David Tennant get to use a Scottish accent, even if he is laying it on thicker than his real brogue in this. See also: Doctor Who’s “Tooth and Claw.” But no one ever lets Michael Sheen play Welsh. Unfair!

• Jimriel went all purple-eyed again and spouted some vaguely biblical stuff about the dead walking the earth again and great lamentations. I couldn’t find the speech in the Bible, but if you know where Jim’s getting that particular prophecy, let me know in the comments.

• Combined with the Buddy Holly song, it seems like a lovepocalypse is coming? It’s certainly cheerier than the last one.

• Beelzebub is also feeling a little “What’s the point of it all?” since no one ever tells them they’re doing a good job. Or bad job? It feels like Hell would maybe have opposite-day rules about what’s good/bad.

• Neil Gaiman always does such a good job putting characters in history. He knows where all the inflection points are. “The Resurrectionists” reminded me a lot of Sandman when Destruction finds out humans have discovered optics, and it causes him to go AWOL.

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